XP home backup utility

[Roland Young]

I have XP Home pre-installed on my PC, but the CD was not supplied with the
computer (as I understand it, Microsoft has stopped including the CD with
new systems to combat piracy?).

I want to backup my system. As the necessary tools are on the XP CD, which I
don't have, is there anywhere they can be downloaded from? I am referring in
particular to Windows XP Backup, Restore, and Automated System Recovery.

I plan to backup my system to a second HDD which is large enough to store
twice the amount of data I have on my main disk. How is using the backup
utility different from just copying the whole drive to the second HDD and
then disconnecting it from the PC (it is a USB HDD) to isolate it? If my
main disk were to fail, would it be possible just to connect the second disk
and have it running again?

Any help would be appreciated. I searched for downloads of the necessary XP
utilities but didn't find anything.

 

[Star Fleet Admiral Q]

FYI - MS had nothing to do with your New PC not having a WinXP CD - your PC
manufacturer did that to skim dollars off the cost of your PC (so don't
blame MS). Also, many reputable PC manufacturers (not the fly by night or I
don't care about my customer manufacturers) still supply an original WinXP
OEM version of either the Home or Professional edition, although be it BIOS
locked to the PC it was installed on.

 

[Jack E. Frost]

Copying the entire drive to another would serve very little purpose in using it as a backup. If you want an exact, usable copy of your HD you will need to make a mirror copy.

However, copying all your important files to another drive is an ideal way to save data. I use it on a regular basis.
I have XP Home pre-installed on my PC, but the CD was not supplied with the
computer (as I understand it, Microsoft has stopped including the CD with
new systems to combat piracy?).

I want to backup my system. As the necessary tools are on the XP CD, which I
don't have, is there anywhere they can be downloaded from? I am referring in
particular to Windows XP Backup, Restore, and Automated System Recovery.

I plan to backup my system to a second HDD which is large enough to store
twice the amount of data I have on my main disk. How is using the backup
utility different from just copying the whole drive to the second HDD and
then disconnecting it from the PC (it is a USB HDD) to isolate it? If my
main disk were to fail, would it be possible just to connect the second disk
and have it running again?

Any help would be appreciated. I searched for downloads of the necessary XP
utilities but didn't find anything.

 

[Rock]

I have XP Home pre-installed on my PC, but the CD was not supplied with the
computer (as I understand it, Microsoft has stopped including the CD with
new systems to combat piracy?).

I want to backup my system. As the necessary tools are on the XP CD, which I
don't have, is there anywhere they can be downloaded from? I am referring in
particular to Windows XP Backup, Restore, and Automated System Recovery.

I plan to backup my system to a second HDD which is large enough to store
twice the amount of data I have on my main disk. How is using the backup
utility different from just copying the whole drive to the second HDD and
then disconnecting it from the PC (it is a USB HDD) to isolate it? If my
main disk were to fail, would it be possible just to connect the second disk
and have it running again?

Any help would be appreciated. I searched for downloads of the necessary XP
utilities but didn't find anything.

You can download ntbackup.msi from here:
http://www.onecomputerguy.com/software/ntbackup.msi

 

[Don MI]

I have XP Home pre-installed on my PC, but the CD was not supplied with the
computer (as I understand it, Microsoft has stopped including the CD with
new systems to combat piracy?).

I want to backup my system. As the necessary tools are on the XP CD, which
I don't have, is there anywhere they can be downloaded from? I am
referring in particular to Windows XP Backup, Restore, and Automated
System Recovery.

I plan to backup my system to a second HDD which is large enough to store
twice the amount of data I have on my main disk. How is using the backup
utility different from just copying the whole drive to the second HDD and
then disconnecting it from the PC (it is a USB HDD) to isolate it? If my
main disk were to fail, would it be possible just to connect the second
disk and have it running again?

Any help would be appreciated. I searched for downloads of the necessary
XP utilities but didn't find anything.

