Hard drive back-up?

[Bonez]

How do I create a back-up of my hard drive onto a disk, just in case I have another crash? I want to make sure I have a back-up of the configuration and necessary systems files.

 

[compuveg]

Install Microsoft backup. (Add/Remove programs, Windows Setup, System Tools, Backup)

You don't need to have a backup drive, just have it backup to a file. it will make a .qic file that you can burn to CD, or copy to another HDD. The trouble is that with FAT32 disks, you've got a 2Gb size restriction on the output file.... This should be enough to backup your C:\ and C:\windows\ directories....

 

[Mulga]

You can use a program such as Norton Ghost which will create an image of the entire drive or partition, trouble is the file created will probably be too big for a CD even with maximum compression. You can however put it on another HDD. All things are possible except skiing through a revolving door.

 

[Win98User]

Norton Ghost and Power Quest Drive Image both support spanned Images to CD-RW drives.

The problem with using the Seagate backup that comes with microsoft OS is that you still have to go through the hassle of restoring the OS before you can restore the files from the backup file - ie. you need windows loaded before you can read/use thwe .qic file.

Regards.

 

[SurferJoe]

I'm not sure if microsofts backup will restore your disk to a bootable state unless you have reinstalled windows. And hey who wants to do that? I just found a way to backup my drive so that I can wipe it out completely and and restore it in 20 minutes and it boots up with everything installed all for free!!! I got all the programs at download.com. Go there and type in partition. The main program is called "partition saving". To use it though, you need to boot to dos and run it from a partition that is not the one you are saving. So in my case I had to use "The partition resizer" to make my main partition smaller. Then I used "ranish partition manager" to tell it what to do with the new empty space. run sys.com on the new partition to make it bootable to dos. Now I have a second partition that I can boot to dos with by pressing 2 at boot up that stores my backup of C: drive and "partion saving". From there I can backup or restore C: to a bootable previous state even if C: is completely empty and unbootable. Partition saving will also compress your partition data and break it up into CD Burner sized chunks. PS: It's a good idea to defrag your drives before saving or resizing a partition, this way all your data is at the begining and you can put the partition on a smaller partition. PSS: Ranish Partition Manager is very powerful but has no help and can wreck your machine. I only use it to tell the new blank disk space to be another primary partition that is fat32 LBA, format it and make it no 2 in the MBR, Then I turn on the boot manager for the mbr and i'm outta there. I now also have a bootable cd that I can stick in my computer, turn it on and come back in 20 minutes to a new c: drive with windows, office, aol, all my online updates, etc... DONE It's such a beautiful thing I had to share : )