My system has a internial H.D. thats a 250 G.B in size ,aprx 10 G.B. currently being used .PC is a little over a year old. About 6 months or so ago I became infected with a nasty piece of either spyware or a trojan that completly destroyed the factory install of WindowsXP MCE 2005. I have Norton Security Suite on my PC and all the definitions where up to date ! Anyway my PC became completly useable,I could not perform a factory restore due to a lost administrator password ! S o I performed a fresh install of O/S. A friend of mine suggested I get a externial H.D. and back up the entire system once a week or so ! I was at a electronics store and they had a Seagate Free Agent Externial H.D. 320 G.B. it was on sale for a great price of only $68 . This drive did not come with any CD ,drivers etc ,it said it was simply plug and play ,so Iam curious as to how I get my entire system backup'ed onto the externial H.D. form the intenial one ? Can someone give me an ide of how this task would be performed ?
All Replies Appreciated , Thanks
Nick

"A friend of mine suggested I get a externial H.D."

Let me guess...your neighbor who is a programmer? lol!

You have GOT to learn how to use google!

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/...

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&...

http://www.acronis.com

Let me guess...your neighbor who is a programmer? lol!

Beware Google. Google is unforgiving. Google doesn't forget anything we post on the net. Google can haunt us for the rest of our lives :-)

i_Xp/VistaUser

WebsWonder suggests Acronis. It's an imaging program that will make an image file on the external drive. If anything goes wrong you can boot from the Acronis CD and restore your system drive from the image.

I prefer Ghost, but they both accomplish the same thing. Backing up once a week might be a little extreme, but that's up to you. I make a new backup whenever I make any major changes to the system. I also keep the last few images and drop off some the older ones.

Nick

Newer versions of Ghost allow for incremental backup. That means Ghost will create a file that writes ONLY the changes since the last image.

I don't know if acronis has such a feature.

I immediately backup any personal files I create. System backup is performed on a as needed basis determined by major changes to the system.

When performing those backups create folders so the drive can be used for multiple backups and/or other files. If the stuff is really important I suggest burning it to disk.

Excellent advice from Othehill. Since you have so much free pace on your OS drive you might consider two backups, one to a DVD and/or a folder on your OS drive and the other to the external drive.
I keep multiple copies of my backups. I have been burned more than once by a defective backup.

If you only have one partition, create another one and store your data on that. Then, if the OS crashes, you won't lose your data.

You can then just copy and paste your data to the external drive; no need for a backup program unless you want to do that.

Life's more painless for the brainless.

Jennifer gave a different spin on what I meant by immediately backing up personal files.

The reason to image the boot partition, at least, is to save loads of aggrevation should you need to restore/ replace the installation there. Not totally necessay if you keep track of all your installation disks.

Acronis has had the incremental feature for some time.............I believe at least 3 years!!

Another vote for Acronis, also handy for backing up personal files and folders. This program can be set to run at sheduled times in the event you don't remember to do it yourself.

Vote 2 for Acronis.

But don't use the automatic
incremental backup.

Why? Well if you want to backup a virus that will bring your system down....then i guess it is ok.

Backing up on a removable disk is super.

I want to thank everyone for their replies .I have been using google a my main search engine for 8 years .My neighbor suggested the externial H.D. as a back up option ,however he has a Western Digitial H.D.a E-Book which after reading some reviews on ,I decided against ,apprently they have a tendency to die after a year of use ,the drive I picked after doing some research is given anywhere from 9 out of 10 points or even 10 out of 10(via CNET) ! The creating another partition on my exsisting H.D. sounds like a good idea ,however if the internial H.D. should have a serious failure making it comletely unreadable ,even the items backed up to the partition would be useless. Seagate has alot of freeware backup options available for download and instructions on how to use it in Adobe Reader format ! Again thanks to all ,and just so you know I take all suggestions or idea's from others as simply a well meaning suggestion ,I always do my own research .I have two neighbors who are programmers ,however one is a engineer who writes device drivers for wireless systems ,he heads up teams of prgrammers ,he is very hard to access for information ,on the other hand the other neighbor works for a company an HMO as their in house programmer .I believe the first one has 20+ years exprience ,the second on has probably been working as a programmer for much less time ,Iam guessing however he is to young to have the exprience of the other guy !
Take Care to All
Nick
P.S. Price had some impact on my choice ,regular price was around $128.00 ,I purchased it for $68.00 on sale ! A Seagate Free Agent 320 G.B. externial H.D. USB !