What you are look for is an image program such as Norton Ghost Version 9
{Google for other image programs}. Norton Ghost Version 9 will create an
image on your USB hard drive which you can use to restore your system if you
have a hard drive failure. Norton Ghost Version 9 also allows you to restore
selected folders or files and to create incremental images as you would be
able to with a backup program.

If you copy your hard drive to your USB drive, you would not be able to just
connect the USB drive and boot from that drive because your BIOS is not
likely to have the drivers need to recognize the USB drive.

Don

 

[Blair]

What you are look for is an image program such as Norton Ghost Version 9
{Google for other image programs}. Norton Ghost Version 9 will create an
image on your USB hard drive which you can use to restore your system if you
have a hard drive failure. Norton Ghost Version 9 also allows you to restore
selected folders or files and to create incremental images as you would be
able to with a backup program.

If you copy your hard drive to your USB drive, you would not be able to just
connect the USB drive and boot from that drive because your BIOS is not
likely to have the drivers need to recognize the USB drive.

Don

I agree with Don it is essential to use a ghost image but I would strongly
recommend Acronis True Image which I think is the easiest system to use and
also allows individual files to be restored as well as the whole system
Blair

 

[Plato]

http://www.bootdisk.com/html.htm

 

[Gene K]

I have XP Home pre-installed on my PC, but the CD was not supplied
with the computer (as I understand it, Microsoft has stopped
including the CD with new systems to combat piracy?).

I want to backup my system. As the necessary tools are on the XP CD,
which I don't have, is there anywhere they can be downloaded from? I
am referring in particular to Windows XP Backup, Restore, and
Automated System Recovery.
I plan to backup my system to a second HDD which is large enough to
store twice the amount of data I have on my main disk. How is using
the backup utility different from just copying the whole drive to the
second HDD and then disconnecting it from the PC (it is a USB HDD) to
isolate it? If my main disk were to fail, would it be possible just
to connect the second disk and have it running again?

Any help would be appreciated. I searched for downloads of the
necessary XP utilities but didn't find anything.

You can get the backup program from here:
http://www.onecomputerguy.com/windowsxp_tips.htm#backup_home

 

[Colin Barnhorst]

Inclusion of the cd is a manufacturer's decision, not Microsoft. Search for
ntbackup.msi, but don't be surprised if the search comes up empty. Backup
and restore are procedures to save the contents of your hard disk. It is
not an imaging program and the saved file is not an executable version of
the hard drive. A backup must be restored in order for you to recover a
hard drive. The saved file is not something you can hook up and run. If
you are unable to find Backup.exe on your hard drive, you can install it
from any version of Windows XP, so if you have a friend or relative with an
XP cd you can follow the directions from this link to install it:
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/setup/learnmore/bott_03july14.mspx
There are other choices for backup programs and some are listed at the end
of the article.

 

[Guest]

I am also trying to back up my computer. (I've never done this!!) I used the
XP backup utility, but now I don't know where to save the file! I tried
zipping it and copying it to a CD, but it's too large. I don't have a "split"
hard drive, so I just have it sitting in a file in My Documents. I'm assuming
this is not the right way to do this. Can anyone help me in simple terms?? Do
I need to buy software like Norton Ghost, or should I "rent" space from a
vendor and save the file that way? (That seems a little dangerous to me,
seeing as I have all our financial records in Money files. )

Thanks,

 

[Rock]

I am also trying to back up my computer. (I've never done this!!) I used the
XP backup utility, but now I don't know where to save the file! I tried
zipping it and copying it to a CD, but it's too large. I don't have a "split"
hard drive, so I just have it sitting in a file in My Documents. I'm assuming
this is not the right way to do this. Can anyone help me in simple terms?? Do
I need to buy software like Norton Ghost, or should I "rent" space from a
vendor and save the file that way? (That seems a little dangerous to me,
seeing as I have all our financial records in Money files. )

Thanks,

You have discovered the basic limitation of Ntbackup. It will not span
CD's. You are correct. Saving the backup on the same hard drive gives
you no protection. There are several options. One is to purchase a DVD
writer. Get a CD-R/RW/DVD-R/RW combo drive so you can read/write both
CD's and DVD's. DVD's store 4.7 GB. After the backup burn it to DVD.
You will need 3rd party burning software, such as Nero or Roxio because
XP cannot write to DVDs natively. Depending on the size of your hard
drive that still might not be enough. Another choice is an external
hard drive. That's what I use -- a 250 GB Western Digital external USB2
drive. Ntbackup will write to an external drive.

