Create rescue DVD.

Hi.

With PCs being used more and more, and with our customers having a tendency to mess things up, I am on the lookout for a solution on how to make a rescue DVD.

I want to take a snapshot of the PC after all software has been installed and tested. Then in case the HD is crashed, or the customer has messed with the settings beyond any hope of getting it back to normal, he can just insert the DVD and reboot the PC. After some time the PC will be fully functional again (hopefully).

I have found Paragon System Recovery. As far as I understand, it will provide with me with the desired functionality at a reasonable price. For 1200 USD I will get the right to use the software with 100 PCs. For 500 USD I will get the rights to use it with an additional 100 PCs.

Are there any other similar products ?

Ghost and Acronis require a full license for each PC (that is how I understand it), and that will be a bit too expensive. They seem to be more aimed at centralised backup/restore to/from a server, or cloning, or backup/restore for a single workstation

I also looked briefly into some Linux based solutions, but I am scared away by the cryptic commands and half-complete solutions.

Hi Jesper,

I do this with my in-house applications, but I use Ghost and burn the image to a DVD and the network, it works very good, but its time consuming.

I don't have license for the images, they can't be ran unless you load them to a PC, I like the idea...insert DVD, a auto .bat file runs and your back to square 1

Do not know about the first 2 but my software supplier has informed me that Acronis is far more tolerant to different sized hard drives than Ghost.

Set the PC up, all apps working fine


Then use Ghost to image the HDD (Just like GIT says)

Another good place to look for free stuff (inc linux apps) is

http://www.thefreecountry.com/utilities/backupandimage.shtml

I use of couple of apps listed there and they have been excellent

I use Acronis on my own laptop. Backup/restore works brilliantly, but I havent tried to backup/restore to a DVD.

It is the licensing that worries me. Am I allowed to install Ghost or Acronis on all PCs in order to create the DVD ? I doubt it.

Even if I installed Acronis/Ghost on the PC just to create the DVD, and then deisntalled it again subsequently - the image created on the DVD would contain the Acronis/Ghost software and would in effect multiply the installed licenses each time a restore was performed.

The normal licenses for Ghost and Acronis are 1 license per PC.
It is too expensive to purchase a full license of Ghost or Acronis for each PC. Or maybe not - if volume discounts are significant enough, maybe that is the simplest way to go. I shall look further into that.

The Paragon System Recovery software works in the way that you either have to boot the PC with a special DVD to create the backup, or you have to attach the HD to another PC for creating the backup. You then create a bootable DVD with the image and restore software. In other words you do not install the backup/restore software on the PC.

Linux could be an idea, but does anyone know a site that explicitly dicusses this topic ? I really dont want to spend too much time with creating a solution myself.
504bloke, I did check your link and also did some search by myself. The problem is that there is no complete "package" as there are with the comercial solutions.

If you have a "Seagate or Maxtor" hard drive in your computer or are going to make new clone to a
"Seagate or Maxtor" HD you can download (FREE) a copy of Acronis from site below.
DiscWizard and MaxBlast are just renamed Acronis software ( full version). I use MaxBlast to clone my Maxtor HD.

http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/support/downloads/

Thanks Mickey, but I have Acronis (a single license to be used with a single PC) already.
The task is not to clone my PC or any other PC.
The task is to let my dumb technically challenged customer have a means to restore his PC in a simple and reliable way, so he can save his butt production, and so that I do not have to listen to his weeping use too much time to support him. And also I dont want to violate any licensing.

I have used Ghost for years but I do NOT use their newer versions. Symantec purchased Acronis and Ghost 9 from what I understand was sort of a relabeled Acronis. I do have V10 which does have some nice features.

However, you should be looking into their Corporate Edition. Yes it involves a "server" which is just another PC not specifically a server machine. There is nothing that needs to be installed on the client PCs. Basically all I have to do is create a "Ghost Boot Disk" which could be a floppy, CD/DVD, or USB drive and take that to the machine and reboot it to either load or save an image.

That being said, I typically just use Ghost 2003 (non-corporate) to create a bootable disc and take that to each machine and create or restore the image from that boot disc. I do this on almost a daily basis.

Ghost has not given me one single issue with hard drive sizes. I create my images on a notebook with a relatively small hard drive and deploy them to various laptops and desktops with a wide range of hard drive types. It makes use of all available space by expanding my partitions automatically or I can do it manually.

So if you can come across a copy of Ghost 2003 or Ghost Corporate I think you will easily accomplish your backups without having to install software on each machine.

OG

Ok in re-reading your last post you don't want Ghost or Acronis. You want those one-touch backup USB external drives.

I recommended one to a customer and they set it up easily and scheduled daily backups of their system. They keep one weeks worth of backups before they roll over. Got a call two weeks ago that they had a crash and while they were waiting for their HD to be replaced, the USB drive acts as their HD. They were thrilled.

Does not require any user action either, once it is scheduled it automatically backs up.

We used a Seagate but there are dozens of them out there.

OG

Maybe you should look into RAID hard drives. I have seen them used were you would have 2 drives working and a 3rd swap drive that would be exchanged each week. You could keep this 3rd drive in a safe place and use it to restore the system back to the last time the drive was updated. A little bit of $ for the hard drives but it could be another option.

Thanks OperaGhost. Will look into Ghost Corporate Edition.

I pardon if I didnt make it clear, but I dont have just 1 customer. I have many customers with basically the same setup, and a HMI and datalogging PC is part of this setup.
So I need to provide a simple (and cost-effective) way to get back to normal that "anybody" can figure out.
So an external HD or RAID is a bit of overkill. A restore DVD is my aim at the moment.

Here...

I got it.....

Just have them push this button and all there issues will be solved

i didn't use linux in quite long time but linux should be quick and easy way out. here is how to create image and dump it on (or restore from) another drive:

1. get image of recent distribution (so it does support file system of the target PC).
2. use that image to create bootable media (CD, floppy or USB drive).
3. once running linux use mount and umount commands to map drives (such as network drive, usb attached storage etc). note that umount is correct (they missed N in uNmount long time ago...)
4. use DD command...
5. now that you have image file, you can burn it to disc (or first compress it) using either linux or windows...

there should be way of burning directly but as said, i haven't played with linux in ages...

The current variant of Ghost is called "Symantec Ghost Solution Suite". I cannot locate a "Ghost Corporate Edition". Byuing single licenses of Ghost would cost me approx 30 USD per PC.

The "Paragon System Recovery" solution would cost me 12 USD per PC, but I would have to commit myself for 100 PCs minimum.

I think this is narrowing down to which one is easiest and/or most reliable. 30 or 12 USD is not so critical.

Panic mode, I appreciate the input, but I have little time for fiddling around with Linux commands (I prefer to fiddle around with PLCs ). If I can find a complete and well-documented solution then yes, otherwise no.
Maybe I'll try and ask on a Linux forum.

If you go with Ghost, make sure it's a newer version that can handle SATA drives that are now showing up in more PCs. We just learned last week that rev 8.3 can not handle these higher speed drives.