I want to create images from my laptop's hard disc to an external USB
2.0 drive under WinXP Professional and have a copy of Ghost 8.0. I am
concerned about "virtual partitions" that Ghost seems to create (and
also find the documentation somewhat unfriendly) and haven't installed
it yet. Is there anything to fear by Ghost's meddling with my disc
structure? Would Drive Snapshot or other package be a better choice to
make reliable images which can easily be restored, with minimal impact
to the source disc? Thanks.

Dilip

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Ghost is a good program, but Acronis backup IMHO is better.  You may
try to look for comparisons and reviews on different sites, discussions
on forums and I think you will make the same conclusion. For example:
http://reviews.cnet.com/Acronis_Tru...-2.html?tag=top

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I believe the "virtual partitions" are only created when you use ghost
windows program to configure a backup and then causes the pc to reset
to start the back up. If you run ghost from a floppy/CD/DVD, then it
does not create "virtual partitions".

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Thanks for the advise. I have hesitations with Ghost (virtual
partitions) and Acronis (I've read several reviews where folks
complained that they couldn't get a backup to restore properly!).

I am running an IBM (now Lenovo) Thinkpad with IBM Rapid Restore Ultra
4.0. From the documentation, it seems like this will work fine (and
easily) to periodically write a complete image file (or incrementally
backup an existing image file) from a disk to an external USB disk. It
seems like I can maintain multiple such image files on a big external
drive. But I don't understand how Rapid Restore Ultra can work as it is
launched from Windows with the source to-be-backed-up drive running as
the primary disk. How would open Windows files be archived?  If anybody
has any experience or guidance, I'd appreciate it.  If Rapid Restore
really works well, is there any reason to consider Ghost, Acronis, or
other such solutions?  Thanks!

--Dilip

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