How to enable Backup Option in XP Home Ed ?

[Guest]

Hello friends,

I am having Win XP SP1 Home Ed in my PC. But it does not show Backup option
under "Start > All Programs > Accessories > System tools" head. Can you
please guide me about how to enable this utility ?

Regards
nik

 

[Will Denny]

Hi

If you are running XP Home the backup utility isn't installed by default.
Have a look in the following folder on the XP CD:

valueadd\msft\ntbackup

--


Will Denny
MS-MVP Windows Shell/User
Please reply to the News Groups

 

[Rock]

=

Hello friends,

I am having Win XP SP1 Home Ed in my PC. But it does not show Backup
option
under "Start > All Programs > Accessories > System tools" head. Can you
please guide me about how to enable this utility ?

Regards
nik

If you don't have an XP Home CD or it's an OEM copy and ntbackup is not on
it, you can download it from here.
http://www.onecomputerguy.com/windowsxp_tips.htm#backup_home

Ntbackup cannot backup to DVD and will only backup to CD if other 3rd party
CD burning software is available and even with that it will not span CDs,
i.e. one CD is the limit, which is not very practical. It is geared toward
tape drives or other hard drives. It will work ok in backing up to an
external hard drive (or network drive) and restoring individual files /
folders is ok, but if you need to restore the complete drive it's
cumbersome. XP must be installed first. If you have XP Pro, Ntbackup has
an ASR feature (Automated System Recovery) which makes this restore of a
boot/system drive easier but still it takes much longer than an imaging
program, and I never got it to restore my system to full functionality as it
was when the backup was made. It also mandates that a floppy drive be
available. One floppy disk is created in the ASR process and there is no
way around that. ASR is not available on XP Home addition.

There are other backup options. One is to use an imaging program. This
makes an exact image of the partition which can be saved on CD/DVD or to
another drive - internal or external. Imaging to an external USB 2.0 /
Firewire drive works well. Then occasionally burning an image to DVD gives
you redundancy. Restores can be done of the entire partition or individual
files / folders. These work well and make it easy to recover from a drive
crash. Examples of this are:

Norton Ghost 10
Acronis True Image
Terabyte Unlimited's Image for Windows
CasperXP

Another option is a traditional backup program such as Stompsoft's PC
BackUP, Sonic’s Backup MyPC or SecondCopy from www.centered.com. There are
other backup programs out there as well. This can do a complete backup or
backup individual files and folders to DVD/CD and other drives.

 

[frodo]

Please note, ntbackup is a bit long-in-the-tooth, but usable. You should
look into a 3rd party tool for more serious purposes.

Also, the ASR feature (Automatic System Restore) WILL NOT WORK properly w/
XP Home. It will appear to make the ASR backup ok, but you can NOT
restore from it at all. So don't go down that road...

 

[Guest]

Hello Rock,

Thanks for the help. I had loaded the utility from the link provided by you.

Actually my sole purpose for enabling this was to take image backup.
Generally I am taking back-up using Nero BackItUp, but I am not much happy
with it. Your reply is really of great help to me. Can you please suggest me
out of the four mentioned s/w for image backup in your reply, which one
should I go for ?

Thanks a lot.

Regards
Nik

 

[Guest]

thanks frodo .. I'll take care about this

Regards
Nik

 

[Rock]

Response is inline

Hello Rock,

Thanks for the help. I had loaded the utility from the link provided by
you.

You're welcome.

Actually my sole purpose for enabling this was to take image backup.
Generally I am taking back-up using Nero BackItUp, but I am not much happy
with it. Your reply is really of great help to me. Can you please suggest
me
out of the four mentioned s/w for image backup in your reply, which one
should I go for ?

Personally I use Drive Image 7.0 from PowerQuest. Unfortunately they were
bought out by Symantec some time ago, and Symantec killed the product line.
They did incorporate the technology of Drive Image into their Ghost line
which is Ghost 10. I have not used it so I can't say either way.

Acronis True Image is highly touted as well, especially for ease of use.
All I can suggest is that you take a look at these two and the other
offerings to see which one you like. Whatever backup solution you opt for,
test it out thoroughly so you know it works and how it works.

 

[cquirke (MVP Windows shell/user)]

Please note, ntbackup is a bit long-in-the-tooth, but usable. You should
look into a 3rd party tool for more serious purposes.

Also, the ASR feature (Automatic System Restore) WILL NOT WORK properly w/
XP Home. It will appear to make the ASR backup ok, but you can NOT
restore from it at all. So don't go down that road...

I love the mindset at work here - "they're only home users, who never
create any Real Work of value, so why would they want to backup?"

------------ ----- --- -- - - - -

Drugs are usually safe. Inject? (Y/n)

 

[Guest]

Thanks Rock,

I'll try to evaluate both the options ....
if needed any help, I'll give you troble once again....

Regards
Nik

 

[Rock]

Thanks Rock,

I'll try to evaluate both the options ....
if needed any help, I'll give you troble once again....

You're welcome.