Guidance on basic `basic` hardrive back up

This is new territory for me so apologies if I sound stupid. I have just got an external hardrive for the first time to be used as a back up for my PC (winxp pro) I have put copies of `my pictures` and a couple of other personal important folders on the external. When installing the external hardrive I have not installed from the manufacturers disc as I didnt want their CD burner photo albume etc. so I dont have an auto save to external facility, instead I just copy/paste or drag onto external icon for saving, this suits me ok as I will only `back up` say once a month. My question is ….what other important computer information should I back up regarding a possible future PC hardrive failure? and how do I do this? For example do I take my main PC hardrive © and copy it into my external? Is that to simplistic or are there certain programmes I should copy to the external. Guidance on this would be appreciated. thanks

Hi, I think you have made a wise move in obtaining your external hard drive. To have an "image" of your Internal Hard drive on your External drive takes the level of security at least a level higher up. In the event of trouble you can eaasily format your internal hard drive and restore the image from the external drive and be up and running very quickly…Takes me about 40 mins at most. You will need software such as Ghost, Drive Image, Paragon, Acronis or similar. I have used Acronis for some years, and am delighted with it (v7 is currently available from their Website free of charge) but you'll need to look very carefully to find it! Just one tip…when you make your image ensure that you check the image is correct, is not corrupted in any way and so can be faithfully restored to your machine. You will need to make a bootable CD (Acronis will do this for you) so even if your machine will not boot into Windows, you can boot the Acronis disc and restore your image from your external hard drive. Regards paws

I could only find the 15 day trials for Acronis so didnt want to risk transfer to the hardrive and then if necessary at a later date couldnt transfer back.

Scudo, Happy New Year to you. For what it is worth the following is what I do and most successfully I may say it is. I purchased a Seagate Barracuda 160GB internal removable Hard Drive which is installed into my tower, but the hard drive can be removed when I go away with a key. To run the backups which are automatic I also purchased Norton's Ghost 10. Once downloaded and installed you can set the backups to be done from all manner of choices to suit yourself. I have mine set to image my hard drive once a month, and to do incremental backups should anything change like a uninstall or download. I also use System Restore before I change any settings. Hope this helps, I can recommend Ghost 10 as a most efficient 'image' software program. Once you set your options there is nothing more to do. Hope this help you in your choice of an image software program.

Hi Scudo,

Tallin has given you good feedback and the combination of Norton Ghost and an external hard drive, make for a very powerful disc imaging setup.

If you still want the Acronis free version (V7)you will need to go to their home page and click on My Account and then register, by giving your name and a valid email address, (hotmail accounts don't seem to be recognised…at least mine wasn't! Acronis will then email you the product key and you can then go to Products under the My Account tab and proceed from there.

I said its not easy to find,…and it isn't… if you are really stuck, here's a starter for the registration page
http://www.acronis.com/mag/vnu-ati7.
Regards
paws

Thanks for the info I will now register. I have taken on board all suggestions and I am taking a step at a time and will review my situation as I go along. The need for a free version at the moment is because I dont actually know what I am doing yet, I just keep reading about the importance of `backing up` information so treading carefully until it makes more sense to me (the process of what I am backing up and the logistics of how it is done) thanks to both of you for your help (and patience) Scudo

Hi
I think you are very sensible taking it one step at a time.

Just to add a little more information, the reason why it is a good idea to take a disc image is that when you have a verified disc image on an external hard drive you have in fact made an image, rather like a photograph, of everything on your hard drive and I mean everything. Not just your data, your emails address book, favourites, files, letters, invoices, photographs, spreadsheets, but your complete Windows operating system including all your settings.

In the event of serious trouble, perhaps where System Restore or the Recovery Console has been unable to help and you cannot boot your computer into Windows, not even into safe mode then you will bless the day you had the foresight to take an Image.

You can boot your computer by inserting the cd that your image programme say Acronis or Ghost provides and restore your image from the external hard drive and be back and up and running very quickly (takes me no more than 40 minutes)

Don't forget however that the image or photograph of your drive will be put back exactly as the day it was taken so if you have written lots of new documents since then you will need to have taken a back up of them so you can get up to date quickly. You will also need to apply Windows updates and update your firewall and anti virus definitions to allow for the updates since your image was created.

The above is only intended to give you an overview, but in addition its important to have a note of your Windows product key (the one that is actually encrypted in your computer, which might not be the one in the COA stuck to your machine ! Some OEM's preinstall, (without any intent to cheat) a different key to the one stuck on your machine.)

If you go here:

http://www.belarc.com/free_download.html

you can download a free programme that will tell you the product key and a lot of information about your computer that it would be wise to keep.

The ideal time to take a disc image is when your machine is running fast and smoothly, when you know there are no harmful elements present like spyware or viruses, when you have cleaned out all your clutter of temp files, cookies, java cache and the like and defragmented your drive. (But please don't leave it too long as this Utopian state doesn't last forever!)

The disc image will use compression to reduce the size of your disc image files and this will mean for example that 10Gb of hard drive would be compressed down to about 6 or 7Gb which is a bonus.

Once you have a good experience of the method and programme you can move on to more fancy stuff like partitioning your drive into 3 partitions so you have your Windows system and programmes on C: with your Data on D: and an extra Image back up on E:

This way in the event of trouble you just format C: and reinstall Windows and all your programmes on C: and you are back in business and with all your data files intact as they are on the separate D: partition. Leaving you just with Windows updates and AV definitions to deal with.

I think this is more than enough to be going on with…so Good Luck
Regards
paws