C Drive Copy

[RSAofYAP]

Inevitably my computer gets used by others and guest login does not help; neither does virus protection. It always takes me a long time to get everything back to where it was. This sometimes requires me to format the drive and reload my programs and once I had to contact a software company to assure them I am not a pirate. Saying ‘no’ to grandchildren is not an option.

Can I clone or copy or make an image of my C drive to another drive that is the same size and same model and then when everyone leaves just switch drives? Would this work? If it is a feasible idea would you share a link to where I can go to read how to do it? Thanks.

 

[Rogue Leader]

This is a paid program that works well, there are some free ones out there too I can't remember off the top of my head

http://www.paragon-software.com/home/dc-professional/

Ohh here we go, this one I have used and its free:

http://www.todo-backup.com/products/home/download.htm

Use the Disk clone feature on either program.

 

[smorizio]

there are drive copy and ghost software that out there. you may want tot look at sb software backup. that you can clone your drive a few places. one to an ext drive and on cloud storage. on small work pc they may hot swap bays for pc that dont move but the it tech need to put new images on. the bay fits in 5.25 cd rom bay and let a person slid in and out a drive. then lock the plate so the drive cant be stolen or moved. if your pc is used most time for light games and web from friends and grandkids. look into building another pc g3258 or amd apu. look into putting vm ware on that pc so that each grandkid can only do so much damage...then you can repair it quicker.

 

[mcnumpty23]

make them run whatever they are doing in a virtual machine

or on a second hard drive

windows used to have a feature--not system restore--that once they logged off the pc would revert back to how it was before

but cant remember what it was called

there are some softwares that do this as well--used on internet cafes-library pcs etc

but again cant remember the names--my brains having a day off i think

 

[mcnumpty23]

it was windows steady state but discontinued now

other similar software--faronics deep freeze or farstone restoreit are all i can think of at the moment

 

[boosted1g]

You have 3 options. For internet café or other public machines I would personally go option 3, but for your scenario I would go with option 2. Now you could always do a mix of option 1 and 3.

1) Separate hard drive with OS for you and one for the kiddies. This will require hot swapping just to prevent contamination. You should also have a saved disk image on another drive to easily restore to

2) Virtual Machine. You create an image of OS (can be copy of your current system or just a barebones OS install). You load the virtual machine when the grandkids want to use it, and you set to auto-revert. Just make sure the kids know they need to save everything to external flash drive or disk.

3) Auto-revert software like Deep-Freeze. This will take a snapshot of OS image and will revert it back at every reboot. This option is great for Public Cafe's, but would be would require to manually disable the program when you want to use the PC.

 

[mcnumpty23]

also farstone one--similar approach but takes one default snapshot of when you have your pc in a "perfect state"

and offers similar recovery to what you get from a oem machine--ie press a key on start up to restore to "perfect state"

 

[mcnumpty23]

option 4--yes you can say no to grandkids

i got a cheap ibm thinkpad laptop for them from ebay--t42

still does them fine for youtube etc but cost very little as its old tech now