DriveImage XML – Awesome Drive Imaging Tool

I recently had a nasty lightning strike that killed my motherboard and processor.  It has been a major pain in the butt to recover from.  I replaced the motherboard with a Gigabyte N650SLI-DS4 motherboard and a Intel E6550 Core 2 Duo Processor.  But, sadly, my existing RAM was not compatible… so, I had to replace that.  Then, my video card’s memory started flaking out… so, I had to replace that.  I was getting BSODs (Blue Screen of Death) at odd moments – like simply playing solitaire, for instance.

 I’ve finally gotten my system to stabilize… but, not after replacing a bunch of hardware and fighting for hours with the nVidia NForce motherboard drivers.  Best I can tell – THEY SUCK!  So, a word of advice if you’re going to build a system around NForce drivers:  Don’t install their IDE drivers, use the generic Microsoft drivers.  They are more stable and will work just fine.  And, don’t install the NForce Network Management tool.  You don’t need it and it will cause you grief.  Trust me.

 If I’d have known that about the sucky NForce drivers, I probably could’ve recovered from my lightning strike without having to re-install Windows XP Pro – and go through calling Microsoft to get a new key since I had changed all the hardware and my old key was officially null and void.   This is very possible – if your new motherboard’s drivers aren’t crap.  Anyway…

I’m not really what you’d call your typical PC user.  I do video work, multitrack audio and web programming.  So, you can imagine I had a ton of software to reinstall once I finally got my system stable.  Hours and hours of watching that little progress bar move slowly from left to right.  I’ve tried to image my system drive using tools like Norton Ghost.  But, never with any success.  I’ve always thought you couldn’t image a system drive while in Windows because Windows has locked out many of the critical files you need to backup.  Well, I’m here to tell you – it can be done.

I was cruising Digg.com recently and saw a link to a free little program called DriveImage XML.  This tool allows you to create an XML-based image of your entire system drive to another hard drive partition while you are booted into Windows.  It’s fast and it works.  It even claims to be able to reimage your system drive while booted into Windows.  Haven’t tried that, but, who knows.

To get this done, you’ll need to download the software from the link below.  And, you should also download a copy of the (also free) BartPE.  This is a great little tool that lets you create a very scaled-down Windows Boot CD (or Boot DVD).  You can install DriveImage XML to your boot disk and have it available to re-image a boot drive in the case of a catastrophic failure.  I highly recommend that you check it out.

Here are the links to the software:

DriveImage XML

BartPE

And, if you ever have the kind of failure I had, I recommend you check out some of these links:

Error Message with RAM Problems or Damaged Virtual Memory Manager

How to find out what is causing a Blue Screen of Death (BSOD) by using the kernel debugger tools

Windows (32-bit) Debugging Tools

Tom’s Hardware Forum – IRQL Not Less or Equal

Tips On How To Analyze Strange Crash Dumps And Uninstall Hidden Drivers

One last thing…

I had my entire system plugged into an APC battery backup with surge/line noise protection.  Don’t kid yourself:  If you have a DIRECT lightning strike, the only thing surge protection will do is keep your computer from catching fire.  Unplugging your gear in a thunderstorm is the only way to be safe.

Oh, and the APC unit got fried too.

Freeware Photo Mosaic Tool

I came across a nifty – and free – program that will take a source photo and turn it into a mosaic of a gallery of your other photographs and images.  It has a number of different options to control the density of images and their orientation.  Of course, you can adjust the resolution of the image too.

It’s called Andrea Mosaic and you can download it here.