Best way to back up to an external hard drive

[Frank J. Lhota]

I recently upgraded my home computer to XP. I want to be prepared for any
future calamity, so I got an external hard drive large enough to back up all
of my internal hard drive. One way to do this is to connect my external
drive to an external port, then use explorer to copy all of C: to my
external. This will give me an extra copy of C: drive (with the exception of
a few files that cannot be copied, such as the swap file, that probably
should not be copied anyways). It occurred to me, however, that USB support
is not available at the DOS level, so if I have a disasterous disk crash,
there is no easy way to get the external hard drive data back in place.

What I really want is some way to make a copy of the C: drive data needed to
restore it onto the external drive, in such a way that if something really
bad happens, I could readily restore C: from this copy. The hardware
certainly should support this. What is the right software to use to make
this happen? Can the backup program that comes on the XP disk do this for
me?

 

[Myron J. Mandell]

Frank,

I believe Norton Ghost can support your USB drive. You need to select the
option to load those drivers when you create your Ghost floppy. Limitation
is that your external drive (but not your internal one) will have to be
Fat32.
I believe Ghost will create multiple files if your backup requires more than
4 GB.

If you use the XP backup program, you will need to reinstall XP before you
can run it.
Don't know how successful it would be at restoring updated system files,
registry, etc.,
particularly on XP Home.

Myron

 

[R. McCarty]

You need an imaging program. The most popular are Ghost, Drive
Image and BootITng. The programs create compressed image files.
This can either be done by partition or disk wide.

Depending on the age of your motherboard (Legacy USB support)
you may be able to boot from the external USB drive. However, I
should point out that while saving images on an external drive is O.K
all magnetic media is subject to crashes and other failures. The safest
approach would be to image your C: drive to the external and then
"Burn" the image to a CD-R/DVD-R that can be stored off the PC".

Also, if your PC does not have USB2.0 or HighSpeed then the transfer
rate to the external is going to be fairly slow. (~10.0 Meg a Second).
Even with USB2.0 channels, an external hard drive is no where near as
fast as an internal IDE/ATAPI drive. So don't expect operations to &
from it to be lightning fast.

 

[Alex Nichol]

I recently upgraded my home computer to XP. I want to be prepared for any
future calamity, so I got an external hard drive large enough to back up all
of my internal hard drive. One way to do this is to connect my external
drive to an external port, then use explorer to copy all of C: to my
external. This will give me an extra copy of C: drive (with the exception of
a few files that cannot be copied, such as the swap file, that probably
should not be copied anyways). It occurred to me, however, that USB support
is not available at the DOS level, so if I have a disasterous disk crash,
there is no easy way to get the external hard drive data back in place.

Copying the files with Explorer does not in any case generate a copy
that will work - among other things it will not correctly copy the
registry..

You need a program that will make a true image of your C partition to
the external drive, and then restore it. I suggest BootIT NG, from
http://www.BootitNG.com ($35 shareware - 30 day full functional trial)
- or its little sister, Image, but the complete partition management
you get in BING seems worth it. That runs from its own boot disk -
either a floppy, or as burned to a CD to make a bootable CD. It needs
no other OS around, and will work with USB drives. So if you had to
restore you would boot its devices and use Image - Paste to paste the
image back to the hard drive. I actually use it burning the image
direct on a DVD-R disk (which with the compression is enough for a 7GB C
drive, or will span disks)

 

[Frank C. Dauenhauer]

| Frank J. Lhota wrote:
|
|| I recently upgraded my home computer to XP. I want to be prepared
|| for any future calamity, so I got an external hard drive large
|| enough to back up all of my internal hard drive. One way to do this
|| is to connect my external drive to an external port, then use
|| explorer to copy all of C: to my external. This will give me an
|| extra copy of C: drive (with the exception of a few files that
|| cannot be copied, such as the swap file, that probably should not be
|| copied anyways). It occurred to me, however, that USB support is not
|| available at the DOS level, so if I have a disasterous disk crash,
|| there is no easy way to get the external hard drive data back in
|| place.
|
| Copying the files with Explorer does not in any case generate a copy
| that will work - among other things it will not correctly copy the
| registry..
|
| You need a program that will make a true image of your C partition to
| the external drive, and then restore it. I suggest BootIT NG, from
| http://www.BootitNG.com ($35 shareware - 30 day full functional trial)
| - or its little sister, Image, but the complete partition management
| you get in BING seems worth it. That runs from its own boot disk -
| either a floppy, or as burned to a CD to make a bootable CD. It needs
| no other OS around, and will work with USB drives. So if you had to
| restore you would boot its devices and use Image - Paste to paste the
| image back to the hard drive. I actually use it burning the image
| direct on a DVD-R disk (which with the compression is enough for a
| 7GB C drive, or will span disks)

