Complete XP Backup

[Carey Frisch [MVP]]

This program performs a more thorough backup:

BackUp MyPC is a powerful yet easy to use data protection
and disaster recovery solution for a single computer or
peer-to-peer network. Conveniently backup important files
or your entire computer while you're not even around using
our advanced scheduling system.
http://www.stompinc.com/bump/bump-retail.phtml

--
Carey Frisch
Microsoft MVP
Windows XP - Shell/User

Be Smart! Protect your PC!
http://www.microsoft.com/security/protect/

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
--


| Is it possible to perform a complete backup of WinXP? I'm thinking not just
| files, folders & registry etc, but scheduled tasks etc. Or is the
| information on these stored in the registry?
|
| Thanks & regards
|
| Duncan
|
| --
| Newsgroups are like one big sandbox that all of us
| UseNet kiddies play in with peace & harmony.
|
| Spammers, Cross-Posters, and Lamers are the
| people that pee in our big sandbox.
|
|

 

[Mike Brannigan [MSFT]]

Duncan,

Please consider setting your PC clock and timezone correctly

--
Regards,

Mike
--
Mike Brannigan [Microsoft]

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no
rights

Please note I cannot respond to e-mailed questions, please use these
newsgroups

 

[Norm]

Drive Image by Powerquest or Ghost by Symantics are 2 very popular backup
utilities. I use Drive Image and create an image to my 2nd disk drive. It
takes around 25 minutes for me to create a compressed image of approx. 13gb.
If my C drive should fail, I can just replace it and restore XP to exactly
the same point I was at when I created the image in less than 1/2 hour.

 

[Bob Harris]

I have used both Norton GHOST and Acronis True Image to backup all of C:\,
including XP, programs, emails, etc. TrueImage is easier to use than GHOST,
and has wider support for external USB and firewire hard drives, and can
write to NTFS drives, as well as FAT32. It also supports the newer serial
ATA internal hard drves.

I keep user data on a separate partition, which I could backup with the same
tools, but instead I choose to use the simpler program called XCOPY, since
it can easily be set to backup only newer/changed files.

 

[CWatters]

Yeah I recommend Drive Image. I've used Ghost as well and prefer DI, mainly
because it allows you to schedule a backup.

 

[Shenan Stanley]

Yeah I recommend Drive Image. I've used Ghost as well and prefer DI,
mainly because it allows you to schedule a backup.

In case you did not know..

http://www.symantec.com/press/2003/n031208.html

 

[Rick Brandt]

Yeah I recommend Drive Image. I've used Ghost as well and prefer DI, mainly
because it allows you to schedule a backup.

Just as an FYI. Ghost can possibly create a bad NTFS image that will still
verify and not let you know its bad until you actually try to restore from it.
I lost my work PC contents last year when all three of my images had this
problem.

 

[Mark]

I also use Drive Image (5.0). Although I've been quite happy with it, there
have been a couple of times I've tried to restore an image and have gotten
an error "1831 Image file not found" when trying to select the image when
restoring it. I believe that the image file was corrupted when taking the
image. This has happened several times. However, whenever I've used a
non-corrupt image file, the restore worked every time (probably 3 or 4 times
for me now). I believe that the corrupt image file problem can be detected
by doing a verify on it after taking it (a step I had not done), and then
re-taking the image if it gets corrupted. The powerquest web site said that
this problem could occur if the "Verify image" is check during the image
creation process. However, I never did select that image and still got
corrupted images.

Anybody else have that experience?

Mark

 

[dev]

Mark said:

mainly because it allows you to schedule a backup.

I also use Drive Image (5.0). Although I've been quite happy with it,
there have been a couple of times I've tried to restore an image and
have gotten an error "1831 Image file not found" when trying to select
the image when restoring it. I believe that the image file was
corrupted when taking the image. This has happened several times.
However, whenever I've used a non-corrupt image file, the restore
worked every time (probably 3 or 4 times for me now). I believe that
the corrupt image file problem can be detected by doing a verify on it
after taking it (a step I had not done), and then re-taking the image
if it gets corrupted. The powerquest web site said that this problem
could occur if the "Verify image" is check during the image creation
process. However, I never did select that image and still got corrupted
images.

Anybody else have that experience?

Verifying the image takes only a minute here when done after the fact.
Will get an error during the write phase, if disk space is insufficient.
During one spell an error message (can't recall which) did appear
repeatedly. Reinstallation solved it.

 

[Mark]

When I verify, it seems to take somewhat longer--45 minutes or so for a
highly compressed image file which is about 2.5G. Maybe its the compression
which makes it take longer.

I've never seen an error message during the image creation process and I
have plenty of space on the disk I'm writing the image too. So I'm still a
little baffled about the images getting corrupted. I use all the default
settings, except that I specify high compression.

