Use Windows Explorer to back up hard drive

[computer_user]

Hi, would it be possible to connect a second hard drive to my computer,
go into Explorer, and just copy all the contents of drive C: onto drive
E:? Would this make a duplicate copy of my hard drive which I could
use to boot from as a replacement in case of 1st hard drive failure?

 

[Al Dykes]

Hi, would it be possible to connect a second hard drive to my computer,
go into Explorer, and just copy all the contents of drive C: onto drive
E:? Would this make a duplicate copy of my hard drive which I could
use to boot from as a replacement in case of 1st hard drive failure?

Nope. You can back up your data as long as your applications are cloes
(for example, you can't backup your Outlook mail while it's running.)

ntbackup.exe (part of the NT/w2k/XP) can make a valid backup but
restoring a system disk is easy, but a PITA if you've never done it
before. If you setup ntbackup to run daily and sh*t happens yoiu can
always get help recovering. E: had to be formatted as NTFS to back up
anything more than 4GB.

 

[Ed Light]

Try bootitng.com.


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[computer_user]

Nope. You can back up your data as long as your applications are cloes
(for example, you can't backup your Outlook mail while it's running.)

ntbackup.exe (part of the NT/w2k/XP) can make a valid backup but
restoring a system disk is easy, but a PITA if you've never done it
before. If you setup ntbackup to run daily and sh*t happens yoiu can
always get help recovering. E: had to be formatted as NTFS to back up
anything more than 4GB.


--

a d y k e s @ p a n i x . c o m

Don't blame me. I voted for Gore.

What about if I hook two hard drives (one good, and the other blank) up
to a third running system, and copy one to the other? For instance,
from drive E: to drive F: ? Can I make a bootable copy of the good one?

 

[computer_user]

Like a 10GB copy, all installed and ready to use.....

????

 

[Al Dykes]

What about if I hook two hard drives (one good, and the other blank) up
to a third running system, and copy one to the other? For instance,
from drive E: to drive F: ? Can I make a bootable copy of the good one?

You can't use explorer, or xcopy to copy a booted partition (C.


You need a product like Acronis True Image (my choice), Ghost, or
bootitng. I'm sure there are others.

 

[computer_user]

You can't use explorer, or xcopy to copy a booted partition (C.


You need a product like Acronis True Image (my choice), Ghost, or
bootitng. I'm sure there are others.

No, I mean, what if I have three hard drives in all.

 

[computer_user]

No, I mean, what if I have three hard drives in all.

Can I copy one non booted drive to another non booted drive?

 

[Ed Light]

No, I mean, what if I have three hard drives in all.

Can I copy one non booted drive to another non booted drive?

You can copy the files but the part that makes it boot when it's the master
won't be copied. That's why you need booting -- you can do it with the trial
version. When it asks to install, cancel and it will go into maintenance
mode, in which you can copy a partition from one drive to the other. Unless
the target drive is smaller.


--
Ed Light

Smiley :-/
MS Smiley :-\

Send spam to the FTC at
(e-mail address removed)
Thanks, robots.

 

[Folkert Rienstra]

Hi, would it be possible to connect a second hard drive to my computer,
go into Explorer, and just copy all the contents of drive C: onto drive
E:? Would this make a duplicate copy of my hard drive which I could
use to boot from as a replacement in case of 1st hard drive failure?

If your OS is Win98 you can get pretty close if you do a sys c: e: somewhere
along the line. That will solve the bootsector issues. Using explorer is a pain
because it will stop copying as soon as a file supposedly can't be copied, such
as the registry. Personally, I use a combination of Explorer and FileSync.
Explorer to copy the bulk that can be easily copied and FileSync to copy
anything that wasn't copied yet and safeguard that I didn't forget anything.
For Win2k/XP you have to find alternatives to solve the bootsector issue

 

[computer_user]

You can copy the files but the part that makes it boot when it's the master
won't be copied. That's why you need booting -- you can do it with the trial
version. When it asks to install, cancel and it will go into maintenance
mode, in which you can copy a partition from one drive to the other. Unless
the target drive is smaller.

where can I get the trial version? Also, I don't have partitions.
What if I had three different removable hard drives connected. Would
it work to copy one to the other?

 

[Ed Light]

where can I get the trial version? Also, I don't have partitions.
What if I had three different removable hard drives connected. Would
it work to copy one to the other?

bootitng.com It is the full version but if you install it to HD it will
eventually beep you out of existence until you pay for it (I knew a fellow
this happened to). But you'll only need to make the floppy and boot from
that.

Your HD probably has just one main partition. There has to be at least one.
You'll see it in bing's maintenance mode when clicking on Partitions or
Partition Work or whatever that is. That's the only part of bing you'll
need.

Think of partitions as file cabinets on the HD. Think of the HD as one room
for data. There has to be one file cabinet. There can be more.

Before using bing it's best to defragment.

You can copy the partition to another hd and that hd will take on the
attributes of the first.

Actually, if the target hd is smaller but you don't have more data than will
fit, you can shrink the partition first, but must back it up before that to
be safe.

If the target hd is bigger, you can expand the copied partition to fit.

bing's a little unintuitive. In partition work you'll see on the upper left
a list of hd's. Assuming the source is the master it will be the first.
Click on that and on the right you'll see a partition, or more than 1 if
there are any. You'll click on the partition and click on copy.

Then click on the target drive on the left. Click on the free empty space on
the right. Click paste. bing will copy it over.

Then if there's free space after the copy, click on it then click resize.
Reduce free space before and after to 0 (zero). Then run it and it will
quickly expand the partition to fill the drive.

It should be all set.

PS Don't get tempted by the Create EMBR button. For your purposes, forget
that. It's for people who want to install bing and boot with it; they can
then have more than the usual number of allowed partitions. For instance,
they could have 10 partitions, each with a different os, and boot from any
one of them.

Ed Light

Smiley :-/
MS Smiley :-\

Send spam to the FTC at
(e-mail address removed)
Thanks, robots.

 

[computer_user]

failure?

If your OS is Win98 you can get pretty close if you do a sys c: e: somewhere
along the line. That will solve the bootsector issues. Using explorer is a pain
because it will stop copying as soon as a file supposedly can't be copied, such
as the registry. Personally, I use a combination of Explorer and FileSync.
Explorer to copy the bulk that can be easily copied and FileSync to copy
anything that wasn't copied yet and safeguard that I didn't forget anything.
For Win2k/XP you have to find alternatives to solve the bootsector

issue

Is it possible to do this if the disk you want to copy is booted? For
instance, close all applications except Explorer and copy C: to E:? Or
did you mean only if I had three physical hard drives, and were, for
instance copying Eseperate removable drive) to Fseperate removable
drive), while booting off C:?

How does your method compare to Bing, and how long does it take to copy
10GB?

 

[Folkert Rienstra]

Is it possible to do this if the disk you want to copy is booted?

It doesn't matter whether it is booted, what matters is that files aren't
held captive by the system that is booted and these can be on any drive.

For instance, close all applications except Explorer and copy C: to E:?

That solves problems with applications but not windows itself.

Or did you mean only if I had three physical hard drives, and were, for
instance copying Eseperate removable drive) to Fseperate removable
drive), while booting off C:?

When no files are open then Explorer should do fine.