What is the right way to back up the hard drive?

Question

I want to back up the hard drive of my laptop to an external hard drive (160 GB). What is the right way to do it? Shall I copy paste the folders to the new drive or go to START>PROGRAMS>ACCESSORIES>SYSTEM TOOLS>BACKUP ? If the hard drive of my laptop fails, will i require to reload all the softwares I have in it? I do not have a hard drive imaging software, which I guess clones the hard drive of your laptop. If I have that software, will I still the need to reload the softwares or not?

Answer 1

back up only good for documents not software due to registry files needed. back up wont bring registry files if using that. i suggest getting Norton ghost. it will do a full image of drive and when u put that image back on after crash will be like it was when backed up. do use microsoft backup it sucks!

Answer 2

If you want to fully restore your laptop's hard drive within a few hours or less (depending on how much data), then you should purchase a hard drive imaging software. The one I highly recommend is Symantec's Norton Ghost or Norton Save & Restore. Although they have different names, they are basically the same thing, but Ghost is a bit more advanced.



If your entire system crashes, all you need to do is boot from the program install CD, locate the file that contains your hard drive image and either restore the whole thing, or just parts of it, like your photos or important documents.



If you just copy your entire hard drive by using the Copy command, then it will not work.

Answer 3

If you get something like Acronis True Image you can create an "image" of your hard drive, which creates an exact clone. With something like that you would not need to reinstall any programs, just re-clone the drive from the external to the replaced internal. That is the only way to save yourself from having to reinstall the programs, by dragging and dropping, copy/pasting, or using Windows Backup you only get the files, not the registry entries or anything else required by some programs. Some may work, others may not after something like that. Imaging software is your best bet if you would like to do it that way, saving absolutely everything.

Answer 4

Use software called image for windows.

Answer 5

yeh well what you could do it send all of your files to the external and then then if you also want the programs and dont have the installations for them you could download them