heirloomjewellery Posted January 6, 2006 Posted January 6, 2006 Hi All!! Happy New Year to everyone first off!! You've always managed to get me out of a pickle in the past (despite me being completely useless!!) so I'm hoping someone can help this time... Apologies in advance for the essay! As the start of 2006 has already been a little rocky for us I thought it best to be safe instead of sorry and find out how to make a back up of my hard drive before that decides to die an untimely death.... I'm running Windows XP home edition and according to microsoft if I use my original disk I can install the facility from there and back up fairly easily.... however, that's where the problem starts.... I bought this system about a year ago and never received any disks. Being a layperson I didn't even realise I should have had them and unfortunately the company went bankrupt 6 months ago. I've heard I can back up by pasting to a CD or DVD, and basically want to know if this will backup my entire hard drive or just bits and pieces?? I'd really like to do the lot if poss.... Wow that was long winded!!! Sorry - and thanks in advance to those of you still awake! xx Quote
TCH-Andy Posted January 6, 2006 Posted January 6, 2006 yes, you can back up everything onto a number of CD's / DVD's assuming you have a writer on your machine. Since you don't have the original disks for XP, I would use some software ( such as Acronis True Image) to take a full backup of your disk. Normally, I rely on installing a new operating system, and hence only backup the data part of my system, on the basis that I can always instal a new system. There are a number of backup systems available, including the one in Windows XP to do this. Quote
heirloomjewellery Posted January 6, 2006 Author Posted January 6, 2006 Thanks Andy, you're a star. I'll have a go and see how I get on.... When my old system died I thought i'd got back up copies of everything - including bits and pieces I'd downloaded on the net but when I tried to load them onto the new system they didn't seem to work - I lost quite a bit like that and didn't want to end up in the same position again! Thanks again for the response, I promise one day I'll find an interesting question to ask! xx Quote
TCH-Don Posted January 6, 2006 Posted January 6, 2006 My DVD writer came with Nero which has a back up program for data or even better a drive image I made a drive image of my C: drive on four DVD rewritables the image backup DVD will boot and offer to restore all even with a new hard drive. Quote
Head Guru Posted January 9, 2006 Posted January 9, 2006 Take a look at the one button backup solutions available from maxtor. I think they are very good and would fit your purpose. http://www.maxtor.com/portal/site/Maxtor/m...eTouch%20Family Quote
paultwang Posted January 18, 2006 Posted January 18, 2006 (edited) If you want to back up the entire hard drive, I would go for a drive imaging software like Acronis True Image. Why? Because you are not restricted to a particular hardware to store your back up. You can use DVD-R, CD-R, or any disc that your drive can write. If you use any backup product, make sure you have at least a bootable recovery CD so you can at least restore your backup from bare metal state. Comparison to follow... Drive imaging Pro: Everything is backed up. If your hard drive dies, buy an identical model of hard drive, plug it in, and restore the image. Everything will be exactly the same as before. Con: Large number of storage media (DVD-R, CD-R, etc), or a hard drive with equivalent size is required. Direct restoration will not work if you change computer. However, most modern imaging software allow you to pick files to restore. Note: Do not forget the bootable recovery CD (sometimes embedded in the first disc of your actual backup)! If you don't have it, you can't work with your backups. File backup Pro: Everything you choose is backed up. Does not require as many storage media. This can be as simple as backing up "My Documents" into a compressed file and put it in a DVD-R. Con: You almost always have to reinstall Windows (or another OS) first before you can do anything with your backups. This method cannot easily backup your Windows system registry and your User registry. Restoration requires more attention because you have to reinstall Windows, drivers, programs, and have to go through all the software activation/registration again. Note: Do not forget the backup program itself! Your backups are useless without it. Edited January 18, 2006 by paultwang Quote
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