backup from external usb hard drive

[Doc]

I think you can use PowerQuest or Ghost to make a backup copy or mirror to
an external, usb connected hard drive.

Question: How do you restore this backup to a new hard drive in case of a
hard drive crash?

My confusion is that I thought the usb support is built into the operating
system (Win XP in this case) but without an operating system on the new hard
drive, can you access the usb drive to bring back the copy or mirror which
would include the original operating system and all the registry entries.

Are there external drivers for the usb port that can be loaded from a
"rescue" diskette like you would to access the cd drive?

Thanks
Doc

 

[bifocals]

with ghost you make a bootable floppy or cd which has all the drivers to
load all devices that ghost sees in windows. to restore you boot with the
disk and select restore. point to image on external hdd or cdrom or dvd and
it restores image. it is not using the os or anything on the target hdd.