/senior/ said:
Byte said:
Spend a few bucks on what? He states "I have a program that came with a
WD
External hard drive and Nero program with backup ability." The only app
he
could spend money on would by Symantec's Norton/Ghost and that would be a
waste. Depending on the size of the Western Digital external harddrive,
he
could possibly backup his entire harddrive. He is mainly concerned about
his
Documents and settings (?) folder.
In my view, dev's suggestions have a great deal of merit, although I must
admit I would like to know more about senior's precise objective(s) when he
or she states that "(I'm) trying to decide how to back up my C Drive."
So let me pose these questions to "senior"...
(But before I do, senior, please - in the future - indicate a more apt
description of your problem or issue as the subject. Entries like "Patience
with a senior" are really useless. Just state the problem or issue in
summary form as best you can.)
1. Are you looking for a backup system that, in effect, will back up your
entire system, including the operating system, all your programs and created
data, or are you just looking for a backup program that will back up the
documents you created? If it's the latter in which you're primarily or
exclusively interested, then the backup programs you have at hand, the one
that was included with your WD external HD or the Nero program or even the
built-in one in XP would seem to fit your needs.
2. But I get the impression you're looking for something more comprehensive,
in terms of a backup system. A system that, should your day-to-day working
HD become defective or corrupt for one reason or another, you would be able
to restore the system to its previous functional state including restoration
of the operating system, all programs & data - in short, everything that was
formerly contained on that previously functional drive. If that *is* your
objective, then dev's suggestions have a good deal of merit in my opinion.
What he or she is saying is that a disk imaging program such as Symantec's
Norton Ghost or Acronis True Image (there are plenty others including the
one dev mentions) can be used in a routine fashion to "clone" the contents
of your internal HD to your USB external HD. In that way you would have, for
all practical purposes, an exact duplicate of the source drive. So that in
the event your internal HD was no longer usable, you could clone the
contents of the USBEHD back to that internal HD (assuming it was
mechanically/electronically non-defective) or a new HD should it be needed.
Thus, you entire system would be restored.
Yes, you would need a bit of study to use these disk imaging programs, but
as that trite saying goes "This ain't rocket science!". By & large they're
relatively simple & straightforward to use and they're quite effective.
Anna
