"Karl Townsend" wrote in
link.net:

I had a computer crash a while back and restoring everything from
install CDs to make it run is just too painful... I have all data and
documents cross backed up on the network and never loose that (so far)

I now have seven networked computers on the place. I need a way to
backup the boot disk on each computer and then be able to easily
restore a crashed hard disk so it runs again. What's best? I'd sure
like to be able to do it over the network to one large hard disk. I
guess DVDs would be OK, but not as nice. If there's a way to backup
just the OS and then reinstall software, that would be great.

Karl





I like Truimage by Acronis. Works great across the local network. You can
install it on a machine and back up the entire drive while in windows but I
like to make a boot cd and use it on any machine capable of booting from a
cd. Works great if you use a DHCP server so the network gets set up
automatically. I usually use it to back up a victom's, I mean client's, PC
when I'm about to do battle with it so that even if I completely wipe the
harddrive I just have to put the boot cd in and recover from the networked
drive back to where I started out at. Another nice thing is that if you
install the software on a pc you can browse the saved drives by mounting
them like a file system. Nice if you deleted something and need to recover
it but don't want to restore the entire drive.

Bill