Backing up WinXP Pro to External Hard Drive

[David]

I would like to back up my whole Win XP system to an external hard
drive and would like some recommendations as to what software I should
use?

...ie is the Backup that comes with XP Pro ok? How would I restore XP
in the event of a failure? Does it do open files etc?

....is there a single bit of software I can buy that will just dump the
whole HD to the external HD and then provide a simple way of restoring
all of this data to a new HD (in the event of an HD failure) or to a
whole new system (in the event of my laptop being stolen)

Are there any XP funnies I should be aware of? Will it complain that
Im restoring to a different type of disk? - presumably if its a whole
new laptop then I will hit problems?

Should I be doing anything else like creating a bootable disk or
something?

The XP Pro CD I have is "Only to be distributed with a new PC" - does
this mean I couldnt restore it to another PC?

Thanks for any help

David Bevan

http://www.davidbevan.co.uk

 

[Tom]

I would like to back up my whole Win XP system to an external hard
drive and would like some recommendations as to what software I should
use?

..ie is the Backup that comes with XP Pro ok? How would I restore XP
in the event of a failure? Does it do open files etc?

...is there a single bit of software I can buy that will just dump the
whole HD to the external HD and then provide a simple way of restoring
all of this data to a new HD (in the event of an HD failure) or to a
whole new system (in the event of my laptop being stolen)

Are there any XP funnies I should be aware of? Will it complain that
Im restoring to a different type of disk? - presumably if its a whole
new laptop then I will hit problems?

Should I be doing anything else like creating a bootable disk or
something?

The XP Pro CD I have is "Only to be distributed with a new PC" - does
this mean I couldnt restore it to another PC?

Thanks for any help

David Bevan

http://www.davidbevan.co.uk

Here is a great utility for imaging what you need, go here:

http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/bootitng.html

BootIt NG is shareware, full trail use for 30 days, $35 to purchase. I
recommend it highly, and most here will also. You can read about this there.

 

[GrndpaDoug]

Norton Ghost is my tool of choice
Cheers Doug

Here is a great utility for imaging what you need, go here:

http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/bootitng.html

BootIt NG is shareware, full trail use for 30 days, $35 to purchase. I
recommend it highly, and most here will also. You can read about this
there.

 

[relic]

I would like to back up my whole Win XP system to an external hard
drive and would like some recommendations as to what software I should
use?

..ie is the Backup that comes with XP Pro ok? How would I restore XP
in the event of a failure? Does it do open files etc?

...is there a single bit of software I can buy that will just dump the
whole HD to the external HD and then provide a simple way of restoring
all of this data to a new HD (in the event of an HD failure) or to a
whole new system (in the event of my laptop being stolen)

Are there any XP funnies I should be aware of? Will it complain that
Im restoring to a different type of disk? - presumably if its a whole
new laptop then I will hit problems?

Should I be doing anything else like creating a bootable disk or
something?

The XP Pro CD I have is "Only to be distributed with a new PC" - does
this mean I couldnt restore it to another PC?

The various imaging programs are best for backing up, however, since you want
to do it to an external hard drive you want to get imaging software that runs
in a Window. The only one I've seen that does it is Acronis True Image.
www.acronis.com (It also makes a bootable CD for recovery and copies
necessary drivers for RAID, SCSI, and External Disks to that CD; none of the
other imaging product will do that.)

Your XP Pro is an OEM version and is /legally/ tied to the PC it was
originally installed onto. Microsoft keeps Activation records for 120 days
and would know if you tried to install it on a different PC during that time.
;-)

 

[Al Dykes]

I would like to back up my whole Win XP system to an external hard
drive and would like some recommendations as to what software I should
use?

..ie is the Backup that comes with XP Pro ok? How would I restore XP
in the event of a failure? Does it do open files etc?

...is there a single bit of software I can buy that will just dump the
whole HD to the external HD and then provide a simple way of restoring
all of this data to a new HD (in the event of an HD failure) or to a
whole new system (in the event of my laptop being stolen)

Are there any XP funnies I should be aware of? Will it complain that
Im restoring to a different type of disk? - presumably if its a whole
new laptop then I will hit problems?

Should I be doing anything else like creating a bootable disk or
something?

The XP Pro CD I have is "Only to be distributed with a new PC" - does
this mean I couldnt restore it to another PC?

ntbackup is fine, within it's limits. I've rebuilt crashed servers
from ntbackup saves several times. You can also recover individual
files and folders from with a ntbackup saveset easily enough.

The major weakness is that to restore to bare iron you need
to install a minimal instance of your OS in an alternate
folder (ie \wintemp instead of windows) and then run ntbackup
to do the full restore, then reboot.