Please bear with me. I've been a user of computers for a long time, but I always feel like a newbie when trying to read technical instructions. I downloaded BootItNG as the possible answer to my questions (as recommended above) and tried to understand the (PDF) instructions, but I'm still confused. Although they are technically straightforward, they don't seem to provide any insight as to whether BING will do what I want to do, which is as follows.

I have a no-name, locally built (not by me), 3-year-old PC running Windows XP Professional, 700-MHz, 192 MB RAM, with a Western Digital 40 GB primary and a WD 80 GB secondary hard drive (no external drives).

When I used WD's DataLifeguard Tools to transfer the contents of the 40 to the 80, it would only allow me a 32 GB FAT32 primary partition and the rest NTFS. What I really wanted was a full-sized (~80 GB) FAT32 partition, or at least a 40 GB FAT32 partition, so I could use it for a complete, cloned backup of the original 40 GB hard drive. At some point, however (obviously) the 32 GB partition won't be large enough, and I don't know if the NTFS partition, though large enough, will be OK (being NTFS, not FAT32) for using to store and possibly someday restore the backup if needed.

Right now I am using Windows XP Pro's backup program to create an ASR (automatic system restore) backup on the NTFS partition, and I'm making daily copies of important data files to the FAT32 partition, but I don't know if this is the best way (under the current circumstances) to do what I really need done.

Before seeing your posting, above, I considered buying Partition Magic to allow me to set or reset partition sizes, and I considered buying Drive Image to create disk images for complete HD restoration. But that would be very expensive, and I don't know if they would really do what I want to do. Now having studied the BING literature, I still don't know if it will work.

Can you or anyone else offer me insight and instructions as to what I need to buy and do in this situation? I certainly would appreciate it. Thank you.

Frank Dauenhauer

 

[CS]

| Frank J. Lhota wrote:
|
|| I recently upgraded my home computer to XP. I want to be prepared
|| for any future calamity, so I got an external hard drive large
|| enough to back up all of my internal hard drive. One way to do this
|| is to connect my external drive to an external port, then use
|| explorer to copy all of C: to my external. This will give me an
|| extra copy of C: drive (with the exception of a few files that
|| cannot be copied, such as the swap file, that probably should not be
|| copied anyways). It occurred to me, however, that USB support is not
|| available at the DOS level, so if I have a disasterous disk crash,
|| there is no easy way to get the external hard drive data back in
|| place.
|
| Copying the files with Explorer does not in any case generate a copy
| that will work - among other things it will not correctly copy the
| registry..
|
| You need a program that will make a true image of your C partition to
| the external drive, and then restore it. I suggest BootIT NG, from
| http://www.BootitNG.com ($35 shareware - 30 day full functional trial)
| - or its little sister, Image, but the complete partition management
| you get in BING seems worth it. That runs from its own boot disk -
| either a floppy, or as burned to a CD to make a bootable CD. It needs
| no other OS around, and will work with USB drives. So if you had to
| restore you would boot its devices and use Image - Paste to paste the
| image back to the hard drive. I actually use it burning the image
| direct on a DVD-R disk (which with the compression is enough for a
| 7GB C drive, or will span disks)

Please bear with me. I've been a user of computers for a long time, but I always feel like a newbie when trying to read technical instructions. I downloaded BootItNG as the possible answer to my questions (as recommended above) and tried to understand the (PDF) instructions, but I'm still confused. Although they are technically straightforward, they don't seem to provide any insight as to whether BING will do what I want to do, which is as follows.

I have a no-name, locally built (not by me), 3-year-old PC running Windows XP Professional, 700-MHz, 192 MB RAM, with a Western Digital 40 GB primary and a WD 80 GB secondary hard drive (no external drives).

When I used WD's DataLifeguard Tools to transfer the contents of the 40 to the 80, it would only allow me a 32 GB FAT32 primary partition and the rest NTFS. What I really wanted was a full-sized (~80 GB) FAT32 partition, or at least a 40 GB FAT32 partition, so I could use it for a complete, cloned backup of the original 40 GB hard drive. At some point, however (obviously) the 32 GB partition won't be large enough, and I don't know if the NTFS partition, though large enough, will be OK (being NTFS, not FAT32) for using to store and possibly someday restore the backup if needed.

