How to Make Own Recovery CD?

[centauri]

I have a Sony Vaio Laptop that comes with a Recovery CD that contains an image of the OS and bundled Apps installed. So in case when I decide to reformat my drive, I don't have to re-install the OS, device drivers and the apps which is very time-consuming. All I have to do is run the Recovery CD and voila, everything in my drive is as good as new. I am hoping to apply this method to my desktop PC and so I want to know what software ( a good one, that is) to use where I can make an image of my entire drive that works as the same as the Recovery CD of my Sony Vaio. What I mean is that I want to make a Recovey CD also for my desktop PC in which I could restore the entire contents in case it goes into trouble.

[cysus]

I think there is a windows program that can do that in the control panel or something. I only heard this, haven't tried it out yet.

[RayH]

You want a disk imaging program such as Norton Ghost, Drive Image, or Acronis True Image. I believe that each of these programs can write to CD or, depending upon what version to DVD.

The task will be simpler and quicker if the drive is partitioned, and the OS and program installations are separated from the created files. The created files can be backed in their own manner. It's the OS and program installations that need to be imaged.

['G']

The imaging program I would recommend is Acronis True Image V7 (build 597).

Forget the others, this one is the best.

[wju425]

I used drive image to create a recovery disk (very nice!) for my win98se system. I started out with a fresh windows install plus the drivers, needed files, and utilities. All fitted one one cd. In any event all I need is installed in 5 minutes.

\o/ Billy

[RedFury]

My problem is deciding which programs I want to have installed all the time

[John Prophet]

norton ghost is the best in my opinion.

you can simply make a norton boot floppy.

then you get your comp all set up the way u want it

boot to the floppy and do "save disk to image"..and point it to your cd burner.

Then it asks you if you want to put a bootable floppy on the cd..so u say yes..and you leave the ghost floppy in the drive and it copies it to the cd so that the cd is bootable.


Very easy procedure.

['G']

Acronis TI V7 can be trailed.

I'm not sure about the others.

Again I would go with Acronis. I beta test for them and their programs are excellent.

[rrcn]

Another vote for Ghost.

(JP, I had a feeling you would chime in some time. LOL )

[RayH]

I'm always backing up my C partition. Whenever I make a change or update. Maybe every couple of months, I'll put one on a set of CDs.