Making a Back up

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I have just bought a 400gb external hard drive,and was wondering if it is at
all possible to copy everything from my internal drive(windows included) on
to this device.
Any help on how to go about doing this would be welcome.

Thank you.
 
Don't have any specific suggestions other than to google for

hard drive ghost

"ghost" is one term for the process of making a complete "snapshot" of a
hard drive in order to restore it to another computer or hard drive.

Beverly Howard [MS MVP-Mobile Devices]
 
JS said:
Backup Solutions

True Image:
http://www.acronis.com/

Ghost:
http://www.symantec.com/home_homeoffice/products/overview.jsp?pcid=br&pvid=ghost12

It's a matter of preference, both are image backup utilities and work
well.
The backup (image file) needs to be created on a second drive (internal or
external).
Check each product to see if it's supports your storage media and
interface (USB, Etc.)

JS
Click to expand...


maxim:
Just to provide you with a few more details concerning the types of programs
that have been recommended to you...

These disk imaging/disk cloning programs are, in effect, comprehensive
backup programs that will create a bit-for-bit copy of your day-to-day
working HDD, including the operating system, all programs & applications,
and all user-created data. The result is a most complete backup system that
you can employ on a routine, systematic basis and it's the type of backup
program that's highly recommended for many, if not most, PC users.

The Acronis True Image program that has been recommended is a very nice
program. Reasonably easy to use and effective in what it does. Acronis has a
15-day trial version available so you should give it a try. See the link
above that JS provided you.

The Symantec Ghost 12 program is rather new and we haven't worked with it
enough to form any opinions on its effectiveness. We were not thrilled with
Symantec's Ghost 9 & 10 versions although a number of users found them more
than acceptable. I don't believe Symantec has a trial version of the current
Ghost program available.

A disk cloning program - Casper 4.0 - see http://www.fssdev.com - that we've
been extensively testing over the past five months has greatly impressed
us - to the point where it's our preferred disk cloning program. It's
extremely simple to use and we've found it virtually flawless in operation.
If you (or anyone) want more details on this program I'll post them.
Anna
 
Just to add to what Anna posted, I use Ghost 10 and have no problems but
have not tried the new version.
The true test of any backup program is after the hard disk crashes and you
need to do a restore. I have seen server administrators make backups daily
but never tested the restore feature only to find out the hard way their
backups were useless.

JS
 
I trying to restore an image now with Acronis and I'm having some
difficulty; Acronis tells me the image is corrupted. I will probably
have to wipe the hard drive and reinstall.

I tried to find an Acronis forum but failed, so I'll post this here: I
made the image on my USB external HD. It became fragmented. I
partitioned the external drive to create a "Recovery" partition --
just for backups. I moved the image there, and defragged.

Did any of these actions cause the image to become corrupted? What
are best practices for creating and maintaining an image in a good
state?

I do think my idea of a dedicated partition for image files is good;
the data just won't get mixed up with my mp3 files and such.

Lady D
 
Lady Dungeness said:
I trying to restore an image now with Acronis and I'm having some
difficulty; Acronis tells me the image is corrupted. I will probably
have to wipe the hard drive and reinstall.

I tried to find an Acronis forum but failed, so I'll post this here: I
made the image on my USB external HD. It became fragmented. I
partitioned the external drive to create a "Recovery" partition --
just for backups. I moved the image there, and defragged.

Did any of these actions cause the image to become corrupted? What
are best practices for creating and maintaining an image in a good
state?

I do think my idea of a dedicated partition for image files is good;
the data just won't get mixed up with my mp3 files and such.

Lady D
Click to expand...


Lady D...
It's entirely possible the defragmentation of your USB external HDD caused
the corruption of the Acronis image file. It's really not possible to tell
at this point.

We never recommend defragmenting a USB external HDD. There's really no
reason to do so in virtually every case. Unless there is some extremely
unusual fragmentation of the external drive's files and it's *conclusively*
determined that this "fragmentation" prevents the device from properly
functioning - leave it be.

As to a "dedicated partition" to store your backup image files...if you're
comfortable with that kind of organization there's no harm in creating a
separate partition to store your backup archive files, both the original one
and any subsequent incremental or differential backup images that you may
create with the Acronis program. Frankly, we never do so, rather preferring
to simply create a folder to store the images. There's no particular safety
feature resulting from a separate partition on an external HDD.

It's too bad the disk image file(s) became corrupted. I assume you tried the
Acronis recovery process and that's when you discovered this situation. In a
sense it's one of the potential problems of creating disk images rather than
a simple disk clone. At least with a disk clone you can become immediately
aware if there's a problem with the clone. Obviously the same is not true
with a disk image since one has to undertake the recovery/restore process in
order to determine if there's any problem with the backup archive.

But what's done is done. I honestly don't know of any way you can
"resurrect" the corrupted Acronis disk image. Perhaps if you contact Acronis
tech support - see
http://www.acronis.com/enterprise/company/contacts/request/?t=2
they can provide some assistance.
Anna
 
I have just bought a 400gb external hard drive,and was wondering if it is at
all possible to copy everything from my internal drive(windows included) on
to this device.
Any help on how to go about doing this would be welcome.

Thank you.
Click to expand...

If all you want to do is clone your internal HDD, all of the drive
manufactures have free utilities which will do this. The programs
mentioned above are only necessary if you want to do incremental backups,
timed backups, etc.
 
Hi Anna,

Thank you for the advice not to defrag the USB HD. I didn't know
that. As for the corrupted Acronis Image, I guess it's a lesson
learned. All my documents are back-uped invidiaully; I was hoping the
image would save me from doing a restore to factory condition. At
least I've haven't lost anything critical.

Lady D
 
Lady Dungeness said:
Hi Anna,

Thank you for the advice not to defrag the USB HD. I didn't know
that. As for the corrupted Acronis Image, I guess it's a lesson
learned. All my documents are back-uped invidiaully; I was hoping the
image would save me from doing a restore to factory condition. At
least I've haven't lost anything critical.

Lady D
Click to expand...


Lady D:
Just one other thing...

You're probably aware that in addition to its disk imaging capability,
Acronis True Image also has the facility of disk-to-disk cloning. So you
might want to give that process a try in lieu of the disk imaging process,
and use your USB external HDD as the recipient of the cloned contents of
your source drive.

While the disk cloning process does takes longer than disk imaging (when
compared with the creation of incremental or differential backup files
following the creation of the original or initial backup image) it does have
the advantage that the cloned contents are immediately accessible in that
there's no recovery/restore process to undertake with the cloned drive in
order to access its contents while those contents are residing on the
external HDD. But keep in mind that the USB external HDD is ordinarily not
bootable in an XP environment so that it would be necessary to re:clone the
contents of that external HDD back to an internal HDD to create a bootable
drive if & when that need becomes present for recovery purposes.
Anna
 
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