Making your computer experience better one step at a time.

Most end users (EU) just simply want a way to take their computer back to a state when it was working and really working well, like right after a fresh install of all your software or right after the computer got a good cleaning and is smoking fast. In the process of doing this, sometimes it's just better nuke the machine and take it back to basics. But for a lot of users who have Dells, Compaqs, HPs or another major name brand system, taking it back to the way it was the day it rolled off the assembly belt sometimes isn't any better. That's because the system is bloated down with Manufacturer specific bundled and branded software that most of the users won't need or use, a lot of trial software and the system isn't ever optimized for any real performance gains. Taking the necessary cleaning steps in the Keep It Clean section and then following a solid back up plan is the best way to get your computer where it needs to be and keep there or to be able to put it back that way in the shortest amount of time possible.

Ghosting, as it's commonly referred to, is the process of taking a computer at a given state of operation and creating a recovery image. Now that might sound really bad and daunting for the home user, but in reality, UNLESS the feature is already turned off, XP was already set up to do something very similar by using the process System Restore. This is fine and well, however in the event that your computer becomes corrupted and data loss is likely to occur, even the built in System Restore may not be enough. This is why ghosting an image of your computer and storing it separate from the machine is a more desired means of disaster recovery.

If there's one thing that I've learned through my years of experience, redundancy is what saves the users in the end. I know several people who use disk imaging product to make daily backups, some I know use a different one for making weekly, and still others use something else to make a backup everytime they install a new piece of software. It really depends on your level of paranoia, and how familiar you are with your own machine.

The easiest way that I know how to accomplish saving a computer is through the outlined process that follows. I will tell you that there is software on the market right now that's able to do hot imaging (create an image of the computer WHILE the system is on and in use) and has a lot of bells and whistles, but when it all comes down to it, keep it simple, seriously (KISS).

With that, first you need to build/burn a dos boot disk. A relatively easy task and thankfully, someone else has already put together a walk-through on how to do it HERE. Now you don't have to be completely computer savvy to do this, you just have to be able to follow some basic instructions. IF for whatever reason those instructions seem a bit over bearing and too much, you can just download a neatly created boot disk HERE. All you have to do is use your favorite burning software and set it to burn an image or ISO and burn. What I like about this particular Ghost boot disk is it is very simple to use as well as fast and capable of backing up to several different types of media (local internal drive, locally attached external drive, USB Thumbdrive...). These items should be attached to the computer/laptop PRIOR to starting the ghost process to ensure avalibility to the system through DOS.

So how does it work you ask? The Ghost program on the disk you just created is a small DOS based program.  When your computer boots up initially, you may see somewhere on the screen something about pressing a certain F key to invoke a temporary boot menu, you'll want to push whatever that key is. Once you push that key, generally F12 (at least for Dell Systems), you get a boot option menu and you can pick which device you want to boot from. Select your CD/DVD drive and hit enter. Assuming you had the Ghost Boot disk in said drive, your computer's going to run through a quick loading of the DOS program and in short order, you'll be looking at the Ghost user interface. IF you receive a window stating ghost found additional drives and do you want to mark them as active so they can be used by ghost, click on Yes.

(***TECHNICAL NOTE***)

Ghost can see and use any type of usb attached drive IF the BIOS can see it upon startup. What this means is if you have an 80gb external hard drive plugged in at the time your computer boots up, and one of the BIOS boot options is Boot from USB Device, then Ghost in turn can see and use that 80gb external drive. This is important to know as we move forward. Also, any INTERNAL hard drives are seen as Drive 1. External drives, usb thumb drives or eSATA attached drives are given subsequent numbers 2 through the total number of attached drives in order of BIOS initialization.

As the example, you have an 80gb internal hard drive, and you attach a 250gb external USB drive. When Ghost runs, it assigns your 80gb as Drive 1 and your 250gb as Drive 2. Keep this in mind moving forward and it will make things easier to understand.

(***END TECHNICAL NOTE***)

From the Ghost user interface, you click on Start, Local, Partition, To Image. You're then presented with a box that says Select the source Drive. If you have more than one available, you want to select the drive that you're imaging from, generally Drive 1 however, I always look at the size of the drives that Ghost shows you to verify that i'm imaging from the right drive. Likewise in the next box, if your drive has multiple partitions (you'd know if it did) you would also select the appropriate  partition. In the following box, it asks you where to save the image to. If you click the drop down in the the location field, you should see your externally attached hard drive or thumb drive listed, select it. From here you can create a new folder to put the image in or just save it and move it later. For now, drop down to the file name box and simply call it restore. You can add notes if you like to help you remember any significant things about the image if you like, when you're done, click on OK. Then Ghost will ask you if you want file compression, I generally use fast as it keeps the image process speed high and maintains a decent restore image. If you select HIGH the process will take longer to complete, but your final image will be smaller.  The last prompt is are you sure you want to create the image. Upon clicking yes, Ghost snaps into action and begins reading and compression the contents of your source drive and putting it on the destination drive. When it's done you will have to click on the Continue box which will bring you back to the main menu. Again, click Local, Image, Check Image and this will run an integrity check on the image that you just created to ensure that there are not issues, follow the prompts and point Ghost to the location where you saved your image. Once this process is completed, you're done! If you received any type of errors during this point, you need to go back through and recreate your image again. Eject the CD and restart the computer and you've just created your own system recovery image.

Restoring your computer from this newly created image is just as easy, just follow the steps in reverse starting with Start, Local, Partition, From Image. Select your image, choose your destination drive on the computer, click yes to accept the warning that any and all existing files will be destroyed and over written, and in 10 minutes or less, you've just restored your computer.