BackUp Dell Lapotop: CDs or DVDs

[Rudy]

A number of friends have recently had total crashes of their Laptop hard
drives with loss of all data. Mine is going on 3 years old, has a CD RW
drive and I'm thinking of backing up files. My question is, should I
backup onto CDs or get an external USB/DVD burner and use DVDs?

I dont have a lot of stuff to save but the biggest group of files are MP3
music files..about 150 of those and photos..maybe a couple hundred of those.
I'm thinking it would take a lot of CDs..

Also, the full set of software discs came with the laptop and were
pre-loaded, including XP.

Should I rely on those or backup some operational files along with My Docs,
files, photos & music ?

Rudy

 

[Zilbandy]

A number of friends have recently had total crashes of their Laptop hard
drives with loss of all data. Mine is going on 3 years old, has a CD RW
drive and I'm thinking of backing up files. My question is, should I
backup onto CDs or get an external USB/DVD burner and use DVDs?

Get a USB hard drive in the 200-300gb range and buy Acronis True Image
and image your hard drive. With the Acronis software you can create a
bootable cd that will let you restore images without having to first
install Windows. The Acronis boot cd has support built in for USB
drives.

 

[Guest]

cd hold about 600 megabytes and dvd's can hold up to 4 gigabytes, whereas 1
gigbyte is 1000 megabytes. newer dvds can hold up 8 gigabytes but the dvd
player you buy has to be designed for these.

disk imaging is the better way to go instead of the regular backup method.
drive images restore the hd perfectly, whereas backups are better for regular
files, pics, etc. for whatever reason, restoring windows system files is
never perfect and have to run windows repair afterwards.

there are recovery programs out there and i use one of them. but there is
one that is freeware and havn't tried it out yet. do a search for dixmlsetup
(eg., drive image xml setup) and see if this works for you. i havn't bought
a seperate dvd-rw yet, but there is a possibility that the hardware may come
with software that includes recovery/backup......

 

[Rudy]

Zilbandy,

Get a USB hard drive in the 200-300gb range and buy Acronis True Image
and image your hard drive. With the Acronis software you can create a
bootable cd that will let you restore images without having to first
install Windows. The Acronis boot cd has support built in for USB
drives.

So rather than buying a DVD-RW, you advise to just get the USB HD and back
up(image) everything to that and make a bootable "restore" CD ?

Lets say my laptop HD totally crashes and I lose all data (as the friends
have). This process will enable me to restore all my data to the 'new' HD
in the laptop, right ?

thanks for your help

R

 

[Anna]

(OP's query)...

So rather than buying a DVD-RW, you advise to just get the USB HD and back
up(image) everything to that and make a bootable "restore" CD ?

Lets say my laptop HD totally crashes and I lose all data (as the friends
have). This process will enable me to restore all my data to the 'new' HD
in the laptop, right ?

thanks for your help

R

Rudy:
Using Acronis True Image or another disk imaging program such as Symantec's
Norton Ghost, you can *directly* clone the contents of your laptop's HD to a
USB external HD. In effect, the "clone" will be a duplicate of your internal
HD including the OS, all programs, and all your data.

Now the USB EHD will *not* be bootable, but if & when the time comes when
you need to restore your laptop's HD (assuming, of course, the drive is
non-defective), you can clone back the contents of your USB EHD to the
laptop's HD.

Under this scenario, there's no need to create disk images on media such as
CD/DVDs.
Anna

 

[Rudy]

Super Anna ! thanks a lot

R