What is the process to backup your hard drive and clean your existing hard drive?

[Red]

What is the process to backup your hard drive and clean your existing hard
drive?



I spent some money to have my hard drive eradicated of SPAM and Spy-ware.
And it works beautifully again. I asked the technicians what their process
was and they replied they have hardware and software in the $1000+ to
perform this process.



I do not believe that it cost that much for both software and hardware to
clean a PC hard drive.



It is my understanding I am to

a) Copy my PC hard drive onto another PC hard drive.

b) Reformat my existing PC hard drive

c) Reload Operating system (Windows XP PRO)

d) Copy back from the 2nd PC hard drive onto the original hard drive
Data files only

e) Reload Windows Office and any other software that was originally on
the PC



My QUESTION to whom ever is what is the process to:

1) Backup my PC Hard drive and

2) Hardware and Software need

3) What kind of cost should I expect to pay for these items.

4) Can this be done by connecting an external or internal hard drive to
my existing PC or must I buy another PC to perform this task.



Thanks for your response.

 

[James]

My QUESTION to whom ever is what is the process to:

1) Backup my PC Hard drive and

2) Hardware and Software need

3) What kind of cost should I expect to pay for these items.

4) Can this be done by connecting an external or internal hard drive to
my existing PC or must I buy another PC to perform this task.



Purchase a 2nd hard drive and install it as a slave. Purchase some type of
imaging software like Ghost. Install XP and all it's updates, install all
your software and data. After you get the machine running like you want,
image it to the slave disk drive you installed. Now if you have a failure
or would like to get back to square one it's just a matter of restoring the
image that you originally created. The added disk has the advantage of
being a 2nd place to put important data that you don't want to lose. Total
cost around $100-150 depending on the cost of the disk.

 

[John Barnett MVP]

If you simply want to backup data files, ie letters, spreadsheets etc
contained within the my document folder then simply create a suitable folder
on your second hard drive and copy and paste the files you need over to the
second hard drive.

As an example i have two hard drives on my pc. One contains four operating
systems on seperate partitions, the second hard drive contains a separate
partition for backup and one for imaging (because i image four operating
systems this partition is 40GB in size) Every few days i copy all of the
contents from the My Document file to my backup folder on the second hard
drive. As a fail safe i also copy the files to a dvd.

For imaging the operating system i use Drive Image (now Norton Ghost) This
images the whole of the operating system partition and is best done when you
have reinstalled your operating system, activated windows and installed all
your other software. Don't image until you are satisfied that everything is
working ok. Now this image is the 'main' image. In other words if anything
goes wrong you can reinmage this back to the original partition and
everything is back to normal. I also periodically take a another image, such
as when i update my pc, etc. But i only do this if everything is working ok.

Now i suggest you visit my website http://xphelpandsupport.mvps.org Click on
the Win XP Faq button and take a look at questions 7, 41 and 85.

You also need to make sure that you have an anti virus application on your
machine and make sure it is updated regularly. AVG anti virus
(www.grisift.com) is free. Also download and use regularly Ad-Aware
(www.lavasfotusa.com) ; Spybot S&D (www.safer-networking.org) and CCleaner
(better know as crap cleaner) (www.ccleaner.com) These applications will
help keep on top of spyware/malware.

All you really need do is by a new internal hard drive or, if you prefer,
and external one. The cost will be dependent upon what size hard drive you
go for. Norton Ghost will certainly not cost a fortune. You certainly will
not be paying anywhere near $1000 + I think the company you used to 'repair'
your pc have resorted to scare tactics to try to keep your business.

You will find loads of information on my website regarding solving problems
(FAQ section). there are also links to othe MVP sites and useful software.
Just take a look and see for yourself.

 

[Ron Martell]

My comments are interspersed.

What is the process to backup your hard drive and clean your existing hard
drive?

You need only to backup the "clean" portions of the hard drive. The
problem is in identifying what is clean and what is contaminated.

I spent some money to have my hard drive eradicated of SPAM and Spy-ware.
And it works beautifully again. I asked the technicians what their process
was and they replied they have hardware and software in the $1000+ to
perform this process.

Most of what you spent was probably for the technician's time. I have
about $10,000 worth of tools and equipment in my own shop (at least).

I do not believe that it cost that much for both software and hardware to
clean a PC hard drive.

