DataSafe uses Norton Ghost to image your C: drive and puts it on D:

 

You have to configure Norton Ghost to run when you want it to and how you want to image. You can do full or incremental images. The Norton Ghost documentation tells you how and explains how full and incremental work.

Hi, Keithg2,

 

Thanks for taking the time to answer.  I did a search on my system, and I don't have any files or folders with the name "Norton" in them.  Do I have to purchase the Norton Ghost software?  In other words, Dell provides DataSafe but not the software needed to implement it?

 

I have an XPS410, that supposedly came with DataSafe.  My computer has C, D & E drives, with  D & E being CD/DVD drives.  Should I be able to see the drive the DataSafe is on?

I know with my XPS 400 when I purchased the DataSafe option, I chose 2-160GB hard drives with RAID 1 enabled and Symantec (Norton) Ghost 10 was installed. My system came with 4 primary partitions. They were the DellUtility, C:, D: and DellRestore. The D: drive was labeled Backup and was used to store the Ghost 10 images. So the combination of RAID 1 (hard drive mirroring) and Ghost 10 images allowed me to have a current backup of my entire drive and be able to go back a few days to recover files by using Ghost 10 and incremental backups.

 

DataSafe today for the 410s may be just the RAID 1 setup. I really don't know for sure. If you have a 410 system that came preloaded with Vista, then you won't have Ghost 10 because it isn't compatible with Vista. If your system came preloaded with XP Media Center Edition, then you may have a trial version of Ghost 10 rather than the licensed version that I have.

 

Judging from your drive letters, you have a C: drive and two CDROM drives (CD and DVD). If you have two hard drives in your system and you see an Intel Matrix ROM Utility screen at boot up, then you may have RAID 1 enabled and running which would be mirroring your C: drive onto another drive so that if one drive fails, you can keep working and not lose any data as the good drive will continue working. You won't see a 2nd drive letter for the 2nd hard drive since it's being mirrored via RAID 1.

Thanks again.  I'll look for the Intel Matrix ROM Utitlity at boot up, as I don't seem to have any of the other drives or software.