Are there an open source image tools?

J

JediFonger

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another words, u know how GIMP is sorta' like OO's response to photoshop, is there one for somn like acronis backup apps but OO?
 
thanks for the suggestions.

super duper looks like it's only for macs no?

the rest are fine suggestions but i think i need to be more specific. i want an OO version of Ghost where u can not only image your existing install, but unpack it from a DVD for example. sort of take a snapshop of ur existing system state then burn the DVD, if it can fit, then when u load the DVD, it'll unpack everything back onto the hard drive as is (including apps). i know ghost does this, but are there OO alts. that can do that as well?
 
JediFonger said:
thanks for the suggestions.

super duper looks like it's only for macs no?

the rest are fine suggestions but i think i need to be more specific. i want an OO version of Ghost where u can not only image your existing install, but unpack it from a DVD for example. sort of take a snapshop of ur existing system state then burn the DVD, if it can fit, then when u load the DVD, it'll unpack everything back onto the hard drive as is (including apps). i know ghost does this, but are there OO alts. that can do that as well?
Click to expand...

I'll bump this. It would be awesome for making "save me" disks for the family's machines before I send them home.
 
Super Duper! is only for macs, but it is great, as far as windows goes ghost might be your best bet, last I checked it wasn't too expensive.
 
Acronis True Image has been my primary lifesaver for a long long time now. Years past I was a HUGE fan of Powerquest Drive Image, the first serious drive imaging application that had widespread use and acceptance. Ghost appeared shortly after but, it just never caught on with me because I can't stand the interface, it's horrid, but that's a personal opinion. I'm not alone as a lot of other people hate it too, but because of Norton's/Symantec's strangehold grip on corporate situations, it spread in the IT field fast.

Years later Powerquest was purchased by Symantec, and Symantec basically destroyed them - and dropped Drive Image totally in favor of continuing to shove Ghost down the IT world's throat. Bleh.

Drive Image, by Powerquest, was the first and still the only imaging software in my experience that would let you image direct to optical media and - this is the big benefit here - it would place itself on the disc, or the first disc of a recovery set and make that disc or first disc bootable.

It's the most brilliant thing when it comes to imaging software and the funny thing is, so far, since PQ Drive Image disappeared from the market long ago, and in spite of Ghost having multiple revisions over the years, in spite of True Image having multiple revisions overs the years, in spite of the many alternative software products that can image a drive, not one of them will image direct to optical media and make the disc/first disc bootable by placing itself (the imaging software) on that disc/first disc.

Is that most fucked up thing you've ever heard, or what?

I still can't comprehend why none of them do it with their consumer or commercial level products. I know you CAN create a CD/DVD using Ghost and use some burning software to manually add a custom bootloader then add the ghost.exe file to it, but really, that's a damned ridiculous thing to force people to do instead of just adding the imaging application onto the disc/first disc situation.

Even True Image, my second most recommended piece of software overall (first is WinRAR), doesn't do it either, and I've asked their tech support why but they won't give me a single rational reason aside from they're too fucking lazy to code it. Maybe they're afraid of someone stealing their application from a backup set, who knows. They could EASILY code the version that gets installed on a disc/first disc so it only restores since obviously that's the whole concept of an image restore set of optical media.

Bleh... idiots.

Anyway, if imaging is important to you, and it should be, my best recommendation if it means anything is go out and spring for the ~$40 cost for Acronis True Image Home. It's worth every cent, and I'm not saying free solutions are any less effective. I'm saying get a good quality recommended product with a history of satisfied people like myself and many many others.

You won't regret it.
 
so i need to boot from a true image bootup disc first. then ask it to load the image to my hard drive and THEN keep swapping DVDs? man that's old skool. thanks for the long experience. i never knew that about imaging. the only thing i've seen myself is OEM imaging, like toshiba's windows xpp disc uses ghost to load an entire wxpp install straight up to the disc and then i can bootup right away.

i know that vista now does this. i have 4 vista computers and they all work fantastic with imaging (replaces ghost imho), unfortunately wxpp doesn't have that option. vista still asks u to use the vista install disc to boot, but from there on u can load ur own image at the time of the backup.

i'm v. surprised no1 has done so yet. if true image is it, i'd rather with clonezilla from above, since that's basically doing what we're asking it to do, but it takes a lot of cmd line to get it right and some *nix kung fu.

i'm surpised NO ONE in the open source community has addressed this yet... but perhaps this leaves room for growth =P
 
No, you can plug in an external hard drive and put the image there if you want, or a USB stick if it's large enough capacity, or whatever the hell you want. You're not limited to ONLY optical media, heaven's no. No... no. :)

There are many options, obviously.

But if you're using optical media and the image is 40GB in size, well, that's basically 8 or 9 single layer DVDs (DVD5) or 4 or 5 dual layers (DVD9). You can image to network shares, FTP sites, etc - it's not really limited, but you did ask for imaging software that would allow you to make CDs or DVDS similar to what you'd get from some OEM computer manufacturers and commonly called recovery discs or restore sets.

Drive Image XML is an open source app and it runs under Windows but it doesn't have a bootable CD version. You could created a UBCD4Win or a BartPE disc and put Drive Image XML on it to run from that limited Windows environment, but realize you have to have Drive Image XML and the restore media - where the image was stored accessible to restore it.

There are many ways to accomplish what you're looking to do. Stop being a cheap bastard and spend the $40. :D
 
I like ImageX for imaging Windows partitions. It's free, but not as flexible as some other programs. It does have some nice features though. Check it out here: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc722145.aspx

The page doesn't mention it, but you can boot to a PE (Windows install disc command line or other) and make and restore images there too.
 
thanks joe, u r correct. thanks for all the good advice. problem is the laptop is really old and can't boot from external flash or hard drive. only DVDROMs.

i'll take a look@drive image again.
 
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