Imaging programs

[Brian Kelsay]

I recall someone asking recently about drive imaging software and I came across this info today.  
One free software and 2 for dollars.  I only mention the commercial solutions here because I've 
never heard of them before today and thought they might be interesting to some of you.  Enjoy.

http://www.feyrer.de/g4u/ 
g4u ("ghost for unix") is a NetBSD-based bootfloppy/CD-ROM that allows easy cloning of PC harddisks 
to deploy a common setup on a number of PCs using FTP. The floppy/CD offers two functions. First is 
to upload the compressed image of a local harddisk to a FTP server. Other is to restore that image 
via FTP, uncompress it and write it back to disk; network configuration is fetched via DHCP. As the 
harddisk is processed as a image, any filesystem and operating system can be deployed using g4u. 
Easy cloning of local disks as well as partitions is also supported. 

http://acronis.com/products/trueimage/ 
It takes an exact image of your hard disk drive or separate partitions for complete backup, and 
allows you to restore all of their contents, including operating systems, programs, personal data 
and settings. In the event of fatal software or hardware failure Acronis True Image protects your 
data, even when ordinary file backup software does not work.  Supported Partitions: FAT16/32, NTFS, 
Linux Ext2, Ext3, ReiserFS, and Linux SWAP.

http://www.bootitng.com/bootitng.html 
First, as the name suggests, Bootit NG is a boot manager.
Second, Bootit NG is a partition manager. It understands all current major partition types (Fat, 
Fat32, NTFS, ext2, ext3, ReiserFS, Linux swap, etc.).
Third, Bootit NG is a disk imager: You can create compact, compressed images of any or all 
partitions on your hard drive, regardless of which OS they're holding, and place the image files 
where you want: Bootit NG even natively supports direct writing to many common CD/DVD+R/+RW/-R/-RW 
drives (and disk spanning is also supported, to allow large images to extend across several 
writable discs); or you can dump the image file to a partition on your hard drive, if you prefer.