Another choice with just the CD writer you have is a backup program like
Backup MyPC from Stompsoft. It is an excellent program, can backup to
CD's and DVDs and can span CD's so if the backup needs 5 CD' it will do
that.

The third option is to use a disk imaging program like Symantec's Drive
Image, Norton Ghost, Acronis True Image or BootitNG. This creates a
compressed image of the hard drive. It can't be stored on the same
partition, and storing it on a different partition of the same drive is
no protection. You'll need to put the image on another drive (internal
or external) or on CD or DVD. As long as the CD or DVD burner you have
is supported by the program it can create the backup directly on that
medium, but you need to check that your burner is supported. Restores
can be done of the complete drive or of individual files and folders.
These programs are fast, efficient and easy to use. It is best if you
have an external hard drive to burn the images to.

I use Drive Image with the 250 GB external USB2 hard drive. When I
purchased Drive Image it was from Powerquest. Since then they have been
bought out by Symantec so now it's Symantec's Drive Image. The problem
is that Symantec uses an activation scheme on it's programs and added
that to DI. I like to avoid activation if i can though I am using Norton
AV 2004 which uses activation and has been no problem so far. Once
Symantec bought Powerquest they took the technology from Drive Image and
integrated it with their imaging program, Norton Ghost. I have not
worked with the latest release of Ghost but I am guessing it's much the
same as Drive Image. I have not worked with Acronis True Image but many
people love it. And BootitNG is the lowest cost one of the group, works
well and several in this newsgroup really like it.

Whatever you do, you should have a backup program and backup regularly.
It's not an issue of if but _when_ data loss will occur.

 

[Guest]

You have discovered the basic limitation of Ntbackup. It will not span
CD's. You are correct. Saving the backup on the same hard drive gives
you no protection. There are several options. One is to purchase a DVD
writer. Get a CD-R/RW/DVD-R/RW combo drive so you can read/write both
CD's and DVD's. DVD's store 4.7 GB. After the backup burn it to DVD.
You will need 3rd party burning software, such as Nero or Roxio because
XP cannot write to DVDs natively. Depending on the size of your hard
drive that still might not be enough. Another choice is an external
hard drive. That's what I use -- a 250 GB Western Digital external USB2
drive. Ntbackup will write to an external drive.

Another choice with just the CD writer you have is a backup program like
Backup MyPC from Stompsoft. It is an excellent program, can backup to
CD's and DVDs and can span CD's so if the backup needs 5 CD' it will do
that.

The third option is to use a disk imaging program like Symantec's Drive
Image, Norton Ghost, Acronis True Image or BootitNG. This creates a
compressed image of the hard drive. It can't be stored on the same
partition, and storing it on a different partition of the same drive is
no protection. You'll need to put the image on another drive (internal
or external) or on CD or DVD. As long as the CD or DVD burner you have
is supported by the program it can create the backup directly on that
medium, but you need to check that your burner is supported. Restores
can be done of the complete drive or of individual files and folders.
These programs are fast, efficient and easy to use. It is best if you
have an external hard drive to burn the images to.

I use Drive Image with the 250 GB external USB2 hard drive. When I
purchased Drive Image it was from Powerquest. Since then they have been
bought out by Symantec so now it's Symantec's Drive Image. The problem
is that Symantec uses an activation scheme on it's programs and added
that to DI. I like to avoid activation if i can though I am using Norton
AV 2004 which uses activation and has been no problem so far. Once
Symantec bought Powerquest they took the technology from Drive Image and
integrated it with their imaging program, Norton Ghost. I have not
worked with the latest release of Ghost but I am guessing it's much the
same as Drive Image. I have not worked with Acronis True Image but many
people love it. And BootitNG is the lowest cost one of the group, works
well and several in this newsgroup really like it.

