Image software that can push to a network share

Question

I am in a situation where our portable hard drive has taken a turn for the worst and now our only alternative is to push images to a network share.

Unfortunaly norton ghost does not support networks (as far as i can see) so we are out of luck with what we currently got.

Open source/free software would be great but paid versions will do.

Answer 1

Norton Ghost can save to a network share by one of two ways:

1. You can create a boot disk/USB device to boot and map a drive to save the image to, or
2. You can use GhostCast Server to save the image to a network share

-JFV

Answer 2

Acronis True Image family of backup/image creation software does support network shares. It works pretty well.

Answer 3

I use partimage, a Linux-based solution that takes full-partition or full-disk images and saves them as files. It can run across the network (by using partimaged on the server being used as storage) or by simply mounting a network share at some local folder, then saving at that folder.

Answer 4

There is a free/open source program called g4u (Ghost for Unix) that works pretty well as a Norton Ghost alternative. Don't let the name turn you away - it's operating system agnostic.

If you have access to a local FTP server (or can temporarily create one with FileZilla Server, etc.) and a DHCP server, it should work smoothly.

Answer 5

If you use Drive Snapshot it can write images to the network while the computer is running. Obviously you can't restore an image while the OS is running. For that I use a WinPE or BartPE boot CD or USB key.

WinPE is based on Vista while the last BartPE I saw was based on 2003/XP and needs some messing around to add drivers for the latest hardware. You can get a copy of the Windows Automated Installation Kit (Windows AIK) from www.microsoft.com/downloads while BartPE is available from www.nu2.nu/pebuilder.

John Rennie