OT: PC back up

D drive no problem, but (assuming the OS boots from C) you would have some open files that would not back up properly, which could cause problems in the event of a restore. Restoring would be just a matter of dragging and dropping back again.

What OS is it? NT flavours of Windows (NT, 2000, XP) have a basic backup and restore built in, which compresses as well as copies.

Some more info on likely scenarios (accidental deletion, automatic operation, disaster recovery) would help.

Stuart

I'm using XP home edition. Ive had hard drives die on me in the past and have lost everything. In case that happens again I'd like to be able to save everything to put on a new drive if need be.

Richard

OK, take a shufti at this:

I haven't read through all of it., but it looks at first glance to be what you are looking for, including creating the all-important boot disk to get you running again when the original hard disk fails.

Stuart

Going slightly off on a tangent ... you should give serious thought to exactly what you want to back up.

For most people this is going to be their own personal data (photos, e-mails etc.). The best advice I can give on that is that such data should never be kept on the same partition as the operating system - especially if it's Windows!

Obviously if the hard drive containing your data partition(s) packs up you still have the situation that you anticipate, but it is a lot easier to back up your data partition alone to another hard drive than the entire partition containing both Windows and the data.

On or around Sun, 19 Nov 2006 15:04:25 GMT, "Richard" enlightened us thusly:

My policy is to back up the data and any install files I've downloaded. Software I have CDs for I don't bother, nor do I bother backing up the main windows partition, since experience teaches that the only cure for a problem there is to re-install anyway.

Personally I back up to CD or DVD - 's not to say that you can't use the external drive for this, but the external drive can also fail. if you have a DVD (or better, a regular series of 'em, I don't do them anything like as frequently as I should) then it's not dependent on any particular device working to recover the data. So...

1) yes, you can drag-and-drop (if there's enough space). 2) IMHO, only backup data and downloads you want to be able to reinstall

It's possible that using a decent backup/restore facility would save you a time in the event of a major system disk crash - if the restore works onto a new drive then it should in theory be quicker than a complete system rebuild. However, I regard those sort of scenarios (or replacing motherboards/drives etc.) as a good opportunity to rebuild a clean system - anything you've not been using doesn't get re-installed, or not until you find you want it after all.

...

On or around Sun, 19 Nov 2006 16:06:02 +0000, Dougal enlightened us thusly:

Oh, and to reinforce this point:

**Don't** store data (only) on the desktop, or in folders on the desktop.

If you want desktop links to directories or files, make shortcuts. Then the data is stashed somewhere safe...

Friend of mine had a W98 system and tried to upgrade to 2K. The upgrade failed, for reasons I couldn't determine, so I did a clean install of XP pro (which I happened to have the disks for) instead, in case the problem was in the 2K install disk, or a hardware incompatibility that couldn't be solved.

XP install went fine, but it destroyed all the contents of desktop folders. Oddly, the folders themselves were still there, but empty.

Guess what files weren't backed up, including a whole lot of irreplaceable photos... much wailing an gnashing of teeth ensued. with superb irony, the upgrade was initially started to enable use of an external USB drive to put all the pictures and stuff on, the external drive being formatted in such a way that 98 wouldn't do anything with it. If I'd been involved from the beginning I might have been able to reformat the external drive into FAT32 form, using partition magic or somesuch.

In hindsight, it might have been possible to recover the data, by installing the HDD with the failed update as a slave in another system and getting the data off it, before doing another install. However, it hadn't occurred to me that anyone would save stuff only on the desktop. It's also possible that the failed 2K install had already eaten the data. no way of telling after the event.

My policy is to have a data partition which only has data, and 2 software partitions. One partition (C:) just has windows and stuff like the firewall and AV on it, the other (E:) has all the other software. D: is data, obviously - and for historical reasons - if you installed 2 HDDs in earlier windows systems, the primary partitions became C: and D: by default. Having the data on a separate HDD is a good plan if you happen to have a spare one around.

Other good tips... if you have IDE and fast UDMA (80-core cable connections) then make sure your swap space is on the fastest drive. Allocate the swap space manually: decide how much HDD you want for swap (typically 2-3x the available ram is good), turn off "manage automatically" and set the minimum and maximum swap file sizes to the size you want. This stops windows farting around changing it all the time.

That´s when we went to Linux at home.

Steve

Get a copy of Ghost - quick, easy & reliable. Just make sure you Ghost in the correct direction :)