Whatever you do, you should have a backup program and backup regularly.
It's not an issue of if but _when_ data loss will occur.

Please help
I was trying a backup software (NovaBACKUP) to get the EXACT COPY/BACKUP of
my XP Home Ed (at least the drive C, where Windows installed). But, there are
so many skipped files (thousands). So after restoring, many program wont run
anymore. I've been recovering my XP using its original CD-Recovery (came with
the box) cause of this error. I'm using Toshiba Laptop L100.
I search through Google that if I wanna make my own CD-Recovery, I must have
the XP original CD (the source) but I don't have it. But, I found on Windows
folder the i386 dir. Can I use it to create my own CD-Recovery?

I'm new to this "Image" technology. Is it really FULL BACKUP our drive
(partition)? No files will be skipped?

 

[Patrick Keenan]

Please help
I was trying a backup software (NovaBACKUP) to get the EXACT COPY/BACKUP
of
my XP Home Ed (at least the drive C, where Windows installed). But, there
are
so many skipped files (thousands). So after restoring, many program wont
run
anymore. I've been recovering my XP using its original CD-Recovery (came
with
the box) cause of this error. I'm using Toshiba Laptop L100.
I search through Google that if I wanna make my own CD-Recovery, I must
have
the XP original CD (the source) but I don't have it. But, I found on
Windows
folder the i386 dir. Can I use it to create my own CD-Recovery?

I'm new to this "Image" technology. Is it really FULL BACKUP our drive
(partition)? No files will be skipped?

Imaging is really full backup, yes. Every file on a partition or physical
drive is copied, and usually much faster than via backup programs.
Imaging also lets you restore a drive to bootable condition, and backup
programs that don't image can't do this.

I usually use Acronis TrueImage, which has a full-function 15-day free
trial - so you can see how it works for you (or doesn't). It isn't
intrusive. Imaging a drive with 30 gig or so of data, conected via USB2,
usually takes me about half an hour. If you like it, it isn't expensive.

www.acronis.com

The downside of imaging is that images tend to be large, often too large to
fit on a CD or DVD even with compression. This is particularly the case if
you are imaging drives with user data. You may find that you want to
image to an attached hard disk instead. I usually suggest adding a drive in
an external USB2 case, and imaging to that. Also, some imaging programs
(like TrueImage) allow incremental images so that only changed files are
backed up after the initial image. You can schedule the imaging.

Before any kind of full backup or image runs, you should reduce the number
of unnecesary files. Clear out temporary files and temporary internet
files, and turn off hibernation if it's on (hibernation will create a file
in the root that's the size of the installed memory, so in the root there
will be a file that can be between 250 meg and 1 gig or so, depending on
your system). Empty the recycle bin. If you need it, you can turn
hibernation back on after the backup. Be sure all apps are closed, because
backups or images will only deal with what's on disk, not what's in memory.

Sometimes it's helpful to use a combination of imaging and backups. Images
would be taken after any install change in the system, such as adding a new
program. Then identify your user data, and back that up to CD or DVD using
an incremental approach. If the system dies, restore from the image and
then restore the data.

As to creating your own CD from the i386 folder - I've never been able to
get that to work. If you got recovery CDs with your system, unfortunately
that's all you have.

HTH
-pk

 

[DL]

Novabackup is a backup app, not an Imaging app which is what you seem to
want

 

[Guest]

Imaging is really full backup, yes. Every file on a partition or physical
drive is copied, and usually much faster than via backup programs.
Imaging also lets you restore a drive to bootable condition, and backup
programs that don't image can't do this.

I really doubt about the already running programs such as the real-time
antivirus protection (usually on systray). Can Imaging backup them and
restore as well? I've limitted connection at home and regarding to Windows
updates (that really-really many updates now), that's the basic reason why I
wanna backup my windows.

