Thread: Individual files or folders Partitions complete system

B]Partitions or the complete system [/B]

TOOLS

Selflmage, GimageX Individual files or folders can be saved using the above mentioned programs. However, they are not suitable for backing up the complete hard disk. Here's a tool that will help you with this task. It's called Selflmage. It creates an image file of each drive and restores the image. Even the Master Boot Record and the partition table are saved in this process, so that even if your system crashes, and all your data is lost, it can be restored using Selflmage.

The biggest advantage with this tool is that it conserves space and only saves occupied sectors. If you require to backup only 100 GB of your 500 GB hard disk,
the image generated is also only 100 GB in size. And this is how it works: you will need to start the tool with administrator rights. Select the hard disk from 'Input I Drive' and start the compressing process from 'Processing I Compress Image I gzip', so that the file size decreases even further. Then specify the target drive from 'Output I Output Location' and press the 'Start' button.

The duration of the backup process depends on the size of the data; it takes
a good 60 minutes for 100 GB. This is what you need to do to restore the backup file. Search for the image file from 'Input I File' and select the target hard disk from 'Output I Drive'. Click 'Start' to begin the transfer process.

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NOTE

Selflmage is available on the website as a plug-in for Bart PE. With that, you can create a Boot CD as backup.

The GimageX tool is much more powerful than Selflmage as it saves the data as WIM images. The principle is easy to understand. You can save several images in one file and incremental backups are possible, in which case only those files that have been modified since the last backup copy are saved. The format is thus particularly space saving and can archive not only complete hard disks, partitions or individual folders, but even the entire system. However, it works only under the XP operating system, since Microsoft advises against taking backups of the system operating under Vista.
You do, however, require the right tools to make it work. The first tool is too large, at close to 1 GB to be able to compress and include it on the DVD.

Then, you need GlmageX which is a graphical interface for the backup tool. Select any folder that you would like to archive in the 'Capture' tab under 'Source'. Specify the storage location with 'Destination', and rename it. Enter the date in the 'Description' line, so that you can subsequently'call up the data using a specific date. Leave the remaining fields unchanged, and create the initial backup with 'Create'. If you want to create an additional backup copy of the folder some other time, select the same settings, but only press 'Append'. With that, the image generated will be attached to the first one. Recovering the data works in a similar manner: Open the 'Mount' tab and select an empty folder for 'Mount Point', in which the tool is supposed to restore the data. You can look for the WIM file via 'Source', and the desired backup status can be found under 'Select'. Now click 'Mount', and the tool will copy the documents in the specified target folder. This way, losing data will be history