Backup strategy

[smage]

Hi,
Anyone knows how I can create an exact image of my hardisk for free?  I would store the image on another partition so that in case of a crash, I can restore my PC.
Thanks

[Vladimyr]

Cloning & Partition Management: http://www.partition-tool.com/personal.htm

Compressed image: http://www.paragon-software.com/home/db-express/

Both very reliable for me.

[DavidR]

You should be wary of placing images on just another partition on the same HDD, if you have an HDD failure these drive images would be lost so you don't have a restore path. If you have a second internal HDD than having a partition on that for your primary drive images would be better.

Currently I have a single HDD in my new system (must get around to installing a second) and save my back-ups and drive images on a partition on that disk. However I also have an external HDD that I copy the back-up partition to so I have copies outside of the single drive.

[smage]

Hi,
Thanks for your answer.
In fact I have 2 partitions on my internal hardisk, so if Windows crashes, I would not be able to restore the image.
I am currently using only 15GB of my hardisk, can I create the backup using DVDs?
Regards

[alanrf]

I believe that David is warning you of the risk of losing everything if you experience a hard disk drive failure.  You would not only lose your system you would also lose your backup images. 

You may want to consider burning an image you trust to some external media (like DVDs) every so often so that you would not lose everything in the unfortunate event of a hard disk drive failure or need to go back too far.

[DavidR]

Thanks for your answer.
In fact I have 2 partitions on my internal hardisk, so if Windows crashes, I would not be able to restore the image.

Alan has correctly gauged my warning.

I am currently using only 15GB of my hardisk, can I create the backup using DVDs?
Regards

That is entirely possible, though the Disk Imaging software you choose would have to have that feature to back-up to DVD, not all of them do.