External Hard-drive Back-up qu ...

[Barry]

Hi folks, just a quicky: I'm running Windows XP and want to back up my entire hard drive.

I've bought an external one, which is 160GB, several times more than the contents of the computer's drive at the moment.

It came with no instructions, so what's the best way of getting the contents of my machine down to the Maxtor? Is there stuff that I shouldn't move across?

Many thanks .

[VG65]

Hi folks, just a quicky: I'm running Windows XP and want to back up my entire hard drive.

The link below should help. I've used it before without problems and you get to choose how much to backup.

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/usin ... uly14.mspx

Let me know if you get stuck or need any more help.

Cheers,
Danny (VG65's technical advisor)

[Barry]

Perfect: many thanks, and I'll let you know how it goes .

[74rsman]

download xxclone.exe

its fabbo and free and makes an exact copy booting and everything.

[TheEasyLife]

Hmm. Questions questions questions.

Do you really want to back up your entire hard drive or just your data? Are you wishing to recover your PC to exactly how it was at your last backup or just have a copy of your data on a portable drive that you can plug in and go on a new machine. Are you happy and or confident reinstalling windows and applications?

If you have a quality branded PC/laptop that came with a Windows Restore or installation CD and you have a copy of all application installation media, MS Office CD, etc, then I would suggest that all you need to do is take a copy of your My Documents folder or use MS Backup on the link provided by Danny to backup your My Documents folder. This assumes that you keep all your data in there. This uses a lot less space than backing up your entire drive and is a lot faster.

If you want an exact point in time copy then take a look at Norton Ghost, other similar products available, which does as it says on the tin and takes an exact copy of your hard drive so you can then throw it back onto a new internal hard drive in case the original fails. This is slower than just backing up My Documents and obviously uses more space on your external drive.

I keep a copy of My Documents on a USB pen drive and have now moved to keeping a copy on a hard drive that goes with me and a hard drive at home in case I lose either. I do work in IT and am reasonably paranoid about my data. I don't backup what I can easily download again from the internet. eg installation files for Skype, iTunes etc.

HTH and makes sense

Cheers

James

[Barry]

Quick update on this: all of my document info is now on the back-up drive, which is enough for now. I've got all of the software disks here so should be good to restore things should the need arise.

Many thanks for the help .