Is this external hard drive a good deal? UPDATED help with backup

MrsE_2

http://www.staples.co.uk/Wrapper.aspx?param=press04

I need to do a back up & a machine wipe.

espresso

MrsE wrote: »

http://www.staples.co.uk/Wrapper.aspx?param=press04

I need to do a back up & a machine wipe.

Seems to be a reasonable price e.g. £38 + delivery here

MrsE_2

So I've bought the hard drive:T

My C drive is 326 free of 455 so I guess 129 gb.

The new drive (above has 320, so oddles of space).

I've just backup & now the new drive has 280 free of 298, so 18 gb.

Wheres the rest of it?

It should be the 129 thats on the C drive surely?

debitcardmayhem

MrsE wrote: »

So I've bought the hard drive:T

My C drive is 326 free of 455 so I guess 129 gb.

The new drive (above has 320, so oddles of space).

I've just backup & now the new drive has 280 free of 298, so 18 gb.

Wheres the rest of it?

It should be the 129 thats on the C drive surely?

You don't say what you used to back it up with, and what options you used. A little more info please.

MrsE_2

debitcardmayhem wrote: »

You don't say what you used to back it up with, and what options you used. A little more info please.

The portable hard drive in post 1

Options, hmmmmm, well I always go with automatic:o

closed

Which backup software?

Which operating system?

Why are you reinstalling windows?

S0litaire

Most likely it's just backed up your "Documents and settings" folder and not backed up the whole system.

A Full windows backup on your system should (at a very rough guess!!) probably be around the 70Gb mark (it should be about 50% of the normal size because the backups are compressed into a smaller size)

But a note of the Backup software and settings used will let us know for sure.

MrsE_2

S0litaire wrote: »

Most likely it's just backed up your "Documents and settings" folder and not backed up the whole system.

A Full windows backup on your system should (at a very rough guess!!) probably be around the 70Gb mark (it should be about 50% of the normal size because the backups are compressed into a smaller size)

But a note of the Backup software and settings used will let us know for sure.

Its Nero BackItUp

Its Vista

MrsE_2

closed wrote: »

Which backup software?

Which operating system?

Why are you reinstalling windows?

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/3048510=

Because PC is a nightmare since that virus got in & I don't know what else to do.

I looked on the antivirus settings today & it says I allowed this in on 13.02.11

Category: Trojan
Description: This program is dangerous and executes commands from an attacker.
Recommended action: Remove this software immediately.
Security Essentials detected programs that may compromise your privacy or damage your computer. You can still access the files that these programs use without removing them (not recommended). To access these files, select the Allow action and click Apply actions. If this option is not available, log on as administrator or ask the security administrator for help.

closed

http://www.runtime.org/shadow-copy.htm

http://www.macrium.com/reflectfree.asp

try both of these, and backup all your important data to dvd. So you will have 3 copies on different media in case something goes wrong

one will backup all your files (assuming you have an admin account), and one will do a disk image, in case the restore process doesn't work. Check that your data is on the external disk before restoring

Use factory restore partition to do the reinstall (if you have one), it's much faster

StephenM_2

As an aside, I bought a 1TB external hard drive from PC world yesterday. It was kind of urgent because the old one had failed, destroying my old back-up with it. Anyway, the checkout operator remarked that they'd sold a lot of them that day. Struck me as a strange thing to say - why would there be a sudden rush on external hard drives. ?