Create a disc image on an NAS drive with win 7 home premier

[sigrossman]

This require Windows Professional. Looking for third party software.

 

[RealBeast]

I use both Norton Ghost 15 and True Image -- both do a great job and IIRC both have trial versions.

 

[sigrossman]

I've seen postings that True Image has created some problems on some machines. Didn't want to take any chances. The price is right for Norton. I assume it's a single function software just to make disc images unlike Paragon which got an Excellent rating on PC Magazine and has many functions and is more expensive.

 

[RealBeast]

While I've never had an issue in many years of using True Image, Norton 15 is excellent and my first choice most of the time. I've imaged scores of OS drives, including going back and forth between SSDs and HDDs, in recent years all Win 7 installs, using Ghost "Copy My Hard Drive" and never had any issues. It does allow for automated things, but I generally don't use that stuff much.

Get the trial and give it a spin. Note that you will need to check the box to see hidden drives, i.e. the SRP and unpartitioned destination space. Here are the settings to backup a Win 7 OS drive using Norton Ghost 15:

First make the destination partition unallocated space that is large enough to hold the SRP (100MB) and the C drive image.

Create the SPR partition first and then the C: partition with these options:


The Ghost options for SRP (system reserve partition) are

Set Drive Active (for booting OS)

Copy MBR

Destination partition type: Primary

Drive letter of None

The Ghost options for Win7 are:

Destination partition type: Primary

Resize drive to fill unallocated space (ONLY if you want to -- this is for cloning to another larger drive)

Drive letter of None

Don't Disable SmartSector copying for either

Before recovering a drive or swapping one out, it is best to have already made a system repair disc (a single CD that you can make in Windows on the specific machine by typing that phrase in the program search box of the Start button). It is useful for the one time every ten or so disk recoveries that the machine seems to need to repair the bootloader to match the new OS drive. Just restart with the disk in and the bootloader will be repaired automatically.

 

[sigrossman]

Norton has discontinued the sale of Ghost as of April 30 but will continue support until June 30, 2014. Here's their alternative "As a Norton Ghost customer, you’re invited to try Symantec System Recovery 2013 Desktop Edition free for 60 days." Great, but Amazon has 2011 $135. That's really high priced. It's not clear on the Symantec website what the price for 2013 will be. I put an item in the cart and it came up 84.87 but I can't tell if that's for the program or one year support.

 

[RealBeast]

You can still get it on Amazon for around $25: http://www.amazon.com/Norton-Ghost-15-0-1-PC/dp/B002SRNS7A

 

[sigrossman]

Yes, but with less than a year left for support I'm not sure that's a good deal.

 

[RealBeast]

I've been using it for years and never done an update. It will work fine as long as you are using Windows 7. It is silly to pay 5 times as much for a bunch of other junk.