|
Please visit the LangaList Home Page Please note: Older issues may contain information that is now out of date How To
Subscribe and Unsubscribe is at the end of this
note. Mailing List Trouble? See
http://www.langa.com/help.htm Please recommend the LangaList to a friend! (And maybe win $10,000 !) An easier-to read formatted
HTML version of this newsletter is available The
LangaList 2003-07-03 Please visit our sponsors and help keep the LangaList S.E. free!
--- ( Your Clicks On Ad Links Help Keep The LangaList Free! ) ---
--------------( the above is an advertisement )-------------- 1) Not A TeaseIn "Item Zero" in http://www.langa.com/newsletters/2003/2003-06-23.htm#0 I said:
That brief mention triggered a *lot* of email, including notes like this, where the writer thought I was toying with you:
It wasn't a tease. First, no product is right for everyone, and simplistic recommendations often do more harm than good, so I couldn't simply say "buy this instead of that." Second, disk imaging isn't a toss-off subject--- it's been a nearly-constant theme here for years. I believe that a good disk-imaging routine should be absolutely central to any PC maintenance process--- it's that important! Third, disk imaging software likewise isn't an incidental thing because this can--- and probably should--- be the basis of your entire backup/recovery process: It's a core part of keeping your data secure, and is not something to be selected or changed lightly. Fourth, I've recommended PowerQuest products (specifically, Drive Image) many, many times; and if I was going to change a core recommendation, it couldn't be on a quick first impression. I wanted to make sure I had my facts straight--- and that took a little time. So I wasn't trying to tease you in that previous item--- honest! I was simply trying to give you a news-bulletin, heads-up kind of announcement to prevent anyone from acting on a previous recommendation of mine that seemed that it might no longer be valid. And now that I've had more time to explore the products in question, I can say that indeed, I think the new PowerQuest Drive Image is NOT a worthwhile product; and that I recommend *against* buying Drive Image 7. But we all still need some kind of disc imaging tool, so that brings us to today's Special Issue, in which I can present the full details, the full context, and the alternative solutions. See below! lick to email this item to a
friend --- ( Your Clicks On Ad Links Help Keep The LangaList Free! ) ---
--------------( the above is an advertisement )-------------- 2) Drive ImagingFirst, let's very briefly review what "imaging" of a hard drive is, and why it's the best form of backup: Standard (non-imaging) backups are file-oriented: Each file you're backing up gets copied to the backup medium, one file after another. That's OK, as far as it goes, but it usually means it's difficult or impossible to copy any files that are in use by the operating system itself or by the user; your backup may not be as complete as you think! There also can be problems when you restore a standard backup: Again, in-use files may not be able to be restored properly, even if they were originally saved OK. Plus, whatever files can be restored will be overlaid onto an existing setup, so you end up with a mix of freshly-restored files alongside old files. This means restoring from a standard backup may not be able to correct some software problems, and may not be able to bring your system back to "like new" condition, no matter what you do. "Imaging" a hard drive is very different. It's disk oriented instead of file oriented: The imaging tool copies the first sector of the hard drive, no matter what it contains, then copies the second sector, and so forth. This means that the image contains not just a bunch of files, but an exact copy of your hard drive's complete contents AND structure. This means that an image gets EVERYTHING, including even the placement and order of files on the drive. Thus, if you image a defragged hard drive, and later restore that image, you'll also be restoring the drive to the freshly-defragged state. In contrast, restoring a normal backup usually results in increased fragmentation. In practice, this means that if (for example) you make an image of a fresh install of an OS, with everything tuned; tweaked, and optimized to perfection, you can restore the drive to that perfect condition at any time just by reverting to the stored image. Think about it: No matter how scrambled or messed up your system is, just restore the image and you're back to like-new perfection in a matter of minutes! But a good imaging tool can do even more: It also will let you selectively restore individual files, if that's all you need: You don't *have* to restore everything in the image, unless you want to. You can see why imaging is such a big deal: It not only provides all the benefits of file-by-file traditional backups, but also gives you much more--- the ability to totally restore your system to a 100% perfect state, in minutes. That's why imaging has been at the heart of my recommended backup process, as
