So was having another look at "Acronis" but seems that it's all locked down now, people are saying that they have installed it and then it's not until the pressing of F11 (I think it is on disaster boot) that it says something along the lines of "not registered" which of course if you were relying on it then it be a mare.

I have some older versions, Is any one using any thing else?

I wouldn't mind a complete clone of the "C" drive, all though I have a folder on a SATA (D drive) that's where I install most of my apps and the like to keep the C drive SSD's clear you see, (the important ones I want to open fast etc. exist on the C drive) so might have to take that into consideration when using a program as to speak.

It was ages ago on an old build when I used Acronis and it used to pop up with a message at boot if you needed disaster recovery.

All my data for the past 12 years is stored on a RAID mirror, and I have a complete backup offsite that's buried in a safe some where should the worst come to the worst, So I am covered, it was more the whole operating system and all the installed programs, settings blah blah that would be good to save, or make a backup should I ever have to install a C drive again in this rig.

Thanks

Ghost 15. I use that and have done for a while; runs a scheduled image of my C: drive (does incremental too)

I still use older Acronis, can't remember the version it's not on this PC. Not sure what version I last installed on Windows 7.

You needed to enable the recovery at startup feature unless you made bootable media.

cheers, so I'll have a look for an older version other than the ones I have,

Is that Ghost that "Norton" stuff?

oh and spot the deliberate mistake, I meant "mirror" not "stripped" for the Backup drive(s) I have C: Stripped.

Didn't see that. Worries me a bit that I didn't try a recovery on a friend of a friend's laptop .

yeah sorry to bring that up mate, I noticed it yesterday when I was having a look into Acronis and seen that's what people had been experiencing. Might be all to do with the new one (2012) though, so struggled yesterday to find one that had a working keygen. (well that worked when it was installed that is)

Cheers

I never store any data on the c drive. I map my my documents folder on a separate drive so if the OS needs to be reinstalled or gets screwed up, the data integrity still remains. Of course then the data is also backed up to a third drive but i just run a basic ms dos batch file.
On that drive i also store all my applications that need installing including any personal settings.

All my data is held on a 40gb seagate barracuda drive which i found ultra reliable.

I don't either mate, it's all stored on 2 x 1TB's running as a mirror as the D:\drive (and also have an off-site copy stored for complete disaster recovery)

it was more the whole operating system and the like, you know what it's like when you've got it all set up and stuff.....

however, I did have a mare setting up windows 7 on this machine as "stripping" 2 x 64 gig SSD's and getting them to initially install as one drive was a little complicated, had to boot into some screen in windows and use un-assigned drivers or something like that, not looking to install another operating system EVER if I can help it so was just trying to future proof my self, you know make a complete back up of C and all the programs.

There's a one that you can run in windows 7, but most of the programs I have installed are running from a folder on D:\ called "installed programs here" and the windows 7 backup seems to be giving me a ball ache as "profile" and the like seems to be skipped, I get an error message that F:\ was skipped as it's the target. (which it is as have a spare 2xTB that I was trying to back up too)

Hope that makes sense.

Lol I know what you done its very messy.. I had it like that and learnt the hard way. Why don't you separate the ssd, and have os on one and map the program files folder on the other? If you are assigning them both as one drive, knowing the failure rate on ssd you will kick yourself when one fails. If you have everything setup the way you want just take an image of the current state. I use gimagex which is pretty neat.

None of my raw data is stored in my C:, it's just boot/apps only. My Games are stored on one SSD and my local data on a 2TB stripe, however this is backed up/synced to my NAS/Server, which in turn is RTRR'd to a USB disk (although this primarily only backs up the data stored directly to the NAS)

Ghost is Norton Dibbs, I used Acronis before it screwed up my system on a restore (this is the only element to really check, you need to do a test restore)

The other option is MDT/PXE Boot and sysprep your system with a base image, but that might be a little too far.....plus it's only as good as your last complete setup image.