Ghost images

[Paul.nz]

Yesterday in teamspeak a question was asked.The question was what is a ghost image?.
Basically a ghost image is a image made of your harddrive while it is in a good working condition.Then if your windows crashes you can restore the image to reinstall your windows or totally wipe your harddrive and start with a fresh windows exactly the same as when you brought it new.
A lot of companys hides a image on a hidden partition on your harddrive so if you have a problem it is easy to reinstall (this also saves them having to give you a windows dvd...CHEAP.)

I also used ghost images for my backup untill i found other backup programs.Basically this is what i did.
I set my c drive to 10 gig and my d harddrive to 310 gig etc.I installed windows and important programs onto my c drive only and all other programs,movies,music etc onto my d drive.
I also saved a ghost image of my C drive on my D drive (i updated every few weeks).If my Pc refused to start due to a windows problem,virus etc i can pop in my dvd of the ghost program,press a few buttons and reinstall the image saved on my D drive and overwrite everything i had on my C drive.

I know this sounds like a waste of time but i knew nothing about computers and learnt all i know by playing with my computer and ultimatly sometimes i would stuff up and my pc wouldn't start or a setting would change and a program wouldn't go.
Solution pop in the dvd and reinstall my image and try to figure out what i did wrong.

Backup programs like nortons and acronis also use images.My acronis is set to make important backups every 2 days at 6pm (the user can choose what to save).
I save my emails,favourites,windows and doc and settings folders and have a backup dvd to restore the folders i have saved.

Windows Xp does the same thing with its system restore feature which works very well.When you make a restore point or windows does it automatically it makes a new file on your harddrive and when you use restore it the file will overwrite the currupted files and hopefully your computer will start again.

A note on system restore....This can take up a lot of harddrive space after awhile and if you have a small hardrive it wont hurt to delete all the restore points and start again.To do this turn off your system restore,reboot and turn it on again then make a restore point.
Press control panel,press system,press system restore,put a dot in turn off system restore on all drives.