Making an image/restore disk?

[insaneman37]

Well, I'm going to be putting together a computer for my sister over Thanksgiving break. She finally gets to get off of the Celeron 300 w/ 32MB of RAM.

Anyways, what I'd like to do is after I get the OC, drivers, and such things as firewall and antivirus installed, I'd like to make an image of the drive. What I want to do with it is have it on CD(s) where all she has to do is put the CD in the drive, it boots up to the CD, formats c:, and restores this image to the drive. I would like it to be a completely automated thing, so all she'd have to do is put in the CD.

So, is there anyway that I can do this? Or am I asking too much?

[DeeMutz[SS]]

most image proggies will let you make a bootable restore disk

I used DriveImage and it works great

a few pwwople i know use Norton Ghost and swear by it

[God's Unicorn]

I'd like to do the same thing. That sounds like a great idea.

[DeeMutz[SS]]

there was a guide in a past issue of MaximumPC .... I sure if you googe it, you'll find some kind of guide/walk-through

[slayer[SS]]

I use Ghost to do that at work. You can use most image programs to do that kinda thing, it's not too hard... ;)

[insaneman37]

I'll take a look into these options probably Wednesday night when I build my sister's computer. I'll let you guys know how it goes, and I'm sure I'll have some questions.

[slayer[SS]]

Biggest thing is to keep the install small. I would install windows, SP's, all the patches and drivers and maybe a couple other small things, then take the image to another computer (hook it up peer to peer, or ghost it as an image file to another hard drive). Make sure to use the command line switch for the highest level of compression. Once the image has been taken, if it's small enough to fit on a CD, burn it. Then create a boot floppy with CDROM support and have it call that ghost file when it boots. I have an older version of Ghost I use, which made all that necessary. The newest version is probably even easier... ;)

[finagle69]

i use Acronis True Image. it works very well, creates a bootable image.