Back Up From C Drive

[Boater]

Hi

How do i backup from my C drive to my E drive ( back Up Drive )

As i need to extract from my back up drive to an external hard drive

Many Thanks

[surface]

What OS are you running?

As i need to extract from my back up drive to an external hard drive

What exactly does this mean? Do you want to copy the backup from the internal "E" drive to an external usb/firewire/eSATA hard drive?

Do you want to be able to restore the entire drive using the backup software, or do you simply want to backup files and be able to restore them individually?

I'm using a free version of Macrium Reflect which backs up entire disks/partitions and can restore them using a boot CD, or you can mount the backup image (to a drive letter) and restore individual files using Windows Explorer.

http://www.macrium.com/reflectfree.asp

The free version does everything you need to do. The full version has extra features that a business may need.

For backing up individual files only, such as your Documents folder, etc., the built in Backup software in Windows should do okay, depending on which version of Windows you're using.

[solai4]

If you install OS in C drive , it not safe Safe to take back up Whole Drive.If you format drive.

If you Dont want loose any data in documents u can copy that Folder to some other Drive.

if you copy with system Files the While Extracing back it make many problem With current OS file and Older Os files.

[brianinbangkok]

Some of the brand name external drives have a function to back up ur C drive.

Maxtor and Western Digital have this software pre installed on the external drives they sell.

Edited April 2, 2009 by brianinbangkok

[noise]

Some of the brand name external drives have a function to back up ur C drive.

Maxtor and Western Digital have this software pre installed on the external drives they sell.

The Buffalo external drive station (I got the 500GB, USB connection, with power supply) comes with Memeo back up S/W loaded. It was 3590 baht at Pantip when I bought it. It can be set up to turn on and off with your computer and run auto back ups.

[blackkopee]

The C: mostly it the system file (XP) meaning when you bootup the PC. There are many files being load and lock-up (security issue). So you can't just copy and past to new drive. But you can do backup by using program like "gost , acronatic, true image etc. to images them and restore later on.

If i were you, i just do backup my data only and re-install OS from beginning.

[Amnaj]

if you used windows XP so you can use NTBackup software

anywhere norrmally you can copy you name in C:\Users (window7) or C:\document and setting\ your name <-

[siamect]

Just some thoughts...

Never use backup software that uses a proprietary format for storing the backed up data... You cannot reach it without the original program. Will it work on the next generation of hardware? Will it run on the next version of you OS. Use only software which stored your data in an open format so that you can retrieve you data without the original program that created the backup!

Now for something more constructive.

I have questioned the value of partition backups for "normal" users, in other threads in this forum. But as the subject comes up and I think it is important to discuss I make some comments about it here.

For me and for most users, the OS and the installed software are tools. They don't represent anything unique, they don't actually have any value at all as they can be installed from the original installation media relatively easily.

Usually a reasonably busy person doesn't have any reason to mess with it by himself. You can get a good computer shop to reinstall your OS and software for a very reasonable amount of money and they may even have a messenger to pick it up...

Most users also have the possibility to borrow a second computer so he can work immediately after a failure of his main machine, provided he has a good backup of his data somewhere else.

Based on this, I suggest backups based on projects. To me, it doesn't make sense to restore hundreds of GB on the crashed computer, just so that you can finish writing the contracts or the documentation you were working on the moment before the computer gave up.

Just the thought of continuing working on a computer that just crashed yesterday should scare the shit out of the bravest. If it also took just about the whole night to restore the image backup you have reasons to wish you had done it in another way.

Project have a birth, a life and they all die a silent death at some point. This point is not always well defined. The death of a project is not nearly as definite as the death of physical persons. Based on this, you will most likely carry around old projects in your computer just because you may need it...

If you back up your projects in multiple places. arrange a consistency check to it and make sure you have them in separate buildings, you are pretty safe.

But live projects have a tendency to accumulate data that seems to be useful at some stages of the projects and then turns out useless. Some of these useless data may later on be of great value... maybe as a way of telling people how they shouldn't work.

Can you get this data back from your backups?

I have seen people blaming their IT departments for screwing up the backups, although there is a corp policy to use daily, weekly, monthly backups. Many times it turns out that the loudest voices doesn't have a clue how the backup works and they just assume that a file that had a life of 3 days six months ago would be on the backups. That is highly unlikely.

IT departments have many restrictions or limitations when they do backups.

1. One is the cost. You cannot backup everything every day, every hour, every minute. You need to limit your backups so that the total volume is realistic.

2. Another limitation that IT departments are struggling with is that they cannot possibly know when you as a user need to have a backup. They just have to assume that after you go home and the activities are low that that is the right time to make a backup. But if you think about it... it's is the complete opposite. When you work with your files, that is the time when you are likely to screw up, not when you are at home sleeping. When you work, you know what is important, you know when it makes sense to backup.

3. A third limitation... or more an annoying piece of the reality, is that you have servers with multi TB of storage and they get full in an accelerating phase.

- Most of the data on these server volumes are crap... but this crap is backed up regularly.

- On the workstations... some of the data is valuable... but it is not backed up.

- And out of the valuable data on the servers that are backed up, most of it is not stored in a way known to the people who need the data.

So you sit there with a lot of empty space on the workstations and a lot of occupied expensive space on the servers that you need to backup regularly.

And still people are wasting time recreating data because they cannot find it... and you have to back up this recreated data to... and so on...

To solve these annoyances I propose you start using a distributed version control system. There are some really good ones and the best ones are truly free software (ref fsf.org).

Programmers have used them since years but I hope that people who are not programmers will start to understand how they work and what benefits you can enjoy using a distributed version control system in a corporate environment.

I use a system called Git both for private activities and for my work in a corporate environment. Although Git was created for programming projects, most of the activities where I use it, are not related to programming but more for documentation.

The distributed nature of Git works well from the backup point of view because of the distribution of project data to the project members workstations and their remote repositories.

Other features that is beneficial is the consistency check of the data. It has saved my ass a few times.

We also use Git because of it's ability to track changes in a set of files. This is useful for tracking changes to parameters in machines in production. It also make it easy to check that machines doing the same job is set up the same way. We also use it for tracking of statistical production data.

The only downside with Git is that it can be difficult for non programmers to read the documentation that is available. Another problem is the amount of documentation... where shall I start? It depends on your level.

Martin

[siamect]

What OS are you running?

QUOTE As i need to extract from my back up drive to an external hard drive

What exactly does this mean? Do you want to copy the backup from the internal "E" drive to an external usb/firewire/eSATA hard drive?

Do you want to be able to restore the entire drive using the backup software, or do you simply want to backup files and be able to restore them individually?

I'm using a free version of Macrium Reflect which backs up entire disks/partitions and can restore them using a boot CD, or you can mount the backup image (to a drive letter) and restore individual files using Windows Explorer.

Macrium Reflect FREE Edition - Information and download

The free version does everything you need to do. The full version has extra features that a business may need.

For backing up individual files only, such as your Documents folder, etc., the built in Backup software in Windows should do okay, depending on which version of Windows you're using.

Its not a free software... Look for this if they say it is free

The Free Software Definition - GNU Project - Free Software Foundation (FSF)