described more fully here:
http://www.langa.com/backups/backups.htm Click to email this item to a
friend 3) PQ's Drive Image, Old And NewI've been a fan of PowerQuest's Drive Image for years, but the product seems to have peaked in version 5 which was robust, relatively simple to use, and which could work on almost any OS. Although it had a Windows-based front end, the actual product was DOS-based, and ran outside a PC's normal OS. This ensured that the main OS was not active during the imaging process--- there could be no files in-use to cause trouble--- and it also meant that DI could image disks containing almost any operating system, including Linux. DI5 also normally fit on two floppies, although you could squeeze it onto one with some manual tweaking. This made it a breeze to use: Pop in the floppy, reboot, and you could make your image of any drive or partition in your PC, regardless of what OS or OSes it contained. Drive Image has now split into two families: Drive Image 2002 is intended for all versions of Windows except Win2K and XP; and Drive Image 7, intended for the latter versions of Windows. (Actually, when you buy the non-download, full CD version of DI7, PowerQuest includes DI2002 in the box.) I wanted to look at the new DI7 because DI5--- the version I've been using--- does have some limitations. For example, DI5 doesn't know how to handle some newer Linux disk formats (specifically, ext3 and ReiserFS). So, I went to the PowerQuest site, paid my money, and ordered both the full CD version and the DI7-only download. Then the fun started. (continued next item) Click to email this item to a
friend 4) DI7 ProblemsI ran into trouble almost immediately. The PowerQuest web site had neglected to mention that DI7 requires that Microsoft's ".Net framework" be installed; DI7 won't run at all without it. (The web site has since been corrected, and does now list .Net as a requirement.) .Net is a Microsoft initiative that so far offers almost nothing at all for end users, except the hassle of a huge, 40MB install. Even Microsoft's own .Net propaganda pages stress its value is mainly to developers--- and mostly corporate developers, at that. For example, at http://msdn.microsoft.com/netframework/productinfo/features/default.aspx , Microsoft lists .Net benefits such as "Realize New Business Opportunities, Reduce Time-to-Market, Write Less Code...." Even Microsoft's own WindowsUpdate lists .Net as an optional install--- nothing from Microsoft yet requires .Net, and not even Microsoft considers it an essential or critical update. But PowerQuest does. For me, these were strikes one and two: One, that they didn't tell me (or any of the other first downloaders of the new version) that .Net would be needed; and two, that they require the porcine .Net framework at all. (Their major competitors do not.) That alone might be enough to rule out DI7 for many people, but there's more: DI7 itself is a porker, weighing in at 45MB, so an installation will actually take an incredible 85MB when you include the mandatory .Net installation. Recall that DI5 could be made to fit on a single floppy, if you wanted it to--- just 1.44MB for essentially similar functionality to what now requires 85MB. Talk about bloat! You might think that DI7's core is small, and that it's just the Windows front end that's fat, but DI7 has no separate core--- and there is no floppy option. Instead, the DI7 CD itself is bootable: It launches what appears to be a customized variant of the XP Recovery Console, with a basic GUI spliced on, and with some basic local networking support. That's a good thing, I guess, but for all that, it takes a couple minutes longer to boot than the older floppy-based version: It's still a porker. And, even then, it's a *recovery* environment only, designed to let you restore images that were previously made inside Windows. You cannot make new images from the DI7 bootable CD; rather, to make a new image, you *have* to run DI7 from inside Windows. This makes DI7 less flexible than its forebears, and also means it's a poor choice if you now have, or ever might have, a multiboot system, where you'll also have other OSes to back up. There are other problems too, such as the choice PowerQuest forces on you of slow, anemic basic tech support--- or better support at $30 per call. Give me a break! I could go on, but I'd rather start talking about the alternatives to DI, which I'll do in the next item. But if you want more info on DI7, please see http://www.powerquest.com/driveimage/ . For more info on Microsoft's .Net, please see http://msdn.microsoft.com/netframework/productinfo/default.aspx . Click to email this item to a