Right now I am using Windows XP Pro's backup program to create an ASR (automatic system restore) backup on the NTFS partition, and I'm making daily copies of important data files to the FAT32 partition, but I don't know if this is the best way (under the current circumstances) to do what I really need done.

Before seeing your posting, above, I considered buying Partition Magic to allow me to set or reset partition sizes, and I considered buying Drive Image to create disk images for complete HD restoration. But that would be very expensive, and I don't know if they would really do what I want to do. Now having studied the BING literature, I still don't know if it will work.

Can you or anyone else offer me insight and instructions as to what I need to buy and do in this situation? I certainly would appreciate it. Thank you.

Frank Dauenhauer

Hello Frank:

You received good advice from Alex regarding BING. It will certainly
do what you wish, however, and unfortunately - BING has a steep
learning curve. I use it for everything but it took me awhile to
learn how.

It might be a good idea to access the BING user group directly and ask
for help. The experts all hang out there and in my experience, they
are very helpful. The author himself is usually there and is always
ready to assist.

Point your newsreader to:

terabyteunlimited.com

and join:

public.apps.bootitng

Good luck.

 

[Frank C. Dauenhauer]

|||
||| You need a program that will make a true image of your C partition
||| to the external drive, and then restore it. I suggest BootIT NG,
||| from http://www.BootitNG.com ($35 shareware - 30 day full
||| functional trial) - or its little sister, Image, but the complete
||| partition management you get in BING seems worth it. That runs
||| from its own boot disk - either a floppy, or as burned to a CD to
||| make a bootable CD. It needs no other OS around, and will work
||| with USB drives. So if you had to restore you would boot its
||| devices and use Image - Paste to paste the image back to the hard
||| drive. I actually use it burning the image direct on a DVD-R disk
||| (which with the compression is enough for a 7GB C drive, or will
||| span disks)
||
|| Please bear with me. I've been a user of computers for a long time,
|| but I always feel like a newbie when trying to read technical
|| instructions. I downloaded BootItNG as the possible answer to my
|| questions (as recommended above) and tried to understand the (PDF)
|| instructions, but I'm still confused. Although they are technically
|| straightforward, they don't seem to provide any insight as to
|| whether BING will do what I want to do, which is as follows.
||
|| I have a no-name, locally built (not by me), 3-year-old PC running
|| Windows XP Professional, 700-MHz, 192 MB RAM, with a Western Digital
|| 40 GB primary and a WD 80 GB secondary hard drive (no external
|| drives).
||
|| When I used WD's DataLifeguard Tools to transfer the contents of the
|| 40 to the 80, it would only allow me a 32 GB FAT32 primary partition
|| and the rest NTFS. What I really wanted was a full-sized (~80 GB)
|| FAT32 partition, or at least a 40 GB FAT32 partition, so I could use
|| it for a complete, cloned backup of the original 40 GB hard drive.
|| At some point, however (obviously) the 32 GB partition won't be
|| large enough, and I don't know if the NTFS partition, though large
|| enough, will be OK (being NTFS, not FAT32) for using to store and
|| possibly someday restore the backup if needed.
||
|| Right now I am using Windows XP Pro's backup program to create an
|| ASR (automatic system restore) backup on the NTFS partition, and I'm
|| making daily copies of important data files to the FAT32 partition,
|| but I don't know if this is the best way (under the current
|| circumstances) to do what I really need done.
||
|| Before seeing your posting, above, I considered buying Partition
|| Magic to allow me to set or reset partition sizes, and I considered
|| buying Drive Image to create disk images for complete HD
|| restoration. But that would be very expensive, and I don't know if
|| they would really do what I want to do. Now having studied the BING
|| literature, I still don't know if it will work.
||
|| Can you or anyone else offer me insight and instructions as to what
|| I need to buy and do in this situation? I certainly would appreciate
|| it. Thank you.
||
|| Frank Dauenhauer
|
| Hello Frank:
|
| You received good advice from Alex regarding BING. It will certainly
| do what you wish, however, and unfortunately - BING has a steep
| learning curve. I use it for everything but it took me awhile to
| learn how.
|
| It might be a good idea to access the BING user group directly and ask
| for help. The experts all hang out there and in my experience, they
| are very helpful. The author himself is usually there and is always
| ready to assist.
|
| Point your newsreader to:
|
| terabyteunlimited.com
|
| and join:
|
| public.apps.bootitng
|
| Good luck.