I usually use Acronis TrueImage, which has a full-function 15-day free
trial - so you can see how it works for you (or doesn't). It isn't
intrusive. Imaging a drive with 30 gig or so of data, conected via USB2,
usually takes me about half an hour. If you like it, it isn't expensive.

www.acronis.com

I've the Acronis True Image Home 10 (latest version) trial. I've tried to
create full backup of my C (where Windows, Doccuments and Settings and
Program Files installed). But, because I just have one DVD-R, I canceled the
job then move to Nova BACKUP which is not full restore the backup.

BTW, I thin I'm gonna try Acronis again and see what it does.

Thanks BTW...

 

[Anna]

I really doubt about the already running programs such as the real-time
antivirus protection (usually on systray). Can Imaging backup them and
restore as well? I've limitted connection at home and regarding to Windows
updates (that really-really many updates now), that's the basic reason why
I
wanna backup my windows.

I've the Acronis True Image Home 10 (latest version) trial. I've tried to
create full backup of my C (where Windows, Doccuments and Settings and
Program Files installed). But, because I just have one DVD-R, I canceled
the
job then move to Nova BACKUP which is not full restore the backup.

BTW, I thin I'm gonna try Acronis again and see what it does.

Thanks BTW...

rulirahm:
As Patrick stated, the Acronis True Image program is an excellent program
for creating & establishing a comprehensive backup program. It's really
best, in our opinion to use that program (like most disk imaging programs)
with either another internal HDD or an external USB or Firewire HDD as the
recipient of the clone or the disk image(s) rather than DVDs although that
media can be used where disk images are being used rather than disk-to-disk
clones.

I recently posted to this newsgroup step-by-step instructions for using the
ATI program. If you (or anyone else interested) would like to take a look at
them, so indicate and I'll post them again.
Anna

 

[Chuck Davis]

rulirahm,

The cheapest, and in my opinion the best, solution is to buy and install a
second hard drive (300GB for 80USD). Ntbackup will work just great in this
situation. There is little likelyhood of both hard drives failing at the
same moment is almost nil. Also, on a 300GB drive, there is room for the
initial complete backup and two or three incremental backups.

 

[herbzee]

es.

I recently posted to this newsgroup step-by-step instructions for using the
ATI program. If you (or anyone else interested) would like to take a look at
them, so indicate and I'll post them again.
Anna

Yes, Anna I would like to have these step by step instructions,
Cheers-Herb.

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

rulirahm,

The cheapest, and in my opinion the best, solution is to buy and install a
second hard drive (300GB for 80USD). Ntbackup will work just great in this
situation. There is little likelyhood of both hard drives failing at the
same moment is almost nil.

On the contrary, the likelihood of both drives failing at the same time is
extremely high.

That's because the kind of failure you should be concerned with is not the
normal hard drive crash, but severe power glitches, nearby lightning
strikes, virus attacks, even theft of the computer. Such problems will
likely cause the simultaneous loss of both the original and the backup.
That's why backup to a second permanently installed hard drive is a very
weak form of backup. Change your recommendation to an external hard drive,
which is not connected to the computer except when a backup is in progress,
and it becomes an excellent form of backup.

 

[Guest]

rulirahm:
As Patrick stated, the Acronis True Image program is an excellent program
for creating & establishing a comprehensive backup program. It's really
best, in our opinion to use that program (like most disk imaging programs)
with either another internal HDD or an external USB or Firewire HDD as the
recipient of the clone or the disk image(s) rather than DVDs although that
media can be used where disk images are being used rather than disk-to-disk
clones.

I recently posted to this newsgroup step-by-step instructions for using the
ATI program. If you (or anyone else interested) would like to take a look at
them, so indicate and I'll post them again.
Anna

Yes and of course I really need it. I wanna backup my drive C: (where
Windows installed) to another partition of my HD (drive D. Please give me
the instruction.

Oh, yes, BTW, I set My Documents folder to drive D:. The drive C is NTFS and
drive D: is FAT32.

Thank u so much. I'm waiting for ur reply now...