External hard drive help...

poly1

I am trying to find an external hard drive and have been looking looking at THIS, can anyone tell me if it is any good? Are Buffalo a reliable brand?
The second thing I need help with is, is there a means of copying my entire hard drive from my pc to an external hard drive, as in is there a program or something like that I need to make it do this. I do have everything backed up to CDs, DVDs and usb flash drives but my pc is getting a bit temperamental and before I start trying to remove loads of stuff from it I was wondering if I should copy the entire hard drive in case I mess up somewhere? Any advice?

closed

usb drives are all much the same, a bare drive with a bit of electronics for the usb interface. The bigger 3.5" ones need a power supply, 2.5" ones don't

To copy the entire machine you need to create a disk image, along with a boot cd, always a good idea as disks can fail, infections can happen, windows can fail to boot at any time

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/3333202

if you want advice on the underlying problem, post more details along with a hijackthis log

poly1

So if I want to create a disk image do I need a program to do this or can I do it without one? (The comp is running windows vista). I have the original cds with it but I assume I need to create a new boot cd too do I? Thanks

closed

you need a program, as suggested in the thread I linked to - some brands of drive allow you to download a specific program to do the disk image, eg maxtor/seagate drives can use maxblast.

the disk image backs up the data somewhere else (eg usb drive), the boot cd which is usually based on linux allows the machine to boot and restore the image.