Just curious, what kind of verification steps do you do when you restore? Do
you verify the destination drive first? It adds a LOT of time to the restore
process, and I'm wondering how necessary it is.

Mark

 

[Sel'mack]

I have used Norton Ghost hundreds of times in both personal and work
(corporate enviroment). It works great! The key is to test the image if
you are able.

 

[Xlnt]

TrueImage is easier to use than GHOST,
and has wider support for external USB and firewire hard drives, and can
write to NTFS drives, as well as FAT32.

Norton Ghost can write to NTFS volumes as well.

Xlnt

 

[Michael Burk [MSFT]]

If you have backed up all the folders, files, and the registry, you will
grab the settings for every program you have installed. Unless you have
multiple drives and are only looking at backing up one of them, you
shouldn't lose anything. There isn't anywhere for a program to store
settings between computer reboots other than files or the registry.

--
Michael Burk
Longhorn Shell
http://msdn.microsoft.com/longhorn
----===========================----
This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

 

[Alex Nichol]

Is it possible to perform a complete backup of WinXP? I'm thinking not just
files, folders & registry etc, but scheduled tasks etc. Or is the
information on these stored in the registry?

They are in the registry - backed up in any restore point, or you can
make a separate registry backup with ERUNT from
http://home.t-online.de/home/lars.hederer/erunt

Or better is to keep the system partition to a reasonably small size and
back it up by an imaging tool - eg Image for Windows at www.bootitng.com
(shareware)

 

[Duncan Edment]

My apologies to all for the "future-dating" of my post.

I am currently writing a piece of code, and I was testing the calculation of
weeks elapsed. In my haste to post NG messages, I had forgotten to reset my
clock.

As you will see, this has been corrected thanks to someone else pointing it
out to me.

Once again, my apologies to all.

Rgds

Duncan

--
Newsgroups are like one big sandbox that all of us
UseNet kiddies play in with peace & harmony.

Spammers, Cross-Posters, and Lamers are the
people that pee in our big sandbox.

 

[Duncan Edment]

Is it possible to perform a complete backup of WinXP? I'm thinking not just
files, folders & registry etc, but scheduled tasks etc. Or is the
information on these stored in the registry?

Thanks & regards

Duncan

--
Newsgroups are like one big sandbox that all of us
UseNet kiddies play in with peace & harmony.

Spammers, Cross-Posters, and Lamers are the
people that pee in our big sandbox.

 

[Guest]

Have you ever spent ten hours putting all your OS,
programs and settings back in and any Data files you have
created with them. If you downloaded them you will not
have a key to install or a way to get a replacement copy.

A copy is a copy. A Image is a image. A
clone/copy/backup is bootable, it has everything your
original drive has,OS, Programs, Email, Address Book,
Data and Registry. You can update it at anytime, any part
of it. Casper XP does that from the windows platform. I
have had Image files for years, the problem with them is
it's a whole file. You cannot make changes to them, you
cannot access them, you have to restore them. Some will
boot some won't. A image file cannot be written to a
smalled disk unless you can change the partition size to
fit the smaller drive. Lets say you have a 40gb main HDD
with 10 gb of data, you cannot put a image of it on a
20gb disk. If you're up-grading to a larger drive
wouldn't it be nice to have the old drive for a back-up

I have all the backup programs made I think, Drive
Image, Ghost ( 3 versions ), Drive Wizard, Copy
Commander, Drive Back , TrueImage etc. I mentioned Casper-
XP because someone in here made a post about it , I said
what the heck, just another $39.00, I love it. It works
so easy and I have made 30 copies and they all booted,
proof enough for me.
Buy a second Hard drive $69.00 these days and a good
copy/backup program to make a clone. XP-Casper is one.

http://www.fssdev.com/products/ $ 39.00 make the clone
and then un-plug the power to the drive if you want.

Want to test drive a Demo for 30 days. It has some
features disabled.

http://downloads-zdnet.com.com/3000-2248-10161151.html



XP is the most stable of all the windows, but it has the
highest corruption rate i have ever seen. I have Win 3.1,
Win 95 Win98 that never been re-installed , XP machines
have been done 10 times. At some point you have to wonder
what your time is worth.

I mentioned the second drive because the backup/clone is
made at IDE speed. Change two plugs and your back
running with 5 min of down time. Just the filters on my
mail program make it worth it to me.

 

[Al Dykes]

I have used Norton Ghost hundreds of times in both personal and work
(corporate enviroment). It works great! The key is to test the image if
you are able.

This is fine if you are using Ghost for deployment, but impossible
if you are have one PC, with one disk, and you want to do full backups.

 

[Xlnt]

This is fine if you are using Ghost for deployment, but impossible
if you are have one PC, with one disk, and you want to do full backups.

Actually, it depends on the number of volumes you have. If you have on disk
with two or more partitions you can store the backup to another partition.

Xlnt