There are many good tools available that are free for personal use
only. Using them (legitimately) in a business environment requires
that a license be purchased. And as several different products are
usually needed to clean a system the cost quickly adds up.

It is my understanding I am to

a) Copy my PC hard drive onto another PC hard drive.

b) Reformat my existing PC hard drive

c) Reload Operating system (Windows XP PRO)

d) Copy back from the 2nd PC hard drive onto the original hard drive
Data files only

That is the tough part - deciding what is safe to copy back and what
isn't. Many virus/spyware files intermingle themselves with the
"good" data and it is often difficult to tell one from the other.

e) Reload Windows Office and any other software that was originally on
the PC



My QUESTION to whom ever is what is the process to:

1) Backup my PC Hard drive and

2) Hardware and Software need

3) What kind of cost should I expect to pay for these items.

4) Can this be done by connecting an external or internal hard drive to
my existing PC or must I buy another PC to perform this task.

I do this type of work quite frequently in my business, and my
procedures are a bit different. I generally prefer to clean up the
existing drive rather than to "slash and burn" the drive and then try
to rebuild and restore it without recontaminating.

In order to clean up the drive you need a variety of software tools
and the knowledge and experience to use them correctly.

Here is a list of the software tools that I used on my last cleanup
job:

McAfee Stinger
AVG7 Antivirus
RAV Antivirus online scanner
Trend Micro online antivirus scanner
AdAware SE
Spy Sweeper
Spybot Search & Destroy
CWShredder
HiJackThis

Note that the last item, HiJackThis, requires specific knowledge in
order to identify the problem items as it does not distinguish between
these and the good items.

Hope this is of some assistance.

Good luck


Ron Martell Duncan B.C. Canada
--
Microsoft MVP
On-Line Help Computer Service
http://onlinehelp.bc.ca

In memory of a dear friend Alex Nichol MVP
http://aumha.org/alex.htm

 

[Phillips]

As others mentioned, software free for personal use is not free for
commercial use; hence, you have to pay if you do not use the software for
your own machines at home.
Since it is much cheaper - and more convenient - to do-it-yourself, try to
simplify your work as much as possible. There are many ways to approach this
type of maintenance depending on your hardware (speed, capacity), software,
setup.

The simplest and fail safe is to have an additional internal hard-drive as
well as - for portability, emergency retrieval - at least one flash/pen
drive with your most precious data.
Just make sure that you have a partition where you put anything you need to
backup, and w/in that partition a 'most precious data' folder that you can
copy on the flash drive - compatible size.
Forget the imaging of the C (OS) partition since you can reinstall clean at
any time; you can save your personalized settings and reapply them after
install - to keep it easy.
For synchronizing the data partition with the secondary hard drive, you can
use customizable utilities available on the web - Kareen has such a small
yet convenient tool.
An external hard-drive might come in handy (portability, emergency,
dedicated backup software/routines) but there are complaints about fiability
and price.

Again, this is the simplest you can get and keep some degree of confidence
that you still have your data - or at least the critical ones - with minimal
time/money investment.
Michael

 

[Not Me]

Red,
Imaging (cloning) a drive and backing up essential files are essentially
two different functions. Cloning the drive copies everything so that you
can restore everything exactly as it functioned at the point of the
image. Back up programs essentially copy such things as your personal
files (i.e,, My Documents, address book, E-Mail, etc) which you would
otherwise lose if you had to re-install Windows.
Norton's Ghost 9 [about $70] or Acronis True Image [about $50] are
likely the best known and most used of the disk image programs. User's
of either claim they are effective. There are too many backup programs
to mention (I have Genie Backup Manager Pro 6.0). Look around and pick one.
To keep add ware/spy ware off your computer, download and use the
presently free Microsoft tool from here:
http://www.microsoft.com/athome/security/spyware/software/default.mspx .
There are other free ones such as Spybot and AddAware. If you do not
presently have an anti-virus program, use the free one from AVG.
If your Computer now works as it should, you DO NOT need to do anything
else at present except procure and install an additional Hard Drive.
You received some bad guidance/advice.
The Computer shop probably has thousands of dollars in hardware/software
available but did not use anywhere near that much to clean your system.
What you mostly paid for was labor and knowledge.
Welcome to the real world of Computer use!
Gene K