Backup.

[tonysmith1929]

Hi again friends.
I am thinking of adding an external HD (USB) . Can I copy ALL of my existing HD, including XP over to it, if so, HOW please.....Thanks.....

[blutach]

Hi Tony.

Not a good idea. XP needs a boot drive (so make that your IDE hard drive). Plus you want stuff going to and from your OS to be fast - USB is not good for this. I'd also keep "Program files" on my hard drive.

But all the other files (eg My Documents, Videos etc), can be copied in Window Explorer.

Regards

[tonysmith1929]

backup

Thanks Blu, thats what I feared. My PC is an HP, works very well, but when HD does pack up I'm knackered. HD has a D drive partitioned with original loading as a backup, but not much use if and when HD dies !!
I know I can shift almost everything else, and have got it all on DVDs in case, but as no XP disc supplied it wont be much good. Any suggestions welcomed to save future problems....

Ps. We did win ONE match !!!!! and remember Bangldesh 2005 !!!! Regards.

[Chewy]

hp will mail you recovery disks for a small shipping cost and usually there's an option to burn your own

[blutach]

Yes, Tony, you won one, but it musta been staged! We had to drop Joyce about 3 times for the poms to get some runs

Regards

[mens_sana]

Another solution is to use Norton Save & Restore to image your C: drive on that USB external hard drive -- using their incremental choice instead of the independent one. (I also tried Acronis TrueImage but that image got corrupted twice, so I switched to the Norton.)

At one time I was having a great deal of trouble with my system and was having to do a recovery every 6-8 weeks. That's when I got interested in the Image-type backup. However, in order to speed up the recovery, before I make the image, I strip out all of My Documents (xcept My Music) and back it up separately. (My Music, 400GB of WMA Lossless, is on another separate hard drive, backed up to a second external for redundancy.

I've done two recoveries with this method. Both went flawlessly, and in under 2 hours. (When I recovered from the HP discs, it took a day and a half to reinstall all the programs & Docs.)

Note: Just in case... You cannot use Netgear SC101 for an image backup because it has to be installed first for the OS to see it, unlike a USB (or firewire) external. The SC101 is fine for regular file backup, although it takes twice as long as a USB external.

[doctorhardware]

That Norton's save and restore program is crap, I have about 6 or 7 copies of the program and it is useless. I was given this program by the Norton's rep. Since I got the software for free I did not care that it does not work properly.

BTW the HP charges around $25.00 for there recovery disk set. Also the software that is on new HP computers only allows you to create one set of the recovery disks. So if the computer crashes you are hosed and have to order the disks from HP. Unless you want to mess around with the registry and find the proper entry and try to edit the entry to see if you can recreate the disks again.

On the other hand Paragon Software make a decent product to image your HD or backup your HD, and you can use DVD or CD's and make one bootable to recover a crashed hard drive.

[tonysmith1929]

Thanks Chewey. I did use the option to burn my own recovery disc when I first got theHP, However, it was my very first attempt at burning DVDs, using crappy Sonic supplied, and think I made a cockup of it...... Is there any way I can check it without loading it ???? As you know, they only let you do this once.....Thanks to all of you for suggestions.....

[Chewy]

do a disk scan with cdpeed or a verify with imgburn

could boot to it and see if even loads?

or call HP and complain that it doesn't work and you need the factory disks and maybe you'll get them for shipping only

a client had her sonic go south on her and then windows was so corrupted she couldn't burn anything,
dell?, they sent her the disks free
norton's suite problem

[tonysmith1929]

backup

Thanks.. Will do that and report later....