Complete hard drive back up possible ?? (XP Pro)

[Bebeto94]

I have just used the XP pro back up utility to back up my 160GB raid 0 hard drive (2 x seagate barracuda`s 80GB) I stored the info on another 80 GB back up drive used in a removable caddy . Can anyone tell me seeing as though the microsoft web help pages are very vague about this topic exactly what i am backing up when i select "back up all information on this computer". Just what exactly am i backing up ? For example , lets just say my hard drive goes banzai and is not recoverable . Does this XP pro back up system allow me to buy a new hard drive , re-install windows XP pro and restore from the back up removable hard drive and be right back to where i left off before the hard drive crashed ??? If this is not the case as i suspect , is there such a program available that will be able to back up , and in the event of a hard drive failure restore the system to the exact state to where it was prior to the failure . Cheers , Steve , Plymouth UK

 

[Crashman]

Great question!

I've never tried it. Windows XP has all these nifty things for tranfering files and settings from an earlier OS or a backup, but since I've never used them I couldn't really tell you.

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[Crashman]

You should ask this question at the Systopt.com communities, those guys are all over licensing so they should be able to provide answers which don't require an bootable backup. If they can't answer your questions, tell them you're going to make an exact copy of the drive (NOT an imgage) with DriveImage so you can boot with either at your own discretion. And tell them I sent you, that should start a RIOT!

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[sjonnie]

Norton Ghost makes an exact image of your drive that will allow you to replace the drive, run ghost, and place the image back on the new drive.

Windows Backup makes an archive of files. You select what you want to backup so if you're not sure just open the archive and take a look inside. There's no need to backup the Program Files directory (unless you have downloads going to it for some strange reason) or the Windows directory. Just backup documents and settings and you should be fine, that will preserve most of your preferences, bookmarks, documents etc.

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[blah]

If you are backing up your own files and if you have an external drive, why bother with all these backup programs, just Copy/Paste all the stuff that you need onto it perrriodically and you are up to the task. If your sys drive goes tits up, get a new one, set it up (XP will not work on new drive unless it was set up on it from the scratch, as Crash said) and copy all the stuff that you need from the "archiving" drive back to the new one.

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[silverpig]

Or you could just use a linux boot disk and dd the drive... or tar.gz/bz2 it...

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[sjonnie]

why bother with all these backup programs

One word. Scheduling.

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[sjonnie]

Mind you, the problem with scheduling is you assume it has happened and then when your drive crashes you find it didn't! The more usefull backup programs will send you an email of the backup log so you can easily keep track of them.

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[blah]

Two words: Scheduling what? To back up recent photo of my family I just copied from the cam, or just downloaded movie from p2p, or.. In business yeah, that's a given, at home..? how lazy should I be not to copy/paste stuff I value before I shut the PC down?

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