CS,

Thank you. It's good to know that BING will do the job.

That's good advice about joining the BING user group. I have done so. Now I'll read all the posts and try to learn as much as I can before posting my questions.

Thank you again!

Frank

 

[Alex Nichol]

Please bear with me. I've been a user of computers for a long time, but I always feel like a newbie when trying to read technical instructions. I downloaded BootItNG as the possible answer to my questions (as recommended above) and tried to understand the (PDF) instructions, but I'm still confused. Although they are technically straightforward, they don't seem to provide any insight as to whether BING will do what I want to do, which is as follows.

I have a no-name, locally built (not by me), 3-year-old PC running Windows XP Professional, 700-MHz, 192 MB RAM, with a Western Digital 40 GB primary and a WD 80 GB secondary hard drive (no external drives).

When I used WD's DataLifeguard Tools to transfer the contents of the 40 to the 80, it would only allow me a 32 GB FAT32 primary partition and the rest NTFS. What I really wanted was a full-sized (~80 GB) FAT32 partition, or at least a 40 GB FAT32 partition, so I could use it for a complete, cloned backup of the original 40 GB hard drive. At some point, however (obviously) the 32 GB partition won't be large enough, and I don't know if the NTFS partition, though large enough, will be OK (being NTFS, not FAT32) for using to store and possibly someday restore the backup if needed.

With BootIT NG (BING) Download, to its own folder, extract from the
zip, run the bootitng to make a boot floppy.

With the new drive plugged in as slave/secondary, boot the floppy,
Cancel Install, entering maintenance, then click on Partition work.

If you have partitions you have made on the new drive that you want to
clear out, first select HD1 (the slave one) and highlight and delete
them. Now on HD0 Highlight your C:,Copy, then on left select the new
drive (HD1) and Paste.

That will make an exact clone copy of your present partition, at its
present size, to the new drive. You might then consider a resize up a
bit. Or keep the free space remaining beyond, so as to make a separate
partition in it later.

One point is that FAT 32 partitions bigger than 32 GB are not really a
good idea - and XP would refuse to make one, though you *could* create
one, after clicking the free space to highlight it in BING and format
it. If you have reason to stay with FAT 32 I would reduce below 32GB
and have a split drive. Or convert to NTFS for everything (see
www.aumha.org/win5/a/ntfscvt.htm for advice on some preliminaries in
BING to get the result done efficiently).

A mix of a FAT 32 and a NTFS partition on the same drive is fine by XP

Now click on 'View MBR' and in it highlight the entry for this new C
partition and click the 'Set Active' Click 'Write Standard MBR' and
Apply. Also make a check that this partition is in the same place in
the table as it was if you do a View MBR on the old one - if not use the
Up or down to correct it.

Close out, swap the disks to make the new one the one that boots, and
reboot into XP.

 

[Frank C. Dauenhauer]

| Frank C. Dauenhauer wrote:
|
| >Please bear with me. I've been a user of computers for a long time, but I always feel like a newbie when trying to read technical instructions. I downloaded BootItNG as the possible answer to my questions (as recommended above) and tried to understand the (PDF) instructions, but I'm still confused. Although they are technically straightforward, they don't seem to provide any insight as to whether BING will do what I want to do, which is as follows.
| >
| >I have a no-name, locally built (not by me), 3-year-old PC running Windows XP Professional, 700-MHz, 192 MB RAM, with a Western Digital 40 GB primary and a WD 80 GB secondary hard drive (no external drives).
| >
| >When I used WD's DataLifeguard Tools to transfer the contents of the 40 to the 80, it would only allow me a 32 GB FAT32 primary partition and the rest NTFS. What I really wanted was a full-sized (~80 GB) FAT32 partition, or at least a 40 GB FAT32 partition, so I could use it for a complete, cloned backup of the original 40 GB hard drive. At some point, however (obviously) the 32 GB partition won't be large enough, and I don't know if the NTFS partition, though large enough, will be OK (being NTFS, not FAT32) for using to store and possibly someday restore the backup if needed.

