BACKUP DRIVES

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After the second hard drive crash and obliteration in18months iI bought a
IOGEAR 200G external hard drive to use as total backup. It didn not come
with software to preform any backups. So every Friday I manually backup my
entire hard drive. XP will not allow me to backup everything because of the
two "shared" files: NTusers and Default , or so it says.
What software program can I use for one stop back up to the new external
harddrive and how does it get around the "shared" files?
 
There are many files that can not be simply "copied", becasue they are in
use while XP is running. The solution is to get a third-party
(non-Microsoft) backup program.

The classic is Norton GHOST. The latest version is 9 and is based on Drive
Image (formerly by Powerquest, now owned by Norton/Symantec). However, I
prefer Acronis True Image (verision 8). I find it simpler than GHOST, and
it works very well with external USB and firewire drives. It also supports
LINUX.

A web search on "disk backup" or "partition backup" will list several
alternatives, some of which are free. By the way, in general you want to do
a "partition" backup, not a "disk" backup. "partition" backups are easier
to restore to a new disk, in case the old one dies. GHOST and True Image
support both disk and partition backups. They are also both smart enough
not to backup files that XP will automatically recreate, like the pagefile
or the hiberation file.

The one trap of some backup software is how to do a restore, if XP is not
working. GHOST and True Image provide bootable media (floppies or CDs). If
a potential backup software can not restore from outside of XP, I do not
think it is worth having.

The program called Ntbackup.exe, which is free which XP (hidden on XP home
CD; installed with XP pro), can not restore unless you have a working PC,
although that can be a second PC on a network. But for the home user with
one PC, it is of limited value, except possibly to backup the documents and
settings folder. However, it can backup locked files, such as the XP
registry (several separate files), which is located within the documents and
settings folder.

In contrast, personal files can be easily backed-up by a simple copy&paste,
or by the command line utility called XCOPY (free with DOS, 98, ME, XP,
etc), or written to CD or DVD.
 
Thanks Bob
I am not sure what the difference is between the disc backup and the
partition backup as I will be backing up tp an external hard drive. Can you
explain in more detail?
 
Jill said:
After the second hard drive crash and obliteration in18months iI bought a
IOGEAR 200G external hard drive to use as total backup. It didn not come
with software to preform any backups. So every Friday I manually backup my
entire hard drive. XP will not allow me to backup everything because of the
two "shared" files: NTusers and Default , or so it says.
What software program can I use for one stop back up to the new external
harddrive and how does it get around the "shared" files?
Click to expand...

I image my internal hard drive to an external drive everynight. I use a
program called DriveImage (now integrated into Norton Ghost since Symantec
bought the company). It works very well. You can set it up to keep (for
example) the last 5 copies and then delete the 6th. That way your external
hard drive never fills up. You can also configure it to send you an email
when it's done - so that you never have to search for log files to see if it
worked or had a problem. You cal also set it to ssplit the image into small
chunks (eg 600MB or 4GByte) so you can copy a backup to CDR or DVDR. Set up
like this my backups get done every night and I never have to remember to do
anything.
 
Jill said:
After the second hard drive crash and obliteration in18months iI bought a
IOGEAR 200G external hard drive to use as total backup. It didn not come
with software to preform any backups. So every Friday I manually backup my
entire hard drive. XP will not allow me to backup everything because of the
two "shared" files: NTusers and Default , or so it says.
What software program can I use for one stop back up to the new external
harddrive and how does it get around the "shared" files?
Click to expand...

There are at least three approaches. One 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. [In general there is
little value in created a backup on another internal drive.] 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:

Norton Ghost 9.0
Drive Image 7 (still available in some places; the maker - Powerquest -
was bought out by Symantec and is now Norton Ghost 9 with some changes)
Acronis True Image
BootItNg

The second option is a traditional backup program such as Stompsoft's
Backup My PC. This is an excellent tool. It is the evolution of
ntbackup. There are other good backup programs out there as well. This
can do a complete backup or backup individual files and folders to
DVD/CD and other drives.

Lastly is ntbackup which is installed in XP Pro but not Home. For Home
if you have the XP CD it can be found in the \MSFT\ValueADD\Ntbackup
folder as ntbackup.msi or download it from here:
http://www.onecomputerguy.com/windowsxp_tips.htm#backup_home

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. It is
geared toward tape drives or other hard drives. It will work ok in
backing up to an external hard drive (or network drive) and restoring
individual files / folders is ok, but if you need to restore the
complete drive it's cumbersome. XP must be installed first. If you
have XP Pro, Ntbackup has an ASR feature (Automated System Recovery)
which makes this restore of a boot/system drive easier but still it
takes much longer than an imaging program, and I never got it to restore
my system to full functionality as it was when the backup was made. It
also mandates that a floppy drive be available. One floppy disk is
created in the ASR process and there is no way around that. ASR is not
available on XP Home addition.

I settled on an imaging program using an external hard drive. Restores
are easy and reliable. I use Drive Image 7, but any of those listed
above work fine.
 
Thank you all. I will now go searching for Ghost 8 and begin the easier way
to copy the hard drive.


Rock said:
Jill said:
After the second hard drive crash and obliteration in18months iI bought a
IOGEAR 200G external hard drive to use as total backup. It didn not come
with software to preform any backups. So every Friday I manually backup my
entire hard drive. XP will not allow me to backup everything because of the
two "shared" files: NTusers and Default , or so it says.
What software program can I use for one stop back up to the new external
harddrive and how does it get around the "shared" files?
Click to expand...

There are at least three approaches. One 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. [In general there is
little value in created a backup on another internal drive.] 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:

Norton Ghost 9.0
Drive Image 7 (still available in some places; the maker - Powerquest -
was bought out by Symantec and is now Norton Ghost 9 with some changes)
Acronis True Image
BootItNg

The second option is a traditional backup program such as Stompsoft's
Backup My PC. This is an excellent tool. It is the evolution of
ntbackup. There are other good backup programs out there as well. This
can do a complete backup or backup individual files and folders to
DVD/CD and other drives.

Lastly is ntbackup which is installed in XP Pro but not Home. For Home
if you have the XP CD it can be found in the \MSFT\ValueADD\Ntbackup
folder as ntbackup.msi or download it from here:
http://www.onecomputerguy.com/windowsxp_tips.htm#backup_home

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. It is
geared toward tape drives or other hard drives. It will work ok in
backing up to an external hard drive (or network drive) and restoring
individual files / folders is ok, but if you need to restore the
complete drive it's cumbersome. XP must be installed first. If you
have XP Pro, Ntbackup has an ASR feature (Automated System Recovery)
which makes this restore of a boot/system drive easier but still it
takes much longer than an imaging program, and I never got it to restore
my system to full functionality as it was when the backup was made. It
also mandates that a floppy drive be available. One floppy disk is
created in the ASR process and there is no way around that. ASR is not
available on XP Home addition.

I settled on an imaging program using an external hard drive. Restores
are easy and reliable. I use Drive Image 7, but any of those listed
above work fine.
Click to expand...
 
Jill said:
Thank you all. I will now go searching for Ghost 8 and begin the easier way
to copy the hard drive.
Click to expand...

You probably want the version that's based on Drive Image (was that Version
9?). I find the original Ghost much harder to use than Drive Image.
 
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