Format w/o reinstalling programs

[Guest]

This may be a dumb question, but.... Is there any kind of utility that I can
copy my hard disk programs/files to another hard drive (mirror) where I don't
have to reinstall all my programs after reformatting my hard drive? XP SP2
Pro.
thanks.

 

[Omkarnath]

google for norton ghost

 

[DL]

Imaging software will copy the disk in entirety, so if you have problems
they will be reproduced.
So why do you think you need to format?

 

[Rock]

This may be a dumb question, but.... Is there any kind of utility that I
can
copy my hard disk programs/files to another hard drive (mirror) where I
don't
have to reinstall all my programs after reformatting my hard drive? XP
SP2
Pro.
thanks.

No. After a format, programs need to be reinstalled from original media.

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

This may be a dumb question, but.... Is there any kind of utility
that I can copy my hard disk programs/files to another hard drive
(mirror) where I don't have to reinstall all my programs after
reformatting my hard drive? XP SP2 Pro.

No. If you reformat your drive, you will have to reinstall Windows. And if
you reinstall Windows, you will have to reinstall all your programs Except
for an occasional very small simple program, all programs have entries
referring to them in the registry (as well as elsewhere). If you reinstall
Windows, all those entries are lost, and the program won't work

You can back up your data, so that isn't lost if you ever reformat, but
backing up programs is useless.

 

[Jonny]

This may be a dumb question, but.... Is there any kind of utility that I
can
copy my hard disk programs/files to another hard drive (mirror) where I
don't
have to reinstall all my programs after reformatting my hard drive? XP
SP2
Pro.
thanks.

Formatting creates a file table in a condition that suggest no files exist.
If no files exist per the file table, no files can be found for use. That
includes both the operating system and any applications.

Cloning and imaging are two common methods used for copying a partition and
its contents intact. These provide the partitioning and formatting needed
for restoring the original partition. No user formatting or partitioning is
needed.

 

[P. Johnson]

This may be a dumb question, but.... Is there any kind of utility that I
can copy my hard disk programs/files to another hard drive (mirror) where
I don't have to reinstall all my programs after reformatting my hard
drive?

No, unfortunately, Windows programs have an obnoxious tendency to save their
settings in the Windows registry instead of in your personal Documents and
Settings folder or for system-wide program settings in Program Files.
Because of this, reinstalling Windows means reinstalling your programs,
too.

The workaround to avoid this in the future is to install Windows, all the
patches and your software and all it's patches, then use something like
Ghost or SystemImager to create an image of your OS onto an external hard
drive for safekeeping. Then next time you need to reinstall, you only have
to spend 20 minutes reimaging your hard drive to a ready-to-use system
instead of 20 hours reinstalling everything.