backup and restore hard drive

[Walter]

I want to back up my hard drive to an external usb hard
drive, reformat my hard drive and then restore all my
files.

Is there a command that allows a total backup or do I
have to backup each folder, one by one?

Thanks

 

[Willit]

There is no command to do it. If you want a program to do
it there plenty of them. The ntbackup that comes with xp
for one that will. The question is once you format your
boot drive , How are you going to boot to restore it?? If
you can boot from the USB then this will work great.

http://www.fssdev.com/products/ $ 39.00 make the clone
and then un-plug the power to the drive if you want.

Want to test drive a Demo for 30 days. It has some
features disabled.

http://downloads-zdnet.com.com/3000-2248-10161152.html?
tag=lst-1-8

NTBackup:


You have to install it:

If you have a rescue disk the valueadded folder may be on
it or your XP Disk, Mine was on disk #2

Insert the XP or Rescue CD, and run NTBACKUP.MSI program
from the folder D:\valueadd\msft\ntbackup

You can get a copy here;
http://www.onecomputerguy.com/software/ntbackup.msi

In XP Home the ASR Floppy Disk does not work . It will NOT
backup to a CD. You can bacu up to
a folde on your hard drive then burn it to a CD

here is how to use it;
http://windows.about.com/library/weekly/aa020120a.htm

 

[walter]

Thanks Willit,
Actually the situation is that my daughter's pc is going
crazy, and she can't access the internet nor email.
We checked everything in her internet connections setup
and everything seems to be working ok.
Before we started fooling around and possibly messing
everything up we decided to back the hard drive up.
She has an emachine and they gave her a recovery disk
which supposedly contains everything she needs including
Windows XP. If she puts this disk in and runs it, I
think she ends up with a clean system with everything
deleted.
If that happens then we could recover whatever datafiles
and pictures, etc she has on the backup drive.
I presume that the program that you recommended and that
I have downloaded will do that.
Now I have to see if I can copy that software onto a cd
so I can load it onto her pc.
Thanks for all the help!

 

[D.Currie]

Seems sort of pointless as you'd end up right back where you started from.
Unless you just want to save your data, and you were planning on
reinstalling Windows and all of the programs.

 

[Malke]

Thanks Willit,
Actually the situation is that my daughter's pc is going
crazy, and she can't access the internet nor email.
We checked everything in her internet connections setup
and everything seems to be working ok.
Before we started fooling around and possibly messing
everything up we decided to back the hard drive up.
She has an emachine and they gave her a recovery disk
which supposedly contains everything she needs including
Windows XP. If she puts this disk in and runs it, I
think she ends up with a clean system with everything
deleted.
If that happens then we could recover whatever datafiles
and pictures, etc she has on the backup drive.
I presume that the program that you recommended and that
I have downloaded will do that.
Now I have to see if I can copy that software onto a cd
so I can load it onto her pc.
Thanks for all the help!

Just an addendum: if your daughter's machine is "going crazy", she
probably has viruses and/or other malware on it. Imaging an infected
machine is going to produce an infected image. You'd be better off
getting some expert help here if her data is important. Don't go to a
CompUSA or BestBuy type store - call a reputable local computer repair
shop.

Malke