H/D info please

  • Thread starter Thread starter CB
  • Start date Start date
C

CB

Hopefully, I'm not posting in the wrong newsgroup with this.

I have 2 hard drives and I'd like to reformat (wipe all info off) my slave
drive, then transfer my system info & important things from the primary
drive to the slave for backup if needed. I imagine I'll need Ghost, or
another program to achieve this.
I installed the slave (a WD) after buying the computer & no program was
included to transfer data & their Data Lifeguard program I d/l won't work
for some reason. I've contacted WD, but no answer to this question.

My question is: I have a Dell pc and there is a CD with the operating
system, etc that was included. Before I start that up, will it give me a
choice of hard drives to reformat, or should I try to reformat the slave
without it (if so, how)? I'm afraid to insert this CD fearing the unknown.
I've reformatted a Win98 pc, but never Win XP Home.

Thank you
 
Hi, CB.

Have you found Disk Management yet? Many users have not, nearly 5 years
after it first appeared in Windows 2000.

In MS-DOS and Win9x/ME (and earlier Windows, back to the beginning), we
booted from a DOS boot floppy and used FDISK and Format.com to create
partitions and format them. And in Win9x/ME, we used the Device Manager to
reassign "drive" letters. In Win2K/XP, Disk Management handles all these
jobs. One quick way to find Disk Management is to type at the Run prompt:
diskmgmt.msc

In Disk Management, first make it Full Screen and click View to set it up to
give you a clear picture of your hard drives (and CD/DVD drives, "thumb"
drives, etc.). My preference is to see the Volume List at the top of the
screen and the Graphical View at the bottom, but the choice is yours. Also,
check out the Help file from here; it tells us a lot about hard disks and
partitions.

As you can see, it is a simple matter to use Disk Management to create one
or more partitions on your new HD and format them. You can delete existing
partitions and create new ones in the freed space. You may want to reassign
the default letter(s) assigned to fit your own organization scheme.

Then you can use the familiar drag'n'drop commands in the GUI, or Copy and
Xcopy in the "DOS" window, to copy files from one drive to another. The
only files that should give you a problem are the Registry files; these
require special treatment.

I don't know the details of your Dell CD, but you probably don't need that
for this project. Others here are familiar with Dell and can advise you on
that.

RC
 
Thanks, RC! I've printed out your instructions & will go there now. I
appreciate your help
 
You do not need to reformat the second hard drive in order to store backup
files there. You cannot just make the second hard drive a clone of the
first as though you could alternate between them. You can, however, follow
any number of backup plans that will involove storing backup files or images
that you can then transfer back (restore) to the system drive in the event
of a hard drive failure.
 
In
Colin Barnhorst said:
You do not need to reformat the second hard drive in order to
store
backup files there. You cannot just make the second hard drive
a
clone of the first as though you could alternate between them.
You
can, however, follow any number of backup plans that will
involove
storing backup files or images that you can then transfer back
(restore) to the system drive in the event of a hard drive
failure.
Click to expand...


I'd like to also caution the OP that his backup strategy would
let him recover only in the event of a hard drive failure. But
hard drive failures are only one of many dangers to your data.
Backing up to a non-removable hard drive permanently mounted in
the computer still leaves you vulnerable to things like virus
attacks, severe power glitches such as nearby lightning strikes,
even theft of the computer.

If you're serious about backup, you might want to rethink that
backup strategy. Secure backup needs to be stored externally for
the computer. if you're *really* serious about backup (for
example if the life of your business depends on your data) there
should be multiple generations of backup, with at least one of
those generations stored off site.
 
I use USB2 external hard drives and dvd rw drives for backups. I am very
happy with the results and have had one situation where an entire box got
fried and I would not have recovered from any internal backup solution.
 
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