I'm trying to make a backup of a laptop which I no longer have any setup disks for. I have tried two different image programs in it and both need to reboot into a dos mode. The problem is the used space which is 603mb on the partition which is 2 gig cannot copy an image to the drive being imaged. Did that make since? Anyhow since the programs need to reboot into a dos mode they cannot find a mapped drive. I don't have any kind of drive that I can put into this laptop that's 603 mb and I sure ain't gonna try backing this thing up on 436 floppies!!! I'm open for any other suggestions. bty i've tried using norton's ghost and Driveimage 5 ASUS A7V8X Athlon XP 2700+ @ 2.17ghz 1GB DDR 2700 nVidia 128mb FX 5200 WD 80gb SE NEC ND-3500AG DVD R/RW

Sounds like you need to dig into Ghost a little more (what version do you have?) There are several ways to approach, but all will mean "building" special bootdisks or otherwise configureing special drivers for Ghost to operate in DOS. If possible, do this on floppy. Ghost can create an image to a second partition, so if you EVER get this done, you may want to repartition the laptop drive into at LEAST two partitions, so that you DO have a space for an image. One of the first--and cheap things I'd investigate is this: http://www.cablestogo.com/product.asp?cat%5Fid=906&sku=17705&engine=adwords!654&keyword=%28laptop+hard+drive+adaptor%29 which will allow you to temporarily hook the laptop drive directly to an IDE cable of a desktop Ghost can write an image over a network--so you will have to create a floppy that will operate over a network. Ghost can send an image to SOME external devices, again, configureing drivers. This includes such things as PC card operated CD writers, and external hard drives (I have an old Travelstar external drive for PCMCIA) as well as USB CD burners. HOWEVER whatever you get/use/obtain, make sure it has DOS mode drivers available.

I forgot to mention--if you ever get a second partition --- in my case, I have an external USB writer that will NOT work in DOS mode reliably. So what I do is to back up the operating partition to a Ghost image file on the second partition. Then having done that, I KEEP the image on the second partition as a backup, but I ALSO reboot into windows, fire up the USB external writer (with NERO) and simply copy the backup image file to a CD(s)

I don't remember which version but it's a old version. Making a partition would be nice but the os is already on there and there's not much room as it is. I also have one of those adaptors but I can't seem to it read the laptop drive right for making a image. I disconnected all drives on IDE two and put the laptop drive on there by itself and only had the regular desktop drive on IDE one primary master and couldn't ever get it to work right. Windows would see the drive but neither nortons or disk image would see it correctly. It did work fine for a regular drive to drive image something about the laptop drive was screwy. I found a old parallel backpack hard drive but it's only 200mb :( ASUS A7V8X Athlon XP 2700+ @ 2.17ghz 1GB DDR 2700 nVidia 128mb FX 5200 WD 80gb SE NEC ND-3500AG DVD R/RW

Can't you put a larger drive (even temporarily) into the backup drive? IDE cable adaptors CAN be a problem--so called overlay software, and various special partitions can screw that deal up. Do you have DOS mode drivers for the backback drive? That's certainly a possibility. I did, however, go through pure hell getting my PCMCIA external drivers. It was an IBM Travelstar 8E. It needed a special driver for the card, which I eventually found. Was NOT on IBM's site that I found, in this case. Here's another thought--you might play with the old, pain in the *** interlink/interserver in later versions of DOS. It will load in the background, and should map the drive(s) of the server machine over a serial/parallal null modem/Laplink/PCanywhere type cable. What this does, basically, is give you access to another machine's drive(s) in DOS. You should be able to actually load Winhozed for example) right on top, and "see" the other drives. I'll have to try that.

HERE's a page you ought to read: http://www.softpanorama.org/Articles/a_slightly_skeptical_view_on_norton_ghost.shtml and quite possibly this: http://www.symantec.com/techsupp/ghost/ghost_2002_info_man.html Reading the above, which only goes refers back to Ghost2002 (the earliest I can find, and YOU still have not told us what you have) It appears that parallel transfer is built in. I've never used that,---I'll have to try THAT