Last Updated on Monday, 28 December 2009 11:47 Wednesday, 06 May 2009 02:44

Q: How do I create an image of my PC's hard drive to use as a way to quickly reformat and start over?

A: It's recommended that you back up your Windows profile directory (under "c:\Documents and Settings" in Windows XP or "c:\Users" in Windows Vista) by logging in as the administrator and copying it to an external drive, then doing a fresh install of Windows and the applications. That will save most of your user environment, such as bookmarks, cookies, passwords, application settings, etc. Make sure all critical documents are in that profile directory or backed up somewhere like a company file server. You can script the Windows install disk to make all the installs as painless as possible, but if you're doing it only once then it's simplest to just do it manually.

Something like Norton Ghost works fine when you really want to image a PC's drive. The ideal time to image your drive is after you have done a fresh install of Windows and all necessary applications and drivers, not when you need to refresh or re-setup a PC. You don't want to carry all the accumulated problems and software bloat with you to the new PC setup. So, you need to manually set everything up at least once, before creating the image.

Imaging is most helpful in situations where you have a custom-built PC with difficult to find drivers and you just need it to run consistently year after year without change, like a warehouse or clerical computer. In those situations, you don't care about installing the latest/best drivers every time you refresh the PC. Later, when you have problems with that PC, you can just restore the image you originally created and an hour or so later the employee can continue working.

Imaging computers is also useful for companies who buy more than one or two PC's at a time to roll out to their users, so they can set up one PC perfectly with all patches and updates, then duplicate that to other PC's with identical hardware. That can cut a 4-8 hour install time per PC to 30-60 minutes per PC. However, if the PC in question is made by a company with good driver or system recovery support, using the system recovery application or simply installing all the available drivers after a simple reinstall of Windows will usually be easier.

However, if the above situations don't fit yours, an unattended Windows install DVD that installs all of your standard applications is an alternative and will reduce a full computer setup time from 5 hours to about 2 hours. The other advantage of using an unattended Windows install DVD is that it can be used by companies like Net Fu so when you receive them your PC's are completely ready to use at no extra charge.

Of course, before making any kind of changes like this to an existing PC, a comprehensive backup plan should not only be in place, but also verified on a regular basis.