Easiest backup?

Dooke of Bertox · Joined: Dec 26, 2002 Posts: 123

Chris said he was going to cover backups during the Help-a-thon, but I either missed it, or he did.

I'm finally going to "catch up" to everyone else and upgrade to XP from 98. I'm really fond of 98, though, so if I don't like XP I want to be able to return to my current settings.

That said, what is the easiest way to backup my system. I thought he said Nero was the easiest/best, but it told me it was going to require 59 CDs. I don't want to sit here for 24 hours swapping out CDRs, nor do I want to waste them.

Is there a quick and easy (reliable) backup that would only require one or two CD-Rs?

Thank you for any assistance

idzant · Joined: Dec 09, 2002 Posts: 175

I love PowerQuest's Drive Image 2002. It's not cheap but it's a wonderful tool to use for backups even after you complete the migration to WinXP. How many CDs you'll need depends upon the amount of data that you'll be backing up.

Have you ever considered just dual-booting Win98 and WinXP? The WinXP installation process makes it really easy and it might be helpful to have Win98 around to fall back on while you get used to WinXP.

HTH
.:idzant:.

goretsky · Posted: Tue Dec 31, 2002 12:16 am Post subject:

Hello,

This may not be very cost-effective, but have you considered getting a new hard drive, installing the operating system and your applications to it, and then copying the data from your old hard drive to your new hard drive? You can then keep the old hard drive on a shelf as a backup .

The advantage to this is that if you do not like the new environment, you can immediately go back to the previous one by installing the older hard drive.

Regards,

Aryeh Goretsky

User: inactive Posts:

goretsky,

That is fine...but it would be more cost efficient to get DriveImage as suggested earlier and burn images.....DriveImage compresses the images 50% so you could image a 10 gig drive with say 6 gigs of files with 5-10 700mb cds

I use it faithfully several times a week.....Drive Image is the most used file I have and it has paid for itself many, many times....I don't mind screwing up my windows drive. I just restore the latest image....or any earlier image...and I am back in business with NO loss of data and no having to reinstall windows...

albert

SLam · Joined: Dec 12, 2002 Posts: 4

There's also Ghost 2003, but I would still recommend Drive Image 2002.

goretsky · Posted: Tue Dec 31, 2002 2:00 am Post subject:

Hello,

Using a drive imaging program is definitely one way to go--I was just thinking it might be more convenient to be able to "recover" a system by plugging the old hard drive back into the computer without having to spend time reloading a backup.

Of course, it is a good idea to regularly perform back ups. The "hard drive on a shelf" approach was strictly for convenience.

Plus, justification for buying a newer, bigger hard drive.

Regards,

Aryeh Goretsky

User: inactive Posts:

goretsky....

gotcha!!!!!!!! a very good way indeedie.... Wink

albert

ikara · Joined: Jan 01, 2003 Posts: 145

I wholeheartedly agree with the hard-drive on the self approach,
you can get disk maintenance software downloaded from some of the manufacturers sites, they will easily copy everything from one drive to the other on a regular basis.
Now no matter what disaster happens to your hard drive you can quickly get back up on air by swapping drives.
I always do this before I get an update from microsoft, they have screwed my hard drive before.

That time was a sad story of dishonesty or incompetance of a computer repairer, he told me he couldn't get my disk going again, I would have to buy an other one, I did but from someone else. And then with the downloaded repair program from Maxtor I was able to get my original one going again. I don't understand why he couldn't have done the same thing for me.

I am glad now, It is an ill wind that blows no good. Smile