|
| With BootIT NG (BING) Download, to its own folder, extract from the
| zip, run the bootitng to make a boot floppy.
|
| With the new drive plugged in as slave/secondary, boot the floppy,
| Cancel Install, entering maintenance, then click on Partition work.
|
| If you have partitions you have made on the new drive that you want to
| clear out, first select HD1 (the slave one) and highlight and delete
| them. Now on HD0 Highlight your C:,Copy, then on left select the new
| drive (HD1) and Paste.
|
| That will make an exact clone copy of your present partition, at its
| present size, to the new drive. You might then consider a resize up a
| bit. Or keep the free space remaining beyond, so as to make a separate
| partition in it later.
|
| One point is that FAT 32 partitions bigger than 32 GB are not really a
| good idea - and XP would refuse to make one, though you *could* create
| one, after clicking the free space to highlight it in BING and format
| it. If you have reason to stay with FAT 32 I would reduce below 32GB
| and have a split drive. Or convert to NTFS for everything (see
| www.aumha.org/win5/a/ntfscvt.htm for advice on some preliminaries in
| BING to get the result done efficiently).
|
| A mix of a FAT 32 and a NTFS partition on the same drive is fine by XP
|
| Now click on 'View MBR' and in it highlight the entry for this new C
| partition and click the 'Set Active' Click 'Write Standard MBR' and
| Apply. Also make a check that this partition is in the same place in
| the table as it was if you do a View MBR on the old one - if not use the
| Up or down to correct it.
|
| Close out, swap the disks to make the new one the one that boots, and
| reboot into XP.
|
| --
| Alex Nichol MS MVP (Windows Technologies)
| Bournemouth, U.K. (e-mail address removed)8E8L.org (remove the D8 bit)

Thank you! I appreciate your giving me the step-by-step directions to my goal.

No, I have no reason to stay with FAT32 other than that my source drive (HD0) is a 40 GB FAT32 drive, and I felt that to avoid any possible incompatibilities down the road the clone should be the same.

I will get busy on this and report back.

Frank Dauenhauer
Rochester, NY, USA

BTW, a curiosity question that now occurs to me is "Why did XP allow the entire 40 GB source drive to be formatted as FAT32, but would not allow the 80 GB drive to be formatted to 40 GB FAT32 and ~40 GB NTFS"?

 

[Frank C. Dauenhauer]

:
|
| With BootIT NG (BING) Download, to its own folder, extract from the
| zip, run the bootitng to make a boot floppy.
|
| With the new drive plugged in as slave/secondary, boot the floppy,
| Cancel Install, entering maintenance, then click on Partition work.
|
| If you have partitions you have made on the new drive that you want to
| clear out, first select HD1 (the slave one) and highlight and delete
| them. Now on HD0 Highlight your C:,Copy, then on left select the
| new drive (HD1) and Paste.
|
| That will make an exact clone copy of your present partition, at its
| present size, to the new drive. You might then consider a resize
| up a bit. Or keep the free space remaining beyond, so as to make a
| separate partition in it later.
|
| One point is that FAT 32 partitions bigger than 32 GB are not really a
| good idea - and XP would refuse to make one, though you *could* create
| one, after clicking the free space to highlight it in BING and format
| it. If you have reason to stay with FAT 32 I would reduce below 32GB
| and have a split drive. Or convert to NTFS for everything (see
| www.aumha.org/win5/a/ntfscvt.htm for advice on some preliminaries in
| BING to get the result done efficiently).
|
| A mix of a FAT 32 and a NTFS partition on the same drive is fine by XP
|
| Now click on 'View MBR' and in it highlight the entry for this new C
| partition and click the 'Set Active' Click 'Write Standard MBR' and
| Apply. Also make a check that this partition is in the same place in
| the table as it was if you do a View MBR on the old one - if not use
| the Up or down to correct it.
|
| Close out, swap the disks to make the new one the one that boots, and
| reboot into XP.

I tried to send this reply with screenshots but my server won't allow binary
attachments, and it was returned to me unsent.

Sorry to be so goosey about this but I've never done anything
this drastic with my PC before, and I'm afraid of losing something.

I followed your instructions in the first two paragraphs, above, and
they went smoothly. However, I did not clear out (delete) anything on
the slave drive, HD1, because you said "if . . . I want to clear out . . .."
and I'm not sure I want to. If you say "delete this" I will go
ahead and do it.

I think that not having the drive empty or the partitions gone may
prevent me from doing the Paste operation. I can do the copy, but when
I'm ready to do the paste, the Paste button is grayed out and not
available.

Please let me know if deleting is required in order to make Paste
available. Thank you.

Frank Dauenhauer

 

[Frank C. Dauenhauer]

I have moved this thread to the public.apps.bootitng newsgroup.

FD