XP Professional Pro Boot Up CD-ROM or Mirror Image

I have a new computer . . .

Intel 64 bit dual processor
1 Gig of ram
Two 200 Gig Drives C:\ and D:\
No 1.4 floppy drive
CD-R, RW
DVD-RW

First I would like to have a fully functional emergency boot up disk on a CD ROM if possible. You know I've search all kinds of Windows support sites and I can't find anything about this?

Next, I would like to know if my SATA hard drives will allow a mirror image restore? Isn't this a better way to restore, from a mirror image from D: to C:?

There has to be a SIMPLY, EASY to understand method to accomplish this.

Thanks much. . . Rick

 

any image program should do as u wish. just get one like ghost or such.

as to the sata, how are u planning on implementing the mirror? u can do it thru the raid function of u'r MB - if one is present. u can do this thru windows diskmanger as well.

if u'r system does support the raid - read it's docs

 

What kind of disk do you want? Is it just something that will let you carry out repairs or transfer files etc, or one that can restore an entire image of the drive/partition?

The free BartPE is a must have boot CD that boots to a Windows environment and gives you full read/write support for NTFS. There are loads of plugins available so you can run common software from the CD "“ like Nero, Drive image etc. You must have your own full XP CD to build the BartPE CD.
UBCD4Win is BartPE with many of the available free plugins already included.
ReatogoXpe is BartPE again with even more plugins and an almost complete XP GUI.

If you want a CD that can restore an image then as Skeet said many commercial imaging/backup programs will run from CD and so let you restore an image from any source. Many will also build an almost auto recovery CD complete with your latest image.

Other free boot CDs
http://www.ultimatebootcd.com
http://www.bootdisk.com/ntfs.htm
http://www.sysresccd.org
http://www.mepis.org

 

McTavish = great links on the extended barts ... just grabbed the reatogo one

 

I was impressed with Reatogo when I first tried it but I haven’t used it much. The version I have now is several months old so thought I’d update but the install has all changed. It used to be a single download but now it seems you have to choose and download plugins separately and you need to have WindowBlinds to get the XP look. You also have to be online during the process and even register now for some features. Think I’ll just stick with UBCD4Win and BartPE, they do the job without the fluff. Did you give it a go Skeet? The new install claims to be easier but just seems confusing. Building it yourself was easy enough.