Building a recovery disk

Hi,

I wonder if anyone can point me in the right direction on this. I have just finished building a desktop with XP Pro for a friend and I would like to create a bootable image of it for him so that I can give him the disk to keep with him so when he needs to rebuild, he just slips in the disk and restores the base image. I can find tools that image a disk and I can find tools to create bootable recovery disks but I can't find one that will let me take an image of a disk and make that bootable. Any ideas?

Cheers

JD

Start with DriveImageXML and the Ultimate Boot Disk. There may be a way to automate it. I'd love to hear what you find. A 4GB DVD should be enough for a basic XP install image, though mine with Photoshop, Office, apps, etc is 14GB.

I use Acronis software and I have an image of my primary drive saved on my data drive and on an external. If my primary drive ever fails, I can insert the Acronis disk and clone the drive image to a new hard drive.

I update the drive image each week.

I am sure acronis allows you to back up to external media. you can also install its recovery zone, which gives you the option of booting acronis instead of os.

acronis here

Norton Ghost.

Another thumbs up for Acronis, excellent software.

Thanks for the recommendations. I'm sorry that I forgot to say in my original post that I was looking for a free solution. Anyone know one of those?

Jonathan wrote in post #10762229
Thanks for the recommendations. I'm sorry that I forgot to say in my original post that I was looking for a free solution. Anyone know one of those?

Try Tim's advice. He knows what he's talking about.