How to back up Operating systems

[whitbacon]

Can Vice Versa be used to back up Operating Systems -- If so a couple of white papers would be usefuL

[CoreyPlover]

ViceVersa 2.0 Beta is said to use the Shadow Copy service and could possibly access locked system files for synchronisation for real time Operating System backups. However standard file synchronisations will not capture boot sectors, etc if you need to ever restore the OS.

You would be MUCH better off using a version of Symantec Ghost to either perform a real time OS backups without reboot (newest version of Ghost supports this) or create a Ghost boot disk. Boot up off this disk and run the Ghost DOS executable. This will access all partitions and compress each partition or drive to a single Ghost image file. Very fast copy speed and compression and very reliable.

You can even place the Ghost executable on a bootable external USB drive and have all your images stored on the same boot volume, or put the Ghost executable on a bootable USB key and avoid the need for disks.