Easy way to make a "backup" of entire hard drive

[pgee 0]

I need to " backup" the entire hard drive easily on a few dvr's . The sites dont have "techies" so it would need to be via the usb port or some other way . Any ideas ??

[survtech 0]

If you want to backup everything - O/S, software, etc., use drive imaging software. I've used Acronis True Image with excellent results, but there are a number of others, including Symantec Norton Ghost and Paragon Backup and Recovery. Those are programs you buy. There are also freeware and shareware programs like Macrium Reflect Free, DriveImage XML and Clonezilla.

[SEANHAWG 1]

If its a standalone, more than likely no OS will be on there, just video files. If thats the case, just hook up a USB external hard drive and back that thang up. Its gonna take a while. Hopefully your DVR will support the external HD.

[dmoore 0]

I use Hiren's boot CD with the disk clone tools. Add in one of those $8 USB to everything adapters (IDE,SATA, etc) and you are set.

 

http://www.hiren.info/pages/bootcd

[sigmaxsecurity 0]

Norton ghost is what we use here for imaging our systems, its very easy to use and recovers rapidly.

[MaxIcon 0]

For Windows, I'm a fan of True Image, and have used it for many years, though I'm converting to WHS 2011.

 

If it's a standalone DVR, best bet is to remove the HD, attach it to a USB to SATA or IDE adapter, connect it to a Windows machine, and use True Image/Ghost/etc to make an image. This doesn't work with all file systems, so you'd also want to do a restore to a different HD and test that it would work. Yes, this is too techie for many users.

 

For multiple Windows based systems, I've converted to Windows Home Server 2011, which is very much lower maintenance than a bunch of standalone TI/Ghost/whatever systems. It has drawbacks, but has been quite good so far. I'm backing up 6 home networked systems now with few problems, though still running TI in parallel for a bit longer.