I'm using an older computer (Win2000NT). It works very well and even though I have a new laptop I really prefer my old desktop. But there have been times that this old machine has acted up on me and WhattheTech experts have had to help resurrect it. So I'm considering purchasing an external hard drive. My thinking is to try and save alot of the data on this older machine to something that might be more stable. That's it. I've never owned an external hard drive. Don't really know how it operates. Is this a good way to back up all my data? Is it possible to back up my applications on an ext hard drive? I have some old software that I really like (ie. Diet Chef with lots of home recipes, etc) that might not be bootable on WinXP, Vista or other operating systems, not sure. So if the external drive won't back up applications and I have trouble with my desktop then I might have the data but no way to get to it. This is probably a dumb question but what is the proper usage of an external drive anyway? Thanks for any help you can give.
I have an internal removable hard drive which is locked into the tower of my PC. The reason it is there is only to backup my entire system in case of a HD failure. To do this I run Ghost 10 image backup.
When I leave the house or go away for a time I unlock the external HD from the tower and put it in my safe. If anything should happen I always have that external HD to get me back up and running within half an hour.
Every Sunday it does an image of my entire HD to the external HD and incremental backups daily if more than 500MB's are installed or uninstalled. This is set to do automatically so once installed all is taken care of in an easy and non stressful way.
Just to prove it worked, I purchased a new HD and used the latest Ghost backup file to image onto the new HD which I am now working from.
Again this is to backup onto an external HD that is set accordingly but laying by the side of the Laptop. When I travel I lock it away also and only the work I do away would be lost if the worst happened. Of course I can take it with me but for me that is not necessary as the work I do away is only for pleasure.
So rather than transferring your data to an external HD, why not think about image software to make it easy for yourself for the future.
I hope this is of some help to you,
Please post back if you need more information.
Others will come by to give you their recommendations.
However I can recommend both Ghost and Acronis from experience.
Noting your system
I'm using an older computer (Win2000NT).
I have not done the research as to whether Ghost or Acronis Software would work with your system but both have been around for some time so I am sure there would be earlier software that would be fine.
