External Hard drive cannot boot to windows Operating system-WHAT!?

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Guest

After buying a Maxtor external hard drive USB 2.0, the people at Maxtor told
me that it cannot boot to a Windows operating system. They told me that I
would need the correct drivers and told me to look to see what devices are
supported by Acronis 8.0. True Image which is the imaging software I want to
buy. They told me to purchase Norton Ghost instead. They also told me to go
online and search Google for the right devices and drivers. Only problem
is...I DON"T KNOW WHAT THE FRICK THEY"RE TALKIN' ABOUT. I am a complete
beginner when it comes to backing up a computer and I am getting extremely
frustrated. Thank you to those readers who have read this so far, now I need
your help. Aaaaaaarrrrgggghh!!!

Tbone Man...smileymad '_'
 
Tbone,

Both Tru Image 8 and Ghost 9 work well for backing up disks of partitions
within Windows XP though Ghost is sometimes difficult to start. To restore
the whole of your system disk you have to boot into a specail recovery
environment before Windows is started. "They" are talking about the drivers
that will be written by your backup software to a "Rescue Disk"* to boot
your PC in case you have a total crash.
*[ A bootable CD or several floppies the first of which is bootable.]

If you have a disaster and cannot boot your PC into your Windows
installation then you can use the Rescue Disk to boot into a special
virtual environment where you can see the backup image you created- on an
idle HDD or external HDD or high capcity DVD in a compatible DVD drive. I
believe Acronis True Image will have the drivers you need.

Personally I think that Acronis True Image is more reliable that Ghost 9
[which is actually a renamed version of Drive Image 7 by Powerquest's who
were bought up last year by Symantec].

Go to the Acronis web site http://www.acronis.com/ and check that True Image
8 will work OK with your Maxtor HDD. If they confirm that it will then go
ahead and buy True Image 8. If you decide to buy Ghost 9 just pray that you
will not have to use it for dsiaster recovery because it is as likely to
help you as Father Christmas.

Good luck!

John Butler
 
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