Ntbackup also doesn't:
- break the saveset into CDrom-sized chunks,
- apply any internal compression that I can see,
- backup some open files
- write to CD/DVD-R media.

Other than that it's great. ;-)

The plus side;

- It's free
- It does a valid OS backup without booting to standalone. That
means it can be scripted and scheduled as a batch job

You _can_ mount a shared folder on another PC and save your backup
there. If your backup is more than 4GB the server share has to be
NTFS. If you have a desktop and a laptop PC (and ethernet) with a few
GB extra on each you can cross-backup. Write a script that excludes
the other system's BAK file. Apply NTFS compression to the folder you
put your BAK file into and you'll get

Maybe these days we can boot the w2k/XP CDrom and run NTbackup
right off the CDROM. That would be great. Can someone answer that ?

I use Acronis Trueimage these days. I like it.

Read the Tao of Backup (http://www.taobackup.com/)

Keep generations of backups.

Never backup ontop of your only backup.

 

[Al Dykes]

The various imaging programs are best for backing up, however, since you want
to do it to an external hard drive you want to get imaging software that runs
in a Window. The only one I've seen that does it is Acronis True Image.
www.acronis.com (It also makes a bootable CD for recovery and copies
necessary drivers for RAID, SCSI, and External Disks to that CD; none of the
other imaging product will do that.)

Your XP Pro is an OEM version and is /legally/ tied to the PC it was
originally installed onto. Microsoft keeps Activation records for 120 days
and would know if you tried to install it on a different PC during that time.
;-)

If you needed to recover data to another machine you'd have 30 days
before the activation kicked in, as I understand it. You might have
to avoid connecting that PC to the Internet while recovering.

 

[relic]

If you needed to recover data to another machine you'd have 30 days
before the activation kicked in, as I understand it. You might have
to avoid connecting that PC to the Internet while recovering.

Only if it wasn't activated when installed. The 30 day limit is on mandatory
activation.

 

[Tumbleweed]

Here is a great utility for imaging what you need, go here:

http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/bootitng.html

BootIt NG is shareware, full trail use for 30 days, $35 to purchase. I
recommend it highly, and most here will also. You can read about this there.

That looks pretty good, currently I use Norton Ghost, the only thing that
doesnt seemingly do is create a bootable image on DVD. I'll have a look at
the bootit manual but do you know if it will do that? Also, do you know if
the image is compressed or not? If it is that would be excellent since
compressed I can fit my C drive (well, partition) on a DVD.
My recovery CD that came from my PC vendor came with a norton ghost created
bootable DVD system image but I think that was created by a 'pro' version
rather than the personal one.

 

[Toshi1873]

I would like to back up my whole Win XP system to an external hard
drive and would like some recommendations as to what software I should
use?

For backing up data files, get a program that does
incremental backups of only what changed. My personal
preference is Second Copy 2000, which sits in the system
tray and runs periodically (I run daily). The big
advantages:

- Only copies what changed.

- The files are stored in regular folders on the
destination device (F:\Active on the external USB or
network share) which makes recovering from an individual
"oops!" as easy as copying a file in Windows Explorer.

- You can choose to store older revisions or deleted
files in a seperate location (e.g. F:\Trash), specifying
how many revisions you want to keep. So if you goof up
a file, you can pick/choose which day you want to go
back to.

- No muss, no fuss, no putting off your backups until
another day.

I also periodically burn snapshots of my active backup
folder to DVD.

..ie is the Backup that comes with XP Pro ok? How would I restore XP
in the event of a failure? Does it do open files etc?

...is there a single bit of software I can buy that will just dump the
whole HD to the external HD and then provide a simple way of restoring
all of this data to a new HD (in the event of an HD failure) or to a
whole new system (in the event of my laptop being stolen)

True Image or Norton Ghost... Al seems to like True
Image, and from what I hear it's easier to use then
Norton Ghost in a Windows setting.

Good for bare-metal restores (assuming you can buy the
same brand of laptop).

Usual recovery method is to use both an imaging program
and a seperate program that just backs up your data.
Restore the image that you want (e.g. go back to a point
in time when the O/S wasn't hosed), then restore the
data.

 

[Bob]

ntbackup is fine, within its limits.

It's the Veritas Backup Exec that was distributed with tape drives
several years ago. It is probably the most widely used backup utility
there is.

I've rebuilt crashed servers
from ntbackup saves several times. You can also recover individual
files and folders from with a ntbackup saveset easily enough.

I am using it - the one that comes with Win2K Pro.

