Norton Save-&-Restore sounds like an updated verison of a product called
Norton GHOST, which goes back to the days of DOS. Around 2004 or so the
guts of GHOST was changed to be what had been called Powerquest Drive Image.
(Symantec, which owns Norton, bought Powerquest.)
Anyway, since then GHOST has the ability to backup/restore from external
hard drives, like USB 2.0 and firewire. Such drives (1) come in sizes far
larger than 19 Gig, (2) are fairly cheap, (3) are much faster than writing
to optical media, such as CDs or even 16X DVDs.
These days I happen to use a competing product, called Acronis True Image,
which can backup 13 Gig in about 16 minutes to a USB 2.0 drive, and that
even includes time to do some compression so that the image is only about 6
Gig. Your Norton product ought to have similar performance. By the way, I
also request that the image be made in a linked set of files, each no larger
than 650 Meg, in case I ever want to write them to CD, which I do about once
a year. I suspect that your Norton product can also write an image in
pieces of your choosing; the old GHOST could.
Thus, I would suggest that you get a USB 2.0 drive and see whether it
provids acceptable backup times.
Futher, you would be wise to separate your personal data from the operating
system and programs. Personal data includes files like DOC, XLS, JPG, AVI,
MP3, etc, which users tend to create/collect over time. These grow a lot
faster than operating system files plus program files. These can be
backed-up via a simple windows copy&paste, or better the XCOPY program (also
part of windows) run from a command prompt. XCOPY has the advantage of
being able to copy files by date, so that it easy to copy only new/changed
files. It can also copy recursively, meaning down through all levels of
directories. However, XCOPY can not be used to backup locked files, such as
those that are part of XP itself. I backup personal files just about daily,
but only backup the operating system and programs once every week or two,
depending on changes (e.g., monthly Microsoft updates). Type XCOPY /? for
more information. Here is a sample of how I use XCOPY:
XCOPY F:\*.* L:\XFSAVE /S /V /H /EXCLUDE:XFSAVE_L_EXCLUDE.TXT /D /R
F:\ is the internal parition I am trying to backup. *.* is all files.
L:\XFSAVE is the place I am saving to, external USB 2.0 in my case. /S does
a recursive copy. /V verifies the copy. /H copies even hidden files.
/EXCLUDE:XFSAVE_L_EXCLUDE.TXT is a text file listing file and/or directoies
not to copy. See sample below. /D copies only newer/changed files. /R
forces XCOPY to overwrite read-only files, otherwise it will stop on the
first read-only file it encounters that already exists an the target
location. Sample of exclude file follows. Never try to copy RECYCLED nor
SYSTEM VOLUME INFORMATION. Not copying TEMP is my choice:
\RECYCLED\
\SYSTEM VOLUME INFORMATION\
\TEMP\
To separate personal files, it is best to save them on a separate partition
or a separate hard drive. If like most PCs you have one big C:\ drive, that
can easily be split in two (or more) pieces via a product called Parition
Magic, also by Symantec. There are other alternatives, some of which are
free. See the following link for some ideas:
http://www.majorgeeks.com/downloads8.html
One minor caution. If you do break C: into multiple paritions, you will
then be making parition images, not disk images. The subtle distinction is
that a disk image always includes the boot record, whereas a parition image
usually does not. The significance of this small difference is that if you
restore a disk image to a new hard drive, it usually will boot. But, if you
restore multiple parition images to a new hard drive, it will usually not
boot. There are a number of ways of making the partition with the operating
system bootable, and most backup/restore software explains how to do this.
Or, there are several partition management software products that can do
this. Or, one can temporarily install any copy of XP to set the boot
record, then do the restore before even booting into that arbitrary copy of
XP. The activation information from the original (pre-new hard drive) will
be preserved.
One other caution: You have an "OEM" version of XP, meaning that it came
with the PC. Such versions can not be transferred to another PC. Thus, in
your case, having a XP CD (OEM) is really not more useful than having a disk
(or parition) image. Both will only work on your current computer (really
current motherboard).
