Backing Up My Computer

[higgy88]

First of all, I have been reading this forum for a while but have just started to post. I have gotten a lot of very good information here and many of my questions have already been answered already. You guys have been very helpful.

So now for this question. I bought my computer about a year and a half ago in Thailand. It's an hp, and it came with windows xp home edition pre-installed by hp, which I hoped would guarantee that it was legal. It did not come with any windows installation cds, but it did come with instructions on how to make my own set of recovery disks, which they highly suggested that I do immediately. I was also told that I only had one chance to make one set of recovery disks, and like a good boy I did what I was told. Now that my family and I have been using it and making lot's of changes and doing our things, I figure it was time to do some backing up of what we had done. I have made copies of everything in our documents and saved them on cds, but if anything did happen I really don't want to go all the way back to the begining and lose a lot of the new programs I have installed and do not have the original installation disks. The first thing I found out when I tried to back up my computer was I couldn't do it unless I bought an upgrade called Backup My PC for $40 US. I did some investigating and it does look like a pretty good program, but as I am cheap I would have really prefered something for free. On further investigation I found that windows xp professional edition came with backup software, but not the home edition. I guess microsoft in their infinite wisdom decided home users did not need it. They said it was on the windows xp home edition installation disk, which I do not have, and it was nowhere to be found on my recovery disks. I was able to find it online, so I downloaded it and installed it and was ready to go, only to discover that I could not back up to CDs or DVD, only to another drive, and it does not break up the files into smaller ones that can be burned into multiple CDs. Back to square one.

So, can any of you guys suggest any free software that I would be able to use to back up my computer into multiple CDs, or should I go with the $40 software or something similiar, or should I just go out and buy another external hard drive and use microsoft's program to back up to that. Or, of course, I could just do nothing, which unfortunately I have become very good at doing.

[Gary A]

I bought a USB 2 hard drive enclosure and a 40 gig Seagate hard drive. I back up my entire system with the XP Pro software and it works great. It takes a little more than a half hour to do the entire system backup.

[Firefoxx]

Sounds like what you want is to keep your current installation (mainly programs) in case something happens. There is no real way to keep installed programs from installation to installation... you need to re-install. However, you can keep the complete installation. Go get another harddisk (internal or external) that is equal or larger than your current one and a program called "ghost". It will make a complete working image of your current drive in its current state to the other drive. If anything happens to your current drive, be it hardware or software failure, you can just swap the drives and be back up and running in no time.

[Crossy]

Sounds like what you want is to keep your current installation (mainly programs) in case something happens. There is no real way to keep installed programs from installation to installation... you need to re-install. However, you can keep the complete installation. Go get another harddisk (internal or external) that is equal or larger than your current one and a program called "ghost". It will make a complete working image of your current drive in its current state to the other drive. If anything happens to your current drive, be it hardware or software failure, you can just swap the drives and be back up and running in no time.

Used to be called "Norton Ghost" I think it's now called "PowerQuest DriveImage", unfortunately neither are free

I use Driveimage to create backup images on a USB drive, should my main drive die (as it has on more than one occasion) you can boot from the DriveImage CD and restore your machine exactly as it was before the failure.

[higgy88]

Thanks for your input guys. I've been reading some old TV topics from about a year ago on archiving and external/internal hard drives with USB 2.0 box and it looks like that is the best way to go rather than burnning and stocking up on multiple CDs. I'll run up to Chiangmai and shop around to see what's available and the prices. The idea of having another hard drive that I can just pop in my computer when/if this one decided to head south really appeeals to me.

As far as the software, I now have the same MS backup software that's on XP Pro and can use that, but it won't give me an exact image as ghost will. Tell me if I am wrong, but I think I could use the recovery disks I made to get back to it's original settings, and then use the ms backup to get it back to where it is right now. Also, I googled ghost and found out it is a Symantic program and I really don't like anything from them. Anyone have any experience with other software they like that can also give me an exact working image?

[Gary A]

I haven't had to try it but the MS backup makes you a floppy to boot off of after it copies everything off your computer. It then it allows you to restore the entire system after booting from the floppy. I hope it works this way but I also hope I don't have to test it.

The USB hard drive is big enough that I copied my entire documents into a separate folder in case I do have problems restoring the system. Everything except my music and photos can be reinstalled so I actually have a double backup for those.

NOTE - I had my photos and music backed up on CD's and apparently a type of fungus ate the silver backing off the CD's in some small areas. The CD's were useless. That is when I lost faith in keeping data on CD's and bought the USB hard drive.

