Win 7 - Ghost Imaging Problem

[sopchoppy]

Win 7 Ghost Imaging problem

Help! My son is having a problem getting the win7 imaging program to work correctly. It copies onto the first DVD okay but as soon as the 2nd DVD is entered it starts imaging then sends an error message that the Media is corrupt. These are all brand new DVD's. He has tried three additional DVD's and the same error message occurs.

Any help would be appreciated.

[Just Plain Fred]

Win 7 Ghost Imaging problem

Help! My son is having a problem getting the win7 imaging program to work correctly.
Any help would be appreciated.

sopchoppy,
Hello... As a first thing you should try to complete a backup to a folder of your choice (create one) on either your C: (if that's the only one you have) or a "Partition" on the same Hard Drive.. Better would be a Flash drive or a 2nd Internal or External hard drive. This would prove that the program is working... or you have some other problem... that we then can investigate, and go from there. Regards Fred

PS: You are talking about Windows Backup..and not "Norton Ghost" ?

[DrWho]

Like, forever, there has been a set of rules for doing backups of your main OS drive, usually drive C:.

One, your backup program should be run from a boot disk, not from within windows (which will be unavailable in case of a HD or Windows Crash.)

Two, the only safe backup is the one NOT made to any drive or storage media INSIDE your computer.

Three, the backup should be complete enough so that when it's restored, like to a brand new hard drive, your computer will boot up normally.
A data-only backup can't do that.

Four, backups should be made on a regular schedule, not just once in a lifetime. Many of us, do Weekly (not weakly) backups.

I recently had to work on a computer that had NO maintenance, even AV or AS updates for over two years. Windows was completely hosed, by virus infection.

When I had last worked on that PC, over two years ago, I had made a second partition on the HD and did a Ghost backup to that partition.

That backup was still viable and I used it to recover the PC. A lot had happened since that backup was made and a lot had to be reconstructed. But the job would have been a lot worse and would have taken many more hours, if I had not made that Ghost Backup.

Since 1997, I have used ONLY the Ghost program, now ver 11.5 for all my backup and cloning needs.
I boot up the PC and run the backup or restore from my Ghost Boot Flash Drive, CD or SD Memory Card.
I have Ghost on several different media, just in case one gets messed up and won't work.

I once had to use a Recovery Disk, from Toshiba, to fix a customer's Laptop PC. I was both surprised and pleased to discover that the Factory Restore Disk was made by "Ghost".

Good Luck to you and Happy Holidays!
The Doctor

[jwitalka]

Backup strategies are based on individual needs.
How often has your computer become unbootable due to OS corruption that can't be fixed with System restore or a hard drive failure?

If relatively frequent, you need an imaging program and a regular backup routine as Dr who suggested. Using an imaging program from within windows is perfectly fine as long as you have the recovery disk that comes with the imaging program.

If its been over a year since the last major failure, (or you can't remember the last time like me), regular backups of data only is all that's necessary. Sure it will take longer to restore the OS, reinstall all your programs, and recover the data, but if it only happens once every couple of years or so, who cares? A clean install at that point would also eliminate a lot of the extra crap accumulated over the years that an image restore would still have.

Using a separate disk installed within your computer is a function of your risk tolerance (not the one that contains your OS or data). Using a separate disk is fine for all failures except the rare case of a power surge that wipes out the whole PC. If you have data that you absolutly cannot live without, it should be backed up to an external disk or the cloud. Rotating external disks to an off site location is recommended as well if you want to also protect against disasters like fire.

As I said though, for many users that only have some pictures and a few documents they want to protect, data backup to an external disk or a secondary internal disk is sufficient.

Jerry

[sopchoppy]

Just a note of thanks to all of you who replied. As a point of information, the backup program is windows and not norton ghost. My son has windows accreditation but only up through Windows vista. He just bought a new dell laptop and wanted to have a clean install base point after his Windows Visual Basic, C++. Silverlight, Netframe, et al were installed. I will pass this information on to him and again, thank you for your help.