XP Home Edition Back Up

[Guest]

I noticed that XP Home does not have a back up function like XP Professional.
There was an article on how to back up with Home Edition, however, what if
you don't have the CD. I purchased my computer with the software already
installed and I only have a recovery disc. I suppose I could just copy what
I want backed up onto an external hard drive but it would be nice to have the
back up function. I didn't realize that the Home Edition did not have this
function. Any suggestions?

 

[Guest]

Hi Lezlee,

Well you have a couple of options. You can get a backup program similar to
ntbackup for free and it will backup files and folders and partitions and
entire hard drives and also has a scheduler it is Karens Replicator and you
can get it here..

Karens Replicator
http://www.karenware.com/powertools/ptreplicator.asp

Also on the free side, most Hard Drive manufacturers especially external
drive oem's have free backup software that you can download from their
website. Check out the type of external drive you have and find the
manufacturers website and search through it for backup tools like Western
Digital has Data Lifeguard Tools here..

http://support.wdc.com/download/

If you want a superior backup than either of these then you either want to
get Acronis or Symantec's imaging programs..

Acronis True Image 9.0 - Home
http://www.acronis.com/

Norton Ghost 10.0
http://symantec.com/home_homeoffice/products/overview.jsp?pcid=br&pvid=ghost10

Good Luck,

Joe

Kemco IT Tech

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

Lezlee wrote
:

I noticed that XP Home does not have a back up function like XP
Professional.

Yes it does. Backup is installed automatically on XP Professional, but not
on XP Home. If you have the complete XP Home CD, find backup on the CD, in
\ValueAdd\MSFT\NTBACKUP and install it yourself by doubleclicking the file
ntbackup.msi.

There was an article on how to back up with Home
Edition, however, what if you don't have the CD.

If you don't have an XP CD, you can download ntbackup.msi at
http://www.onecomputerguy.com/software/ntbackup.msi Also see
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=302894

 

[Dave Cohen]

Lezlee wrote
:


Yes it does. Backup is installed automatically on XP Professional, but not
on XP Home. If you have the complete XP Home CD, find backup on the CD, in
\ValueAdd\MSFT\NTBACKUP and install it yourself by doubleclicking the file
ntbackup.msi.





If you don't have an XP CD, you can download ntbackup.msi at
http://www.onecomputerguy.com/software/ntbackup.msi Also see
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=302894

If he has a recovery cd, it's likely using an image type backup. Contact
the manufacturer, but third party software may be a better solution.
Take a look at www.terabyteunlimited.com
Dave Cohen

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

If he has a recovery cd, it's likely using an image type backup.
Contact the manufacturer, but third party software may be a better
solution. Take a look at www.terabyteunlimited.com

Yes, there are several better solutions that the built-in Windows Backup.
Hoever he specifically asked about it, and it does have the advantage of not
costing anything extra.

 

[Rock]

I noticed that XP Home does not have a back up function like XP
Professional.
There was an article on how to back up with Home Edition, however, what if
you don't have the CD. I purchased my computer with the software already
installed and I only have a recovery disc. I suppose I could just copy
what
I want backed up onto an external hard drive but it would be nice to have
the
back up function. I didn't realize that the Home Edition did not have
this
function. Any suggestions?

You can obtain the backup program that comes with XP Pro, Ntbackup, from
here:
http://www.onecomputerguy.com/windowsxp_tips.htm#backup_home

Ntbackup has some problems as a backup solution. It is a legacy app from
Windows NT geared toward backing up to other internal hard drives, network
drives or magnetic tape drives. Ntbackup cannot backup to DVD and will only
backup to CD if other 3rd party CD burning software is available and even
with that it will not span CDs, i.e. one CD is the limit, which is not very
practical. Backups to internal hard drives, unless copied to CD/DVD or to
an external drive are better than no backup, but don't do anything to
protect you from a system wide problem such as lightning, fire, theft, etc.
Best to backup to external media - CD/DVD and/or an external USB hard drive.
For redundancy back up to an external drive and burn a secondary copy to
CD/DVD, storing that off site.

In place of ntbackup one option is to use an imaging program. This makes an
exact image of the partition which can be saved on CD/DVD or to another
drive - internal or external. Imaging to an external USB 2.0 / Firewire
drive works well. Then occasionally burning an image to DVD gives you
redundancy. Restores can be done of the entire partition or individual
files / folders. These work well and make it easy to recover from a drive
crash. Examples of this are:

Acronis True Image
Norton Ghost 10
Terabyte Unlimited's Image for Windows
CasperXP

The second option is a traditional backup program such as Stompsoft's PC
BackUP, Sonic’s Backup MyPC or SecondCopy from www.centered.com. There are
other backup programs out there as well. This can do a complete backup or
backup individual files and folders to DVD/CD and other drives.