Backup C drive via USB Stick?

I have re-installed an nlited version of XP Pro on my laptop, removing all of the unwanted fluff and setting up the appropriate laptop drivers
The total usage on C: is now 910MB. Happy days

Since I have a spare 2GB USB stick I want to backup the C: drive in it's current working state (including the Master Boot Record)
My laptop can boot via the USB. So, ideally, I would like to create a bootable USB stick with the C: drive image copied on the stick for restoration. Is this possible?

I have looked at Ulimate Boot CD, PenDriveLinux, and other utils for making bootabe USB sticks but I think the sticking point will be the fact that the O/S is NTFS file system

I want to avoid going down the route of burning hundreds of CD's. Mainly because 1, I don't have any blank CD's knocking around, and 2, I seem to waste no end of CD's which fail to boot or turn out to be useless

Why not use Acronis or Ghost to make a ghost image. You really don't want your main system to be booting from a USB stick I think.

That's what I was thinking, they're hopelessly slow.

The idea is to simply use the USB to boot and restore the c: drive after a crash / virus, rather than going through the tedious XP installation procedure

Acronis sounds good on paper. However, how do you restore the system? Does it create a bootable CD/Floppy?
I used Ghost before but I could not restore the system because of a persistent BSOD. I therefore could not launch the restore program which required XP running .. Doh !?!

This is pretty much akin to placing a fire extinguisher in the middle of a blazing room!

Don't know about Acronis, but that's what Ghost does. I have a ghost image of my C drive, freshly installed and with all my dev tools on - the backup is about 16GB and is stored on an external hard drive.

If it ever goes wrong I can boot from the Ghost CD and recover/reinstall the whole system from there. It'll take about half an hour, as opposed to the day and a half it normally takes me to get everything reinstalled.

I just have to interject that the Ultimate Boot CD for Windows is AWESOME and NTFS...requires a windows CD to make though. Can't run it from a pen drive though I think.

I usually use UBCD4Win/Bart PE in conjunction with runtime software's DriveImage XML.

Acronis has always been working for me. It supports other filesystems like ext3 and ext2 as well.

You just make a backup of your C:/ drive. When you restore it you only restore that partition and you'll be in the same state again as when you made the backup.

So with Acronis you can create a single boot disc which will allow you to restore the partition. The backup file can be anywhere: USB HDD or internal HDD, or some FTP server. You also have the option to compress your image and if needed split it up into smaller chunks so they can be burned on a couple of cd's or dvd's.

Acronis True Image Home is good enough and cheap, considering how easy and reliable it is.

I use Acronis Trueimage 11, there is an option to create bootable media which can also be saved as an ISO image for later burning. Unfortunately I have never used the bootable media function, I create a partition on my hard drive and backup to a "secure zone" in that partition. You can also backup to an archive file and it can do differential and incremental backups. on XP, it has a smart restore mode which restores key system files so you are up and running very quickly ... while you are in windows it restores the rest of the system in the background dynamically.

It had a "try and decide" feature which if abused can corrupt your system. I did use this a bit for trialware, shareware type of programs ... to get around the 30 day trial period ... ahem, forget I said that :D

Creating a backup on the essentially the same drive is senseless. A hardware failure will take down your OS and your backup as well.

That doesn't bother me, the most important files I need are already backed up to DVDs. If something drastic happens, I can always reinstall XP again and create another "secure zone" based backup. My backup is very small as I have nothing important on this machine, which is normally used for Team Fortress 2 gaming and regular internet usage ... heck my entire backup is only 5GB.

DriveImage XML

I just got insurance on my laptop, so if anything happens, they will 1. give me a new laptop or 2. restore my folders and OS on the same laptop if possible

My system hasn't crashed in eight years. XP

If it did, I'd reinstall XP Pro (for OS/software failure) and/or replace the necessary parts (for hardware failure.) After that, I'd just copy back all my important files (which fit in a 500MB ZIP), and carry on as though nothing happened, grinning like a loon. 8D

PING (PartImage Is Not Ghost) is a nice freebie:

http://ping.windowsdream.com/

1) Download .iso from their website
2) Boot from CD
3) It will take an image from a harddrive (including filesystem, boot records, etc.) and either write it to another disk, to a network share, OR burn direct to CD/DVD if you have a burner

I've succesfully used it with both XP and Vista myself.

nice post, some good options here...

This is just the job ..

http://www.paragon-software.com/home/db-express/features.html


Install it on PC
Select option to create a bootable USB Stick <-- the feature I wanted
Backup contents of drive C to USB Stick

@Jim: Did you actually use it successfully? Not being able to easily ghost the OS has been my biggest (perhaps only real) bugbear with XP so I'll be having a look at that if it works.

Sledge,

I cannot vouch for the restoration process but everything else worked a treat. The live backup compressed into ~900MB. The USB stick is bootable and, upon booting from the stick I get the option to restore the partition via an image which I saved onto the USB stick or the one I copied onto the second partition.
All looks professional to me

this looks like a nice piece of backup hardware:

http://www.adorama.com/VDLALDCUF320.html