best type of backup

marrittm

hello i would like some advice on the following, i need to take my laptop back to the shop for repair i have been told already that it will most likely be replaced with a new one, the problem i have is that i have allot of important programs on my laptop that i have not got original setup.exe files for. i have saved all my files e.g (pictures, office, music/video) but what would be the best way to save my programs on my current hard drive to put directly onto new laptop hard drive.

thank you

EDIT: i need it to be a free way of backup and my current laptop is a ACER ASPIRE 5315 running vista home basic

sorry i know there is a sticky thread reguarding backups but as mentioned above i only want programs backed up nothing else and i need to be sure that i will be able to put them onto new laptop

fwor

Few programs are simple enough to make this easy - most are complicated assemblies of executables, linked libraries, config files and registry entries, and many will have measures included that are meant to defeat software piracy, but which also make such a "backup copy" difficult.

If you have a USB hard disk that you can connect to backup onto, your best bet would be to save an image of the laptop's HDD on the backup HDD and then restore it onto the new one.

There are several free programs that will do this. I use Clonezilla because it's Open Source:

http://clonezilla.org/

It runs as a LiveCD and is not ~too~ hard to use, but be careful to double-check things like source and destination, as you'll make a mess of things if you get those wrong...

BTW, only do this if the replacement laptop is exactly the same make and model as the original or you are likely to have driver problems.

marrittm

thank you for help will give it a go and im pritty sure it will be same laptop.

spiro

With my ACer laptop it has a built in backup routine that is designed to backup everything. Once this has been installed on the new laptop you should be able to restore everything. Never had to use it so try checking on Acer website or Forums.