Backing up a hard drive

chameleon · Amateur Joined: 05 Jul 2007 Posts: 49

I want to create a complete backup of my C drive onto an external HDD as I have never had much luck with hard drives in the past. What would i need to use to create a complete, bootable copy that I could just plug in and the computer will recognise? will NTbackup in XP copy everything including boot and system files? Or do I have to use something like Norton ghost?

BrianJohnHunt · Innovator Joined: 05 May 2007 Posts: 170

Chameleon,

You are going to need some Drive Image software - normal backups will not cut the mustard for this task.

I have heard that Acronis is a good one - but I have only used it for incremental backups and have never attempted to restore a complete image.

http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/products/trueimage/

Needless to say, you will not be running your image copy as well as your original will you Wink

Regards
Brian.

Eu · Master Ambassador Joined: 02 May 2007 Posts: 2983

Both Ghost and Acronis are good bets.

chameleon · Amateur Joined: 05 Jul 2007 Posts: 49

I used a copy of Ghost I had lurking around, but the image drive isnt the same size as the original. Theres about a 3G discrepancy (Approx 25G as opposed to the originals 28G) had a looky through some of the files and windows is a different size, so are a few others but I cant see whats missing?
And no, it is completely legit as I have had about 3 or 4 HDD die on me over the years so I aint putting all my eggs in one drive again (especially as my Main drive is raid0!)

Eu · Master Ambassador Joined: 02 May 2007 Posts: 2983

I believe acronis has a time based trial and you could test that. Both should provide some sort of compression with the backup but I cannot comment on your results.