Backup whole PC

WHA

I already do regular backups of my data from my pc, but as I use many different programs on it, if the hard drive or PC failed, I would lose a lot of time re-installing all the programs and then the data.

Would it work if I copied the entire C drive to a portable hard drive or a separate directory in another PC? Could I then copy it back to my original PC in case of catastrophe for it to continue working as normal? Could I copy it to another PC and thereby transfer all programs and data from one computer to another or would it interfere with its BIOS and internal hardware?

b33r

You would need a total mirror of the drive for this to work. Norton Ghost is a good program for this.

alanwjones

Theres a trial version of
Acronis True Image 10 you could try. Alan.

CHR15

Another vote for Acronis.

Ghost was the standard for years until it went all bloated and interfering. The older versions still work well but I dont rate the newer versions at all. I had a couple of failed images with later versions of Ghost.

Chippy_Minton

You need a drive imaging tool, and backup to an internal or external hard drive, e.g.

http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/products/trueimage/
http://www.drive-backup.com/home/personal/
http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/imagew.html

think the last link is a free trial.

Flexible_Friend

I could never get Acronis to work. It would say it had copied my hard drive but it hadn't.

In the end I found this product that did the job. It was a bit slow at copying but it worked first time.

http://www.fssdev.com/products/casper/

rmg1

I'm having similar thoughts to the OP.
Does anyone know if Acronis will back up my hard-drive quickly to CD/DVD? I can do the backup via Nero, but it says it will take about 8 hours and use about 12 DVD's.

I'm hoping for something a bit quicker?

CHR15

That sounds about right.

A CD only holds up to 700MB,

A DVD generally 4.7GB (unless you dig deep for them)

Right Click on C and select Properties to see how much data needs to be backed up.

I wouldn't trust any kind of disk spanning to backup my important data. An external drive will be much safer (even a cheap internal IDE one if money is an issue used for backup only)

Ideally you need to do a fresh install of Windows, fully update it. Install all the software you are likely to need. Configure all your favorites, email account data etc

Then do the Full backup

Otherwise you will be backing up all sorts of junk you dont really need.

Personal data, documents etc can be easily backed up onto CD/DVD as there will be less to backup

rmg1

I'm basically looking for something that will take all my installed programs (Nero, office, etc) and my saved docs and back them up. I want to do a fresh install of windows to have a proper "tidy-up" og my hard-drive, but don't want to lose everything.

CHR15

unfortunately you cant back up installed programs like Office.

Too much information is buried in the registry within Windows so its an all or nothing scenario.

Once you install Windows, you will have to plod through the individual installations one by one. Thats why the suggestion I made earlier is the only real way to go (bit late now though!!)

Your saved docs are simple, just search for *.doc, *.xls, *.ppt, *.jpg and so on for whatever type of document/file you need to back up

You can then back all that lot up onto a DVD to restore later.

If you ar ebacking everything up first, go slowly and be methodical

Remember it is not just your documents and pictures.

Its the favorites, Email account settings, other user account settings (and their information) and stuff which normally get overlooked.

rmg1

Favortites would be easy enough as they are "documents" for my purposes. I don't use OE so that's no problem.

Where do I find the setttings for user accounts, and so on?