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What's the best software for hard drive back-ups? 1

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Julianne

Technical User
Jan 30, 2002
156
GB
I'd like to install a second hard drive and have the ability to back-up everything that's on my current hard drive to the new drive every so often, so that if my drive failed I wouldn't have to reinstall XP and all my programs.

If possible, I'd also like the ability to be able to restore only certain files/folders from the back-up (for when just a certain file has become corrupt, for instance) or at least be able to back-up certain files/folders separately to the back-up of the entire C drive, but still onto the second hard drive.

What's everyone's experience of back-up software and which would be the best program for me, in terms of what I'd like to be able to do?
 
If you are looking to not have to completely re-install an OS upon a hard-drive failure, you'd have to have a duplicate copy of your drive. So, you could use Norton Ghost (part of Norton SystemWorks Professional) to create a duplicate drive, bit-for-bit.

But, you'd have to do that regularly, dependent on how much changes on your system. And, you'd have to be careful not to let the computer see this other drive as a resource because any writing to it would diminish its integrity of being a duplicate copy of your C:\ drive.
 
Alternatively, if your motherboard supports RAID IDE, or you can get a RAID card you can use Mirroring.

This basically means it keeps an exact copy of your drive on another drive. Great if your hard drive blows up, but not so great if its a software issue.
 
In regard to the computer seeing the other drive and using it:
Awhile back,I used an old version of drive image to create an image file of a win98 disk on a separate partition. At the time the image file was created, drive image overwrote the entire partition but after that I was able to use unused space on the partition for temporary files without affecting the original image file. Does Norton not do something like that?
 
I've not used Norton Ghost to image one partition to another partition on the same drive. I am not sure if that works or not.

Once you have a duplicated drive/partition, adding things in unused space on the "copy" is merely an integrity thing, eh?

I haven't tested it out, but I would:
1. Create a duplicate partition,
2. Add "stuff" to the unused space on the new partition,
3. Alter the boot.ini to boot from this new partition, and
4. See if you see no behavioral difference other than the added items as additional data on that partition.
 
It's been awhile since I've done this-was just looking at the manual and I think maybe the complete partition overwrite comes on restore, not on creation of the duplicate/backup -- in the drive image program I was talking about.

In that program the "image" is not an openly accessible layout of the disk, rather the "image" is stored in a .pqi file which needs the drive image program to access and restore. I also have a copy of norton ghost which I spent some (mostly unsuccessful) time with last summer. I am frustrated at the moment because it has totally disappeared somewhere and I cannot look at it at all, but what I'm remembering is that it gave a choice of doing a fully open and exposed disk to disk duplication like you talked about or a "special" norton file accessible only to norton reading and restore tools -- but I can't remember for sure and have no way to check -- hence the question/comment above. I am not a techie and I don't know how to do the boot.ini business but i'm pretty confident of my statement above re my copy of drive image because it involves a restore from a single file, not the complete contents of a disk or partition.

 
I use Norton Ghost and just make a copy of my C drive to my D drive. I use the fast compression option and I made a directory on the D drive that I copy the image to. It puts the entire contents of the C drive into three files and refers to them as disk 1, 2, & 3.(This depend on the size of your C drive) You have to put the Ghost program on a floppy and run it from a true command prompt. I have used it many times and it has bailed me out when my C drive has gotten hosed up. I use the D drive for all kinds of storage. It's not a clone of the C drive, so you can write to it all you want. The C drive image is just files in one directory. I used to back up on CD-RWs, but that took forever. I like Norton Ghost much better. Jim

[cat2] [americanflag]
 
You can back up on seperate partitions .

Your 1st Partition can be a copy of a what you know to be a trouble free system . ( the one you are using now , assumming it is clean )

The 2nd partion can be used for backing your system from time to time as you add to it .

Plenty off choices to make , it is up to you .

Here is what I use .

xxcopy ( freeware ) from ,

Forum

Info

Start > Programs > MS-DOS Prompt .
Copy a command from the selection below & click paste in MS-DOS , then click Enter .
No need to close any programs down .

1st command , you get a copy of everything .
2nd command excludes Windows .
3rd command copies Windows only .
4th command excludes Windows Temporary Internet Files .

Adjust drive letters to suit .

1 . XXCOPY C:\ D:\ /CLONE

2 . XXCOPY C:\ D:\ /CLONE /Xwindows
3 . xxcopy C:\Windows D:\Windows

4 . xxcopy C:\ D:\ /Clone /x\windows\temp*
If you don't want to confirm all the overwrites ( you get 3 choices Y,N,A, Y ( yes )
overwrites that file , N ( No ) , A ( All ) overwrites everthing ) use the /yy switch after Clone .
Eg. XXCOPY /CLONE /YY C:\ X:\

Below applies if you want to make the new hard drive your main drive ( usually C )
Use the startup disk to boot the computer and when you are at the A:\
prompt type sys c: and press Enter. The required boot information will
be copied to the new disk and you have a working copy of the old hard
disk .
If the partition is not active , use fdisk , option 2 .

Xxcopy will not clone a Windows 2000 operating system volume , probably will not clone an XP OS .
The best tool for this now , is from Acronis , called TrueImage .
 
Thanks everyone, to JMatt in particular. I installed True Image last night and got it to do an image of my C drive onto the new hard drive.

All went well, but I don't know if anyone could just clarify what happens with these image files:

As I selected the C drive (which only has one partition on it) has it copied absolutely everything, including the registry?

What about files that Windows was using at the time, or programs that were running (like my anti-virus, which I didn't think to switch off)?

Does True Image allow some way of comparing the contents of the C drive with the image it's made, to make sure that everything will restore OK if the image is needed?
 
I have used Norton Ghost 2003. It works great. You can put the entire partition in 1 image file ****.gho . The size of the file is approximatly half the size of the partition. It clones a lot faster than previous versions of ghost. You can also burn the image file to CD, copy it back on the HD and clone it back. I have used it with WIN98se, WIN XP and even WIN NT.
 
Seanform

When selecting which software to use I kept reading how Ghost has to use DOS or the Command Line or something, which is what put me off.

If you don't mind, could you please explain what you actually have to do with Ghost 2003 - I've got XP Home. With True Image you can just right-click a drive, choose Make Image and click through the wizard. You don't have to reboot and Windows stays open. What's the process with Ghost?

Also, how does it fare in relation to the questions I asked about True Image in my last post?

Thanks.
 
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