Edited July 7, 2006 by Gary A

[lopburi3]

http://www.7tools.com/pi/table_g.htm

7Tools imager is only US $17.46 from the above link. It is kind of geekish but I was able to figure it out. Have not had to use so can not confirm it is good or not but most reviews seem to say it works well. Takes about 30 minutes to backup my 30GB of data to USB drive. To restore you would use CD (you download ISO and burn).

[raro]

I used to use Freebyte Backup, a free back-up tool that semmed to work fine. Never had a worst case to test it, though (luckily...).

Nowadays I have mapped "My Documents" on the server and made it available offline. Then the server copies all data back on my laptop and the data is available twice. In case the server goes offline (or I take the laptop home), I have all the data permanently available and upon reconnecting to the LAN in the office it synchronizes all changes made since the last log-on. VERY convenient!

[marquess]

Sounds like what you want is to keep your current installation (mainly programs) in case something happens. There is no real way to keep installed programs from installation to installation... you need to re-install. However, you can keep the complete installation. Go get another harddisk (internal or external) that is equal or larger than your current one and a program called "ghost". It will make a complete working image of your current drive in its current state to the other drive. If anything happens to your current drive, be it hardware or software failure, you can just swap the drives and be back up and running in no time.

Used to be called "Norton Ghost" I think it's now called "PowerQuest DriveImage", unfortunately neither are free

I use Driveimage to create backup images on a USB drive, should my main drive die (as it has on more than one occasion) you can boot from the DriveImage CD and restore your machine exactly as it was before the failure.

Does this mean, that If I am having new hardrive installed I can make a pefect copy of the old one onto the new one; and evey programe will work perfectly. Or would I be better off reinstalling everything with all the hassles that go with it??

[lopburi3]

Everything should work exactly the same. You use the CD to access the USB drive and recover the backup, making a new partition on your new drive to match the old drive and all the data is written on it. Should be good to boot when done. As said I have not done it but many have.

[rishi]

Well, there might be a problem related to the sofisticated thing called "partitions". Tools such as e.g. DriveImage doesn't generally take a snapshot of a whole harddrive - they take a snapshot of a partition. Well, most people - who doesn't know about partitions - will only have one on their harddisk: the famous C-drive.

However, DriveImage cannot restore an image onto a partition that is smaller than the partition it backed up ... meaning, if you're a single partition-guy, your new harddisk should be at least as big as the old one.

[Rice_King]

Drive Snapshot makes very fast backups of your Windows boot partition while windows ( NT, 2k, XP, Server 2003 and x64) is running!

I keep my Drive Snapshot image files on an external drive. (They are segmented into 665 MB files to allow them to fit on CDs if you desire.) If the OS hard drive dies, I just install a new one, boot with a DOS, BartsPE CD, or similar boot disk that I have preinstalled the drivesnapshot executable file on. I can then connect and the external drive that contains my backup files and run Drive Snapshot to restore my image file to the new hard drive.

It isn't free. Drive Snapshot will set you back 39 Euros.

[francois]

hi'

I personaly use SyncBackup and it's free, works fine and I have one ext drive setup for backup only

adress od syncbackup : http://www.2brightsparks.com/syncback/syncback-hub.html

it's a great program, and free, exept if you want to buy the se version

francois

Edited July 8, 2006 by francois

[JSixpack]

As far as the software, I now have the same MS backup software that's on XP Pro and can use that, but it won't give me an exact image as ghost will.

Very true.

Tell me if I am wrong, but I think I could use the recovery disks I made to get back to it's original settings, and then use the ms backup to get it back to where it is right now.

Waste of time. Just make an image of your current setup, then restore from that. However, doing more frequent backups of your documents, photos, and favorites is a good idea. You can do that w/ xcopy run from a scheduler.

It's wise of you to invest in another HD for backups.

Anyone have any experience with other software they like that can also give me an exact working image?

For freeware, you need exactly this:

http://www.runtime.org/dixml.htm

Then, if you need to restore, do it from this recovery environment booted from a CD:

http://www.reatogo.de

If you want a commercial app, Acronis is the way to go. It does incremental backups as well.

[Ken]

.........

If you want a commercial app, Acronis is the way to go. It does incremental backups as well.

I've been using Acronis True Image for a couple of years now and it has saved my "butte" on more than one occasion. Many "moons" ago I used Norton Ghost (Windows 98 days) and it worked well. However somewhere between Windows 98 and XP, I started having too many problems with Ghost and anything "Norton". Finally gave up and found Acronis.