When a system crash and unable to boot up any more for any reason, usually the only way to bring the system back to life is to to reinstall the OS and all application the user need - a very time consuming process.

To make the matter worse, some specialty software require special attention. Service call for installation and configuration of this type of software alone will usually demand for several hundred of dollars.

Some system just cannot afford to go down. It is simply unacceptable to spend several hours or even days to install OS, all application, restore data from tape, and even more time on custom setup and configuration.

In an ideal world, every company should have two identical systems with two set of identical software installed on both systems, and get both systems running at all time. When one system go down, the other will kick in within second. In a real world, most small businesses simply cannot afford this type of expensive setup and on going maintenance cost.

If you must bring a crashed system up and running quickly at a low budget, why not consider disk imaging solution - a low budget disaster recovery solution that most small business can afford.

Unlike traditional data backup software such as Backup Exec that backup only data files, disaster recovery software such as Acronis Backup and Recovery, O&O DiskImage, Symantec System Recovery backup a complete system that includes OS, all application, data, and user setting and create a disk image file for each system. These image files can store on a SAN, NAS, or even low cost USB hard drive.

When (not if) a system go down for any reason, software conflict, virus inflection, hard drive crash, system failure, human error, or hacker attack, all you have to do it restore one of those disk image back to the same system or to a new system in case the original system failed. Most systems usually ready to go back online again again within an hour.

Disk image is by no mean not a perfect system disaster recovery solution. An hour of system downtime during the recovery process maybe too long for some companies, but it maybe perfectly acceptable for some companies. It is still much better than having to rebuild a system with time consuming and labor intensive software installation and configuration.

New generation of disk imaging software let you run backup in the back ground while users are working on their PC or servers. "No time to do backup" is no more an excuse. Just set backup schedule and forget about it. It is perfect for those system that just cannot be shut down to do backup. They also let you make a clone hard drive for even faster disaster recovery. Instead of restoring disk image, you can simply swap the hard drive. 

Acronis® Backup & Recovery Server for Linux  is designed to back up and protect stand-alone Linux Servers. It let you backup the complete system, including the operating system, applications and all data. Now you can recover a failed system quickly and easily, instead of hours or days. Advanced recovery technologies eliminate traditional system builds and return line-of-business servers to operation in minutes.

Acronis® Backup & Recovery Advanced Server  simplifies and automates your backup and restore processes across Windows and Linux environments, and remotely monitors and manages geographically distributed servers and workstations. Unlike many backup software that backup only data files, Acronis Backup & Recovery Advanced Server  backup complete operating system, applications and all data can be recovered in minutes, instead of hours or days. It is a great disaster recovery solution that won't hurt your budget.

Genie Timeline Professional lets you restore your system and data even if your operating system no longer loads. You are given the option to create a bootable startup disk in a virtual partition, USB drive, or ISO image. Genie Timeline saves past versions of your documents which you can revert back to easily. Go back in time with Genie Timeline and recover old files, whether through Timeline explorer or the search feature.

O&O DiskImage is a disaster recovery software that let you make a disk images or clone of entire computers. when problems arise, simply restore the disk image and your computer is back as it was before!

Symantec System Recovery Desktop Edition lets you rapid and reliable system recover a PC even from a bare-metal state, without the need to reinstall and reconfigure operating systems, applications, system settings, and preferences.

Symantec System Recovery Server Edition is a disk-based backup solution designed to capture and encapsulate a server's entire live state, including files, configurations and settings, in one easy-to-manage file. It lets you restore a failed server back to working state quickly and easily.  

Anti Crash Assistant  is a powerful software designed to protect computer from crashes and PC errors by restoring a clean Windows system instantly. During installation, it will create a snapshot of the current computer status. In case of virus attack, blue screen, black screen, crash and other pc errors, you can recover your computer to the snapshot and get computer back to work quickly.

Spotmau Emergency Kit 2010 will backup your entire Windows or core parts of it such as DPT (Disk Partition Table), registry and MBR (Master Boot Record). When your Windows gets corrupted or unstable, you can restore it from these backup files. Don’t need to reinstall Windows and applications. Data Transfer is your data rescuer for rescuing and transferring your data from crashed Windows.