friend 5) A Welcome Alternative To DILet me say up front that the tool I'm about to describe won't be for everyone: It's a little geeky to use, and presupposes at least a little prior knowledge of the basics of partitioning, imaging, and such. So please read all the way through to the end before you run out and grab a copy. But if it will work for you, I can almost guarantee you'll love it because this one tool can replace not only Drive Image, but also PartitionMagic and PQBoot (PowerQuest's boot manager). Those three tools from PowerQuest would occupy something like 160MB of disk space and cost $140. The new tool I'm going to tell you about fits on a single floppy and costs $35. It's called "BootIt Next Generation," and it's a gem ( http://www.bootitng.com/ ). Besides being inexpensive and compact, it's even available as a try-before-you-buy item: You can play with it for a month, for free, to see if it suits your needs. There's also a separate subset version that just focuses on the imaging tool (called "Image For Windows/DOS") , but my discussion here is about the full version with imaging, partition management, and boot management all in one, non-OS-specific tool. (continued next item) Click to email this item to a
friend 6) Bootit NG's Best PointsBootit NG serves three major purposes, and has a mouse-driven interface that makes all the core features ( http://www.bootitng.com/bootitng.html ) easy to use: First, as the name suggests, Bootit NG is a boot manager. It coexists peacefully with Windows (including XP) and Linux (and the Linux boot managers LILO and Grub), and allows you to install a mix of operating systems on your PC, and then boot whichever you want, whenever you want. While there are many boot managers out there, I was especially impressed with how easily Bootit NG could undo boot-record changes done by the built-in boot managers in too-aggressive operating systems. For example, one of my PCs has Lindows on it alongside several other versions of Linux and two Windows partitions. Lindows, in an effort to be newbie-friendly, has a *very* aggressive LILO-based boot manager built in that attempts to take over the boot process each time Lindows runs. Bootit NG can take back control with literally one click, and the cost of just a few seconds' time: No booting to another full OS first, no manual editing of boot tables--- just a mouse click does it. Very nice! And although Bootit NG is meant to run in its own environment, a free add-on called BootNow ( http://www.bootitng.com/utilities.html ) lets you select boot order from within Windows, like PowerQuest's PQBoot does, if that's what you prefer. Second, Bootit NG is a partition manager. It understands all current major partition types (Fat, Fat32, NTFS, ext2, ext3, ReiserFS, Linux swap, etc.). You can create, format, move, resize (nondestructively), and delete partitions at will, without disturbing the surrounding ones; Bootit NG will even let you have as many as 200 (!) partitions on a hard drive, if you want to. And once created, you can easily add any partition to the boot manager--- with Bootit NG, it's the same tool handling both functions, after all. Third, Bootit NG is a disk imager: You can create compact, compressed images of any or all partitions on your hard drive, regardless of which OS they're holding, and place the image files where you want: Bootit NG even natively supports direct writing to many common CD/DVD+R/+RW/-R/-RW drives (and disk spanning is also supported, to allow large images to extend across several writable discs); or you can dump the image file to a partition on your hard drive, if you prefer. The image sizes are about the same as those produced by the "high compression" mode in Drive Image 5. And of course, you can restore those images later, to whatever partition you specify. As with PowerQuest's Drive Image, you can use Bootit NG's images either for a complete restoration of a drive or partition, or for file-by-file restores, if all you need is (say) a single lost file from your backup images. File-oriented restoration is handled though TBIView, a free download at http://www.bootitng.com/utilities.html , which "...extends Windows Explorer by enabling it to open image files created by BootIt NG software programs. If the image file is based on a FAT, FAT32 or NTFS partition then you'll be able to view and extract individual files or folders." (continued next item) Click to email this item to a
