The point of XPs Backup?

[Guest]

What is the point?
I backed up a few folders last night, and then I looked at
the backup size, and it is barely a tenth smaller than the
origional folder. 3.42GB to 3.31GB. La-de-freakin-da.

Wouldn't it just be easier to copy the folder to my other
hard drive? This way I wouldn't have to run the slow
restore thing, I could just copy the folder back to where
it belongs if I ever crashed my computer.

Is there any way to compress the files when I am doing my
backup? I don't want to zip it afterwards, because if I
was doing that, I would just copy the folder and zip the
whole thing rather than backing it up first because
skipping the backup would save time.

If I want to backup the entire hard drive, OS and all (is
this even doable?), I would need a second (empty) hard
drive of almost the exact same size to put the backed up
file because it is so big? This seems like a little bit
of a waste to me.

 

[Rob Schneider]

What is the point?
I backed up a few folders last night, and then I looked at
the backup size, and it is barely a tenth smaller than the
origional folder. 3.42GB to 3.31GB. La-de-freakin-da.

Wouldn't it just be easier to copy the folder to my other
hard drive? This way I wouldn't have to run the slow
restore thing, I could just copy the folder back to where
it belongs if I ever crashed my computer.

Is there any way to compress the files when I am doing my
backup? I don't want to zip it afterwards, because if I
was doing that, I would just copy the folder and zip the
whole thing rather than backing it up first because
skipping the backup would save time.

If I want to backup the entire hard drive, OS and all (is
this even doable?), I would need a second (empty) hard
drive of almost the exact same size to put the backed up
file because it is so big? This seems like a little bit
of a waste to me.

The backup program that is delivered as part of Windows XP is basic
(like it's predecessor programs in previous versions of Windows and like
other basic applications in Windows).

You can purchase or obtain a more functional backup program from other
vendors if you need this additional functionality.

 

[David Candy]

Compression is built into the tape drive. Backup is a real backup program with sophisticated tape management. It's meant for servers.