Most regular computer users may have certainly faced problems like drive crashes and virus attacks. The entire data is lost, and data recovery would be rather expensive. Losing data is quite depressing, but going through the entire process of re-installing the operating system, the software, the tweaks, the codecs, drivers etc can be very cumbersome. To save yourself all this trouble (should the worst happen). why not just backup your entire hard drive as an image and keep it safe, until the day your hard drive crashes.

Norton Ghost software can do this with ease. But we'll show you how to
do this using another utility. There are many freeware and shareware available online; consider 'R-Drive Image v4.3' for instance. It is available for a 15-day trial period from image. com/ or it can be purchased online for approximately Rs 2,500 (not a big price to pay, considering that your data is invaluable).

We recommend this solutions for Corporates, as they can recreate images of all the drives in their systems, when required. Once you download it, follow the instructions given below.

STEP1: Install your operating system, all the required software, drivers and codec's etc. Once your machine has been completely set up for use, download the file utility from .Drive Image and Hard Disk Backup Software .. Install it and start the program. If you have not registered, it allows you a 15 days trail program.

STEP 2: Make sure you have an external hard drive connected with lots of space (at least equal to the amount of data you need to backup). After clicking on next, select 'Create an image' on the following page. On the same page you can choose other things to do too, if not imaging. Choose to restore an image or check the image. Also mount a drive image on a drive so you can extract its files.

STEP 3: Select the drive or partition you want to backup or create an image of. Make sure that you have chosen the right drive and partition for making the image. STEP 4: Next choose the destination drive where the current drive's image can be stored. In our case, we stored it on drive F which is an external 320 GB hard drive. Then you need to type in the name of the file for backup. Click next when done. STEP 5: Select the compression ratio depending on the size or speed of data backup. You can also choose to select the backup type - Sector wise or data only. Options to split the file are also available, where you can split the image file to fit multiple media's like floppies and CDs. Add a security password and a description for the backup if you need it. STEP 6: Confirm the backup on the final page and click 'Next' to begin with the image creation.

STEP 7: The utility then creates the image of the drive to be backed up on the destination drive. The procedure may take time depending on factors like the amount of data to be backed up, the speed of the external storage device and the ratio of the compression. Be patient. STEP 8: After the image is created, a message will appear indicating that it has been created successfully. Now that the image is created on the external storage, you have an option to write it to an optical media (CD or DVD) for storage or let it remain on the external storage drive itself. STEP 9: It's now time for us to create
a startup disk for image restoration.
This can be done by clicking on the 'Create Startup Disks' button in the main interface of the utility.
STEP 10: Be ready with a blank floppy or CD/DVD media for the bootable disk that is to be created. Choose the ISO image file if you don't have a blank CD/DVD/ Floppy immediately so you can burn the ISO file later. You can also insert the data image onto the ISO file using other software and finally burn the data on to
one single optical bootable media.

STEP 11: Choose the type of media (CD/ DVD) you wish to make a bootable startup disk. You could use a RW (ReWritable) optical media provided it is formatted before use.

STEP 12: Now that this disk is created, you can rest easy, as you have safely created a backup of your hard drive. In case of a disaster like a hard drive crash, software crash or a virus attack, all you need to do is connect the external hard drive to the computer to be restored, and boot it from the bootable rescue disk.

STEP 13: After booting from the disk, a Linux-based rescue disk, choose the action you want to perform. Click on 'Rescue from an image' using the mouse or just press the 'R' button. You may choose to check the image file before restoration too.
STEP 14: Now select the drive on which the image file is present. If the image is on an optical media, remove the rescue CD and insert the CD/DVD with the images present on it.

STEP 15: Choose the image file from its respective location and click the 'OK' button. Click 'OK' to choose the target drive where the image needs to be written. Finally click 'Next' to complete the drive restoration procedure.

There are other utilities available on the Internet with different prices and procedures. Acronis Drivelmage and Norton Ghost are some well known software that can take drive snapshots and restore data. All software that can create an image for data restoration in cases of crashes and hard drive failures, create a bootable rescue CD/DVD