friend 7) Bootit NG's WeaknessesI see three main areas of concern with Bootit NG: First, there's no hand-holding. If you're new to boot management, partitioning, or imaging, there's not a lot in Bootit NG itself that will help get you going. The Bootit NG site has some tutorials ( http://www.bootitng.com/examples.html ); I suggest you check them, the FAQ ( http://www.bootitng.com/faq.html ) and the online owner's manual ( http://www.bootitng.com/downloads/bootitng.pdf ) to see if the level of information "feels" right. If not, Bootit NG may not be the best tool for you. Second, there's no built-in way to password protect or encrypt your Bootit NG image files. This means you'll need other tools or techniques if you need to ensure that your images cannot be read by others. Third, some users report that some Bootit NG operations--- moving a large, data-filled partition, for example--- may be slower than other products. I haven't seen this myself, and in fact it seemed as fast to me as, say, PowerQuest's PartitionMagic. But your mileage may vary, and if speed is your #1 concern, some careful tests with Bootit NG may be in order. (continued next item) Click to email this item to a
friend 8) Another Alternative: AcronisA number of readers have written emails like these:
Indeed, Acronis seems to have good stuff, with much the same polish as, say, PowerQuest products. But the Acronis software is substantially smaller and less expensive than PowerQuest's--- although substantially larger and more expensive than Bootit NG. Because of this, I'd suggest Acronis as a good second choice, in cases where Bootit NG won't work. (continued next item) Click to email this item to a
friend --- ( Your Clicks On Ad Links Help Keep The LangaList Free! ) ---
--------------( the above is an advertisement )-------------- 9) Bottom-Line RecommendationsIf you have a copy of DI5 (or DI2002) and it's working for you, hang on to it--- it's still good, and still worth using. In fact, I've removed DI7 from my main system, and put back DI5: It continues to handle imaging of my main XP system easily and automatically. As long as you have a tool that's working, there's absolutely no reason to upgrade to the newer PowerQuest versions. But if you do need to change from your current solution, or if you're either new to imaging or need to get imaging software for a currently un-imaged PC, consider Bootit NG as a first option. It offers so much for so little, it's at least worth a look. Besides, it's free to try, so you have nothing to lose. If Bootit NG is too hard to use (and it will be for some--- there's no shame in wanting ease of use), I suggest you try Acronis' products. They cost more than Bootit NG, but less than PowerQuest's; and yet afford much the same polish and ease of use you find in PowerQuest's products. Sadly, I can see no reason at all to buy new copies of PowerQuest Drive Image or PartitionMagic. Competing products are now just as capable--- or even more capable, in some instances--- and much less expensive. I'm using Bootit NG now on my most-complex multiboot system, and plan to install it on other systems as well. If you're at all familiar with the concepts of partitioning, boot managment, and imaging, Bootit NG may likewise be all you need to replace multiple tools on your PC(s). I'll be editing some previously-posted text, such as "Fast,
Easy Backups Click to email this item to a
friend 10) Just For GrinsReader William Fleming writes, "Fred-thought you might get a chuckle out of this---got it from a mate in Scotland. Enjoy, Bill"
Click to email this item to a
friend --- ( Your Clicks On Ad Links Help Keep The LangaList Free! ) ---
--------------( the above is an advertisement )-------------- 11) Plus! Edition Highlights:
Access to over 100,000 additional words in special features, extra content and private links, all on a private web site--- plus 30% more content in every issue, for just a dollar a month! Full Plus! Edition info: http://www.langa.com/plus.htm Click to email this item to a
friend (Want to give a gift
subscription to the LangaList Plus edition? See you next issue, which will be in the normal format, and which will appear on July 10th (due to the US national holiday). Best, UNSUBSCRIBE: From the same email account you
used to sign up with), send an email to SUBSCRIBE (it's free!): Create and send a new email to CHANGE ADDRESS? LIST TROUBLE? HAVE QUESTIONS? OTHER PROBLEM? NEED HELP? See http://www.langa.com/help.htm This newsletter is SPAM PROOF and requires two levels of subscriber confirmation
before delivery begins: See
http://www.langa.com/info.htm |
|
|
Please visit the LangaList Home Page |