Backup / System State Restore

[VictorD]

I have been looking at various system restore products,
Symantec Ghost and Acronis True Image. They look like very
good products, but I do a weekly backup of my data files
and system state. I store this backup on a cd. My
question is: If I can recover my pc from this weekly
backup, why should I get one of these system restore
products? What will they do that the WinXP backup/restore
utility can't do?

 

[John Barnett MVP]

Ghost, Drive Image, and Acronis true Image takes an Image of the whole of
your hard drive - that means operating system, applications and data.
You are backing up your data files but that is all. What happens if a
problem occurs with the operating system and system restore is unable to
correct it? The simple answer is you are stuck. The easy solution is to
reinstall xp. How long does it take to reinstall xp? depending on your
machine anything from 30 to 45 minutes. Add to this a couple more hours for
installing your software applications like office, anti virus etc etc and
you have a total down time of 2.5 to 3 hours. You also have to set xp up the
way you like it - desktop, screensaver etc. With drive image software they
take an accurate copy of the whole of your system. Any problems all you have
to do - we'll take Powerquest drive image as an example - is put the drive
image disc into your cd-rom and bootup. At the main interface select the
option to reinstall the image backup. Browse for the backup file, (you may
have saved it to a second hard drive or a set of cd's) and then let drive
image get on with the job. As an example my drive image backup is saved to a
seperate hard drive. It takes me, on average, 20 minutes to reinstall. That
means the reinstallation of xp, all updates, office, adobe acrobat,
photoshop, paintshop pro, anti virus, and a load of other stuff. I'd rather
spend 20 minutes reinstalling than 3 hours or more.

 

[Skip]

I am sure you will get others to respond on this, but
question is..If your hard drive goes out how can you
restore your files with out a working operating system?
The two products you mentioned will "clone" your hard
drive on another hard drive,OS and all, so you don't miss
a beat. Just slap the drive in and turn on pc your good
to go. With XP back-up, your backing up files to install
on a new clean install of XP so you don't lose them with
a failure of the hard drive...Hope this helps.

 

[Meg Hair]

-----Original Message-----
I have been looking at various system restore products,
Symantec Ghost and Acronis True Image. They look like very
good products, but I do a weekly backup of my data files
and system state. I store this backup on a cd. My
question is: If I can recover my pc from this weekly
backup, why should I get one of these system restore
products? What will they do that the WinXP backup/restore
utility can't do?


Hello - I was wondering how did you get the Backup

Utility program to work in the first place. I got it pre-
installed with my HP desktop computer. I can not get the
box labeled "Backup Destination" to work. I am STILL
trying to understand how exactly I do a backup onto a DVD
and could use ALL the help anybody can give me.
According to what I have seen I need more than 1 DVD to
do a FULL BACKUP (since it is my first time I want to
capture all the data). I am really new to this whole
idea so please be patient with my questions. What do you
back up on a weekly basis and how do you tell the PC what
to backup then?

 

[Rocket J. Squirrel]

" I am STILL trying to understand how exactly I do a backup onto a DVD "

To ask a new question, please start a new thread.

"Windows Backup Does Not Back Up to CD-R, CD-RW, or DVD-R Devices"
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;315255&Product=winxp

Rocky

 

[Guest]

This sounds too good to be true. Two questions then. Are
you saying that with this imaging software I can backup the
contents of a 40gb hardrive onto one cd? And, once I've
done that and my hard disk crashes, I install a new hard
disk which is just formatted with dos. Then I insert the
backup cd and it restores all of the data from my old 40gb
hard disk? Operating system, all applications and data?

 

[Guest]

As surprising as it sounds, the windows backup utility for
XP will not allow you to backup to a cd drive. You must
first create the backup on your hard disk, then burn the
backup file onto your cd either with the windows burner or
one like Nero....As to what to backup, I have saved a
routine in the backup utility that backs up all of "my
documents" and any special software settings files like
browser bookmarks, Outlook email folders, Winamp settings,
etc. As to how to tell it, you must open the backup tab,
and then select all of the files you want, then save these
settings and call it "weekly backup".

 

[John Barnett MVP]

Even with the best will in the world there is no way you will get 4OGB on
one cd. Besides if all of your a 40gb drive is taken up with data then your
pc will hardly function. It would be so slow.
Let me elaborate. My system has two 80GB drives. Drive one is partitioned
10GB for Windows XP Home and 20GB for XP Professional. Drive two is
partitioned 2GB for data, 10GB for Windows Server 2003 and 10GB for Windows
Longhorn. Now let us consider drive 1 partition two, i.e., XP Professional.
Of that 20GB of space 10GB is taken up by the operating system and software
applications. If i image this drive all 10gb of operating system and
applications will be imaged plus all the information that relates to the
partition being 20GB. Drive Image (using full compression) will trun the
10GB into around 5.5 to 6GB. Putting this onto CD will take around 8 maybe 9
cd's. Change to DVD and you get away with 2.
My point, in my original reply, was that my backup image is saved to a
seperate hard drive thus enabling me to reinstall 'everything' on that
aprtition within about 20 minutes. Remember data transfer from a hard drive
is far faster than a cd or dvd.
Your assumption regarding inserting the backup cd's and it restoring all
data from your 40gb hard disk, operating system, all applications and data
is correct. That is exactly what it does. For that matter, that is all a set
of recovery discs do. Okay, from cd it is likely to take longer than my 20
minutes but the principle is still the same.