backing up windows vista

donnajunkie

ok, well i now have a new pc that has windows vista home premium on it. someone here advised me recently to back up the operating system. well in the help and support section on the pc it talks about backing up the files and stuff on the pc and then it mentions backing up the whole system only to say at the end that it is not possible with windows vista basic or windows home premium. so does that mean there is no way to back up the operating system then?

albertross_2

you need some sort of disk imaging software, norton ghost, acronis trueimage, or driveimagexml. Check they work with vista before buying, as I'm not sure if they are vista compatible yet.

donnajunkie

thanks.
why cant they just make it as simple as burning to a dvd?

albertross_2

They do now, just not in Vista home. Microsoft seem to get clobbered by the EU and antitrust laws when they bundle more functionality, so they always seem to stop short of giving us what we want nowadays, when there are competitors in the market.

This is free, but not as full featured as the other two, works on vista.

http://www.runtime.org/dixml.htm

You might need to use DVD rw's to burn direct to dvd

kltpzyxm

I can confirm that Acronis TrueImage 10 works fine with vista. I use it to secure my laptop...

BritBrat

Can't get beter than Norton Ghost.

Just make sure what ever one you get it makes bootable discs or you will be lost when you try to do a restore, yes it can be done without a bootable disk but needs a bit more work and experiance.

Most new pC's come with an option to make a one off backup, are you sure you don't have that option?

BillScarab

If you have a Maxtor or Seagate drive you can download Disk Wizrd which is a rebranded version of Acronis TrueImage and is free. It may also work with other hard drives, unless they've put some code in to check your disk.

http://www.seagate.com/ww/v/index.jsp?locale=en-US&name=DiscWizard&vgnextoid=d9fd4a3cdde5c010VgnVCM100000dd04090aRCRD

donnajunkie

thanks. i will look at all of those.

gremlin666_2

My Packard Bell Laptop which has Vista Home Premium gave me option to back up when i first started it up. As for your own files i copy then to Flash Drives about once a month.

donnajunkie

it reminded me the other day about backing up to discs, i clicked remind me again later. i had forgotten that it had gave me the option earlier. the problem is it doesnt say how many discs is needed. i dont want to find i dont have enough and on the other hand i dont want to buy millions of discs that might not end up being needed. i do have the option to buy from the manufacturer but when i went to the link all it talked about was backing up windows xp.

albertross_2

A single sided DVD holds about 4.7GB, you can estimate the no of disks by right clicking on your c: drive and seeing how much space is used, then divide by 4.7