Never used Ghost before to make an image via DVD although the instructions are simple enough.

My only concern is, I know that Ghosting requires a machine with identicle equipment/hardware for it to work. What if something minor gets changed, does the ghost process get interrupted or does it continue with the follow up that a driver need to be updated or changed later on.

I want to Ghost an image I made for the 4th time of my neighbors kids PC, ALWAYS getting screwed up, because I am sick of installing from scratch, and this kid messes it up to that poin tof no return. The only problem is that I will temporarily use my DVD burner in that PC to make an image, how will this affect the PC when throwing the image back with a missing DVD burner, I just hope the process will go through and remove it upon reboot from the device manager list.

Does anyone know for sure what will happen?

I use a different program which does the same thing as Ghost and I can tell you that Windows XP is remarkably robust in its ability to deal with different optical and hard drive setups. I have two different boot discs set up in a removable tray and I am always changing these out with any of 5 different hard drives and optical drives. Just give Windows time to identify the new hardware and you should have no trouble. Just stick with one motherboard at a time.

As far as I know/ remember the only difference that will make a difference in the restore procedure would be a different hard drive. After that XP shoudl "adjust" itself to not having the burner.

I will add that I havn't tried it with different hardware while restoring before. But thats how I understand it.

Will try it soon, within next 2 days and will report back here.

Will you not have the same drive connected when you use the dvd to restore it or are you ghosting it to a seperate partition?

I dont see much of a problem occuring because it is on a dvd drive but if it were something major you could run into an issue

I have restored a boot partition to 5 different drives and it never gave me any trouble, other than grief if the partition was larger than the new drive. Even empty space counts.

There is currently a dvd rom reader only drive, will add my dvd burner to make this image, but then take it away. My concern was that when restoring from the reader only the missing optical drive would make the process problematic.

Yes I too heard empty space is counts, its picky.

wasted 5 DVD's it keeps failing integrity check of image, I am having doubts here

If I suggested using good media would it be an insult?

I have to say never been an issue on my backups.

why use ghost when acronis trueimage runs rings around it ?

FujiFilm TY02 burned with an NEC3500 2.TC firmware.... nah no insult here

I think Acronis migth be something I will need to resort to, but I really am hesitating because I don't wanan spend the cash... will see.

I'm a lazy guy. I would probably yank the kid's hard drive, install it on my machine, and ghost it that way.

lol, i thought of that too, well, tried norton 9 now, and it has no option to output to a self bootable dvd... maybe i am missing something

ok, maybe acronis can help me

reading acronis pdf file, doesnt mention anywhere that is supports making a restore self bootable DVD???

is this correct?

acronis is GOD. it does exactly what you want, to CD or DVD. but then again so does my ghost 2003 bootable CD...most of the time

working with acronis now, it made an image and verified integrity to be okay, but it appears that it makes an image to boot off of and you have to use third party burning software to backup the main image itself to later select from a restore medium, it doesnt make an all in one like Ghost tries to make... unless I am missing something and using it wrong.

it doesnt make an all in one like Ghost tries to make... unless I am missing something and using it wrong.

forgive me, you are correct. i was incorrect - now i realise Acronis is far from godly. thank you, this has taught me a lesson

i think both are far from godly, Windows alone isn't...lol

at least acronis is able to achieve what ghost hasn't, a workable image that even though I need to boot off one disc to later switch and insert another, a rather small inconvenience, it DOES work unless ghost in this instance... bah

it also verifies that the image is made correctly

Now I am happy to have a nice backup, finally