Hi, I wish to make a disk image that would consist of three drives, a root drive (c:), a swap drive(page file partition d: I know it is not great to do this, but if you saw how defragment this drive was, diskeeper could not fix after 17 hours and boot defrag attempts)anyway, and a home drive (f:). I want it to run off cd or dvds, dvd preferably. Just like norton ghost disks for laptop recovery. Save the OS, drivers, apps, cluster size, etc... I don't care how many disks it takes either. Futhermore there is no floppy on this box. So the insert floppy thing ain't gonna work. I guess I could use nero to make bootable disk from floppies, but I not near a floppy anyway. I also have three linux partitions on this drive a /, a swap, and a /home will these partitions be kept as well? Or could I just select the windows ones? Then install my linux after? Or can I make the disk image restore leave my linux alone? Will the boot loader in the mbr be saved? Cause this might suck unless I can image the whole hdd. I would really just like the windows to be saved. I probably could just fdisk/mbr then reinstall bootloader after imaging is done. I also want to know if I have to use an alternate partition to save this image to first then write it to disk or can it be done on the fly? And will Norton ghost (which I have 2003 or newer if need be)see my linux partitions to back the image up to. Also have Acronis True Image I think this program would do it. The linux fs are ext3. Is the gnu app I could use instead? Or can I just use the 30 day trial of Acronis? Or does someone have a better alternative? I was also looking at partition saver, I think. Sorry for the long post, I just the original restore disk sucks bad, like really bad. And for the amount windows has to be reinstalled this effort would prove useful. p.s The image size in Acronis was about 13 gigs or so, will I have to 'purchase' this software for it to work for this particular cause? Thanks kindly for your time.

..will I have to 'purchase' this software for it to work.. Maybe. Did you know that trial versions of any software are usually stripped of all (or most) working functionalities? i_XpUser

Don't fickle yourself into a mishap, buy the software and make the images before your HDD's southern trip gathers too much momentum. When Google isn't your best pal

It would be more reliable to back up all your drives including Linux partitions. True Image can do this actually. It supports all these Linux fs. You can use 30 days trial of Acronis but it will allow you only to image but not to restore. To restore your backup you need to purchase this product. However it has 30 days money back guarantee, so you will able to get back your money if you don't like TI due to any reason. You can also use Acronis instead of Nero to create bootable CD - it will run the complete version of True Image and you will be able to run restore process from it.

thank you cnf