Yesterday I was surprised to find my home page (Ezone)out of service. Ezone gave and explanation of what happened on their temporary page and in the message they warned Ezoners to make sure their own system is backed up to avoid such disasters.
I'm not a salesman, and I won't get a commission, but I have to let Ezoners know about a great backup program I've been using for years called "Drive Image". This program saved my butt so many times I stopped counting. It's quick and easy, works 100% of the time with 100% accuracy, and now works with everything but XP. Best of all, you don't need to boot Windows for it to work. Power Quest makes it, as well as several other programs that "really" work.
Check it out: http://www.powerquest.com/driveimage/

Danny,
Been using DriveImage for quite some time myself. Also used Ghost (before Symantec bought it). Both are great tools for backing up an entire drive.

We use it all the time to deply new computers at work. We make a single file "image" of a completed hard drive (generally about 1 Gig or so), and store it on a server. When we need to get a new computer ready, just apply the already saved image to the blank hard drive...in no time you have a comletly configured computer with almost no effort. Saved my butt on many occasions.

Havn't tried in on XP yet, but it works greate for DOS, OS/2, Win9x, WinNT and Win2K.

Steve

P.S. - There's also a product called TAKE2 (comes with Adaptec CD Creator Delux I think) that allows you to save your entire HD to CD's. If you crash, just put in a new drive, boot to a floppy and restore from the CD's. Assuming the backup isn't too old, you'll be in business in a matter of hours.

Steve, Yes, Drive Image is a great product. It's too bad it doesn't come installed on every computer, although my old Compaq laptop did have a spin-off version of Drive Image installed, also made by PowerQuest. Unfortunately I believe it needed Windows to run. What good is it when the most likely system crash will involve Windows.
I believe the newer versions of DriveImage allows saving to CD and will break up the file as needed. I'm still using v3.0 since it works well for me.

Right now I have a 60gig and a 20 gig HD, but I keep my C: drive to under 5 gigs, and install as little as possible on it. I make frequent backups of c: since it only takes about 10 minutes, or less. Amiga owners (I was one of them) in the know knew to install as little as possible on the primary partition, keeping it mainly for the operating system.

BTW....have you had a chance to visit our club in Croton? Are you going to Rhinebeck this weekend?

I've used Ghost on many machines. I worked for a school district we did just as Steven said and wrote a disk image to the server. Every semester, we formatted all the disks and reloaded everything. I made up a boot disk with a batch file to automatically log in and run the batch file. I could do up to 8 machines at once, total time, 3 hrs. It would have probably been faster if we had the bandwidth and more machines could be done at once. I never had a problem with Ghost. It also made the disk image in a compressed form so it didn't take up as much space as you might think.

Danny,
So you owned an Amiga huh? I used to have the original Amiga 1000...what a great machine!!! I used to be a big Amiga booster, I never touched a normal PC until 1993. I eventaully had to throw in the Amiga towel and join the rest of the world, but I think the Amiga will always be my favorite computer.

I'll be at Rhinebeck this weekend. Not sure which day, gonna play it by ear and see what the weather is like. If Saturday is nice, I'll probobly go then. I'll look for the Twinstar taking aerial video and say hello.

P.S. - In regard to drive image, Version 6 allows you to break the image into smaller files, but won't automatically burn them to CD's. No biggie though, just save them somewhere and burn them after the fact. I think our record so far is 27 Thinkpads building off a single file. We didn't warn any of the network administrators before hand. Since we were using NetBios boot disks to connect to the server, we were broadcasting like maniacs and sucked up nearly 80% of the available bandwidth. Oooops, sorry guys.

I had to post this photo Steven because I knew you'd appreciate it. My Amiga 500 sits next to my PC on my computer desk. As you can see it's been modified some. I used it for midi music in a portable box I made which also housed a small b&w monitor. It was a "poor mans" laptop. It blazed at an incredible 7 1/2 mhz....but it did the job, and in some ways better than the PC...to this day. I bit the bullet in '92 and bought my first PC because a music creation program called "Band In A Box" wasn't ported over to the Amiga and I really wanted to be able to use that program, so I had to buy a PC. I still like the midi sequencer program I use on the Amiga, Dr. T's KCS. In some ways it's better than any PC sequencer, and it dates back to the late '80's. Unfortunately I haven't been doing many music gigs lately and I may have forgotten how to operate the Amiga...plus I had to take the Amiga monitor off the desk to be able to fit the 19" PC monitor....so I couldn't use it if I wanted to. I really should move it on up to the attic (along with my two C-64's) but I know I'll need it again some day.

<a href="http://www.dannytroy.com/amigalarge.jpg">
<img src=http://www.dannytroy.com/amigasmall.jpg></a>

Wow....backing up to 27 computers at the same time.....that's amazing.

I should be at Rhinebeck Saturday.....if the weather doesn't cooperate I won't be able to go at all since I can't go Sunday. If the weather holds and stays as clear as it is today I'll get some great video.
You won't be able to miss me...The Twinstar should stick out like a sore thumb. I'll probably get some weird looks while carrying it in since it's not exactly from the WWI era, not even close.

Wow! Amigas!

I had the original Amiga 1000 as well. Have you ever opened up the case and looked at the signatures of all the designers stamped into the inside of the case? Very odd. There's even a paw print in there.

I also have an old Amiga 500 or two cluttering up my basement. They were hacked into old PC cases and amazingly enough they still work. I managed to boot one that hadn't been powered on for at least 7 years. It was so weird seeing the desktop I knew and loved from so long ago.

They were such great machines! Way, way ahead of their time!

Jason.

The Amiga really was a great machine for the time. For graphics and video games, it was head and shoulders above the compatables of the time. Anyone remember HAM mode graphics? How about the Video Toaster?

This thread is really starting to take me back. When I think about it, I started with a 'Commodore Pet' in school (7th grade maybe?), went to a 'Vic 20', then a 'Commodor 64', then 'Amiga 1000'.

I do remember the signatures inside the Amiga 1000 case. I've long since gotten rid of the computer, now I wish I hadn't. I do have a friend who still has his Amiga 500 and C64. I'll be stoping at his place on my way to Rhinebeck this weekend, maybe I should have him fire it up for old times sake.

I had the Amiga case so many time I can't believe I can't remeber those names, although I think one was "Denise". They were named after the people in the original design team.

Hey Steven, Too bad you still don't have the Vic and Pet because they'll probably sell for a good price on Ebay for collectors.

I was doing on-line banking in 1983 using the C-64 with Citibank Direct Access. It actually worked but it was slow since I think I only had a 1200 baud modem...and that was after I upgraded from a 300 baud modem....I think I still have those in the attic.
And how about the "tape drive". I actually bought one but never got it working.