The major weakness is that to restore to bare iron you need
to install a minimal instance of your OS in an alternate
folder (ie \wintemp instead of windows) and then run ntbackup
to do the full restore, then reboot.

Not if you keep a carbon-copy archive on a removable disk (e.g., Ghost
or Drive Image Pro).

- It does a valid OS backup without booting to standalone. That
means it can be scripted and scheduled as a batch job

Version 5 has scheduling built in.

You _can_ mount a shared folder on another PC and save your backup
there.

Or you can use an old disk in the removable bay and do a daily
differential backup, after you have made the the main carbon-copy to
another hard disk. You will have to use attrib to clear the archive
bits after the main archive process is over.


--

Map Of The Vast Right Wing Conspiracy:
http://www.freewebs.com/vrwc/

"You can all go to hell, and I will go to Texas."
--David Crockett

 

[Markeau]

I just had to restore my XPpro's c: drive from a Drive Image 7 backup
located on an external USB2 drive, it went great - just booted from
the DI7 cd and go ... and this was from a DI7 image backup that was
created while still booted into windows ... NICE!

 

[Bob]

For backing up data files, get a program that does
incremental backups of only what changed. My personal
preference is Second Copy 2000, which sits in the system
tray and runs periodically (I run daily). The big
advantages:

- Only copies what changed.

The problem with incremental backups is when you do them on a daily
basis and you change the same large files every day. With a
differential backup strategy, throw away the prior backups. Indeed you
do backup files over and over again, even though they have not changed
since the last backup, but that is the price to pay for two most
important features of differential backup:

1) Small archive file size compared to 30 days of incremental backup
of files that change daily.

2) Restoring is a simple operation since there is only one copy of any
changed file, namely the most recently backuped version.



--

Map Of The Vast Right Wing Conspiracy:
http://www.freewebs.com/vrwc/

"You can all go to hell, and I will go to Texas."
--David Crockett

 

[Ron Reaugh]

I would like to back up my whole Win XP system to an external hard
drive and would like some recommendations as to what software I should
use?

www.acronis.com

 

[Alan C. Brown]

Here is a great utility for imaging what you need, go here:

http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/bootitng.html

BootIt NG is shareware, full trail use for 30 days, $35 to purchase. I
recommend it highly, and most here will also. You can read about this

there.
--------------
I have an External Firewire HDD that I purchased as part of the ABSplus
Backup System from CMS Products, and I noticed from the website info that
BootItNG has a backup feature.

Does the Backup feature on BootitNG allow you to:

- backup to an external firewire HDD ?

- do incremental backups of new & changed files that are on the computer
HDD ?

- purge files on the External HDD that are no longer on the computer HDD ?

- make a bootable backup ?

Thank you

Alan C. Brown

 

[Alan C. Brown]

The various imaging programs are best for backing up, however, since you want
to do it to an external hard drive you want to get imaging software that runs
in a Window. The only one I've seen that does it is Acronis True Image.
www.acronis.com (It also makes a bootable CD for recovery and copies
necessary drivers for RAID, SCSI, and External Disks to that CD; none of the
other imaging product will do that.)

Your XP Pro is an OEM version and is /legally/ tied to the PC it was
originally installed onto. Microsoft keeps Activation records for 120 days
and would know if you tried to install it on a different PC during that time.
;-)

---------

I have an External Firewire HDD that I purchased as part of the ABSplus
Backup System from CMS Products.

Does the Acronis allow you to:

- backup to an external firewire HDD ?

- do incremental backups of new & changed files that are on the computer
HDD ?

- purge files on the External HDD that are no longer on the computer HDD ?

- make a bootable backup on an External HDD ?

Thank you

Alan C. Brown

 

[john]

To make a bootable DVD you must create a DOS Ghost(2003) diskette,
boot from the disk and create the DVD (you will be asked for the
DOS diskette which will be written into the DVD doot sector).

....

 

[Jimmy Smith]

I just had to restore my XPpro's c: drive from a Drive Image 7 backup
located on an external USB2 drive, it went great - just booted from
the DI7 cd and go ... and this was from a DI7 image backup that was
created while still booted into windows ... NICE!

Did you need to re-activate XP after the restore?

Jimmy

 

[Ron Reaugh]

Did you need to re-activate XP after the restore?

Generally you wont have to re-activate if the HW restored to is the same as
when the image was made.

 

[Markeau]

Did you need to re-activate XP after the restore?

No

 

[Tony]

Here is a great utility for imaging what you need, go here:

http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/bootitng.html

BootIt NG is shareware, full trail use for 30 days, $35 to purchase. I
recommend it highly, and most here will also. You can read about this there.

Tom, will this work while the OS is running (open files, etc)?