PING is a free software

Free software

Free software, software libre or libre software is software that can be used, studied, and modified without restriction, and which can be copied and redistributed in modified or unmodified form either without restriction, or with restrictions that only ensure that further recipients can also do...

 Linux

Linux

Linux is a Unix-like computer operating system assembled under the model of free and open source software development and distribution. The defining component of any Linux system is the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released October 5, 1991 by Linus Torvalds...

-based live CD

Live CD

A live CD, live DVD, or live disc is a CD or DVD containing a bootable computer operating system. Live CDs are unique in that they have the ability to run a complete, modern operating system on a computer lacking mutable secondary storage, such as a hard disk drive...

 ISO image

ISO image

An ISO image is an archive file of an optical disc, composed of the data contents of every written sector of an optical disc, including the optical disc file system...

 built upon the Partimage

Partimage

Partimage is a disk cloning utility for Linux/UNIX environments. Partimage can save partitions in many formats to a disk image. Utilities such as Partimage are useful in a number of situations which are commonly encountered by network administrators as well as advanced computer users who maintain...

 and Linux From Scratch

Linux From Scratch

Linux From Scratch is a type of a Linux installation and the name of a book written by Gerard Beekmans among others. The book gives readers instructions on how to build a Linux system from source...

 (LFS) projects for disk cloning

Disk cloning

Disk cloning is the process of copying the contents of one computer hard disk to another disk or to an "image" file. Often, the contents of the first disk are written to an image file as an intermediate step, and the second disk is loaded with the contents of the image...

 or backup

Backup

In information technology, a backup or the process of backing up is making copies of data which may be used to restore the original after a data loss event. The verb form is back up in two words, whereas the noun is backup....

 purposes. The software supports most hardware platforms using Parallel ATA, Serial ATA

Serial ATA

Serial ATA is a computer bus interface for connecting host bus adapters to mass storage devices such as hard disk drives and optical drives...

, or SCSI

SCSI

Small Computer System Interface is a set of standards for physically connecting and transferring data between computers and peripheral devices. The SCSI standards define commands, protocols, and electrical and optical interfaces. SCSI is most commonly used for hard disks and tape drives, but it...

 systems for desktop computers, workstations, and servers. It can access file system

File system

A file system is a means to organize data expected to be retained after a program terminates by providing procedures to store, retrieve and update data, as well as manage the available space on the device which contain it. A file system organizes data in an efficient manner and is tuned to the...

s using FAT16

File Allocation Table

File Allocation Table is a computer file system architecture now widely used on many computer systems and most memory cards, such as those used with digital cameras. FAT file systems are commonly found on floppy disks, flash memory cards, digital cameras, and many other portable devices because of...

, FAT32, NTFS

NTFS

NTFS is the standard file system of Windows NT, including its later versions Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2008, Windows Vista, and Windows 7....

 or ext3

Ext3

The ext3 or third extended filesystem is a journaled file system that is commonly used by the Linux kernel. It is the default file system for many popular Linux distributions, including Debian...

 format. Disk partition images can be stored on other partitions on the same drive, other drives on a network, or written to one or more CDs or DVDs (CD/DVD spanning). Images can be written without compression or using a choice of several compression schemes, thus reducing storage requirements.

Although the user interface is keyboard-based, it is easy to navigate with the cursor keys. Option selections are checked or unchecked with the space bar, and minimal typing is required when specifying file names for backup or restoration.

Since PING is built upon LFS, it is very small in size. Even if a user decided to expand the content and install it permanently on hard drive, it would still take only 20 megabytes. Normally, the software is burnt on a CD-ROM

CD-ROM

A CD-ROM is a pre-pressed compact disc that contains data accessible to, but not writable by, a computer for data storage and music playback. The 1985 “Yellow Book” standard developed by Sony and Philips adapted the format to hold any form of binary data....

 or installed into a USB Drive for booting. There is also a special version that allow users to load plug-in programs, for example, Clam AntiVirus

Clam AntiVirus

Clam AntiVirus is a free, cross-platform antivirus software tool-kit able to detect many types of malicious software, including viruses. One of its main uses is on mail servers as a server-side email virus scanner. The application was developed for Unix and has third party versions available for...

(ClamAV) for virus scanning.

Downloading PING requires registration with an email address. Older versions are still available for download.

External links

• ping.windowsdream.com — PING official site
• http://www.partimage.org/forums/viewtopic.php?p=2328&sid=fcaddf82cef5a31a3b9e5c5b626f7cd7