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Community Newsletter: Q&A: How to back up and restore my PC to the exact same condition it was...
- 8/30/07 3:39 PM
Restoring computer
by o.khater - 8/18/07 5:34 AM In reply to: Restoring Just Like It Was by edbradyYOU can have two operative systems on your computer so copy E BY C and in reverse copy C BY E , keep all your programs and personal things on external Hard Disk and to be copied on DVD FOR ALL.So you will have on DVD THE FOLLOWING C-operative system1,E-operative system2,ALL PROGRAMS,PERSONAL THINGS.
Restoring
by me4 - 8/25/07 11:56 AM In reply to: Restoring Just Like It Was by edbradyWhen you make a HDD disk image, does it also image the hidden files that may also be in RAM (like the registry)?
Hidden Files and RAM
by spacepirate1 - 8/31/07 10:48 AM In reply to: Restoring by me4You're confused. The RAM is the memory which is on chips. RAM is used to actually run your programs. The computer copies the data from the storage media, which is usually your hard drive (ROM by the way), to the RAM and then runs the software from there. Your operating system, other programs, etc. are loaded into the RAM. Once they are not needed, the data gets flushed. This happens when you close a program that you were using, or when you shut down your computer (the RAM gets completely flushed of everything. RAM chips can't work without electricity by the way). ROM, as mentioned, would be your hard drive, but CD's, DVD's, floppy disks or USB memory sticks are also ROM. These media are solely for storage purposes. You may have heard the terms CD-ROM or DVD-ROM, right? Any hidden files or the windows registry will only be located in the RAM if the computer needs to grab this data and work with it. They'll get flushed out of the RAM again once the computer doesn't need the data anymore.
When people talk about backing up their system, or data that's on the system, they specifically mean data located on the hard drive. Backing up the system refers to making an exact copy of the entire contents of the hard drive, usually the drive on which the operating system and all installed programs are located. Backing up data means copying certain information on the hard drive to another media. This would usually be data linked to a program that you are using, such as an accounting program or database program.
I constantly run into people who do not understand the terminology properly, and many have no clue that memory means something different than hard drive storage capacity. You don't normally call the storage capacity of a hard drive, CD or DVD memory. Even USB memory sticks should not have memory in their description, because it confuses people. Loosely used, you can call the storage capacity memory, but when it comes to computers the word memory commonly refers to RAM, not ROM. USB sticks are almost solely used for storage, but because they also use chip technology many people decided to use the word memory. It's an instinctive association that's being made in their minds since RAM in computers uses chips too. What's really important is to distinguish the role or purpose of the device or media.
If you want to get a better understanding of the terms and how a computer actually works simply visit www.wikipedia.org or www.howstuffworks.com. The explanations are usually very simple to understand because they are designed for the novice. I suggest you do this, otherwise (forgive me, I'm not trying to be mean) you'll keep asking questions like this that are actually non-sense. And because of this, hardly anybody wants to bother answering these types of questions.
Now, as far as the hidden files and Windows registry goes, yes, disk imaging software will grab everything on the hard drive. The only reason that a file is hidden in Windows, is because Windows has a feature to allows it to be hidden. Hiding a file, however, only works when the operating system is up and running. Any third party software can easily view the contents of your hard drive. Many can see everything even if the OS is running. Acronis True Image, for example, can run from within Windows and perform a proper and complete backup image.
Hope this helps.
Backing up
by Neil Bradley - 8/17/07 5:21 PM In reply to: How to back up and restore my PC to the exact same condition it was... by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
A company called Acronis will do exactly that; I have it & its saved me computer 4-5X already !! But use an external HD-NOT CDR's OR DVDs Disks !!! They have a help forum too. Also can be used for 'tune ups' too. It will restore a known god copy of your hard drive the way YOU want it with all of your programs too after it reformats it + it's way faster ; takes me about 20-25 minutes to do it. Good luck!
Image it
by Lumpy95 - 8/17/07 5:23 PM In reply to: How to back up and restore my PC to the exact same condition it was... by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
You need HDD imaging software to make a mirror image of your HDD.
I've been using Casper XP for several years and it works great. It's simple and easy to use and has "smart cloning" to make the backup process quick and easy.
I have had to replace 2 HDDs since using it and it's just a matter of changing the jumpers and cables and swapping HDDs. "Tip": I use a HDD rack for an extra HDD to clone to so that I still have a C: and D: drive also but you could use a USB external drive if you want to.
Casper XP in a nut shell, if you run Win XP
by Caddobob - 8/17/07 5:41 PM In reply to: How to back up and restore my PC to the exact same condition it was... by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
If you use Windows XP get Casper XP from Future Systems Solutions at www.fssdev.com/ and you will never regret it. It will clone any drive in real-time while the system is running. I install a second drive in my computer and run Casper XP periodically when I feel the system is stable and I need to update my backup. Then if my drive goes bad or I just want to update my main drive I just plug it up as the "C" drive and BOOM, boot right up. It will also clone to an external drive but then it gets more complicated getting it back on an internal drive to use in your system, and will usually require another system to use to clone it back on a regular drive. there are other ways but that is usually the simplest depending on your system knowledge.
Casper XP is a great program and has LOTS of features and is rock solid. I have cloned many drives for friends in both desktops and laptops. I wouldn't be with my Casper XP!!
Try it, you'll like it!!
Monkey Handler
Casper XP, easy and worry free
by Aardasp - 8/25/07 2:24 PM In reply to: Casper XP in a nut shell, if you run Win XP by CaddobobI second this choice, and I have used this program to COMPLETELY recover a bad drive/crash. The resulting recovery is an exact mirror/image and is perfect and boots/runs to the EXACT state (including OS-Win XP) as when it was backed up. ...and it is FAST, I've backed up 104 Gb in an hour with my 3.6 Intel powered DELL (SATA HDs).
Backing up your computer
by mikeandleslie - 8/17/07 5:47 PM In reply to: How to back up and restore my PC to the exact same condition it was... by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
I purchased an external hard-drive. They are pretty inexpensive these days. Then used an inexpensive software program that makes an exact image of my internal hard-drive. I found a good backup/exact image software package for less then $50. This way, I do not need to manually reload anything should I have a crash; or want to replace the internal drive with a larger one.
Three ways to do this: an easy way and 2 sure-fire ways.
by lostinlodos - 8/17/07 5:54 PM In reply to: How to back up and restore my PC to the exact same condition it was... by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
The easy way, is to ghost the drive. There are a few programs out there; the most common of which is Norton/Symantec Ghost. This method is as easy as buying and installing the product then running it. It will walk you through the steps one at a time to make a copy of your drive to another drive. You will need a second, avalable (empty or erasable) drive. What it does it make a near-clone of your drive to the backup. There are some sub-system files that a program like this will not be able to copy no-matter what you do, but it usually works, probably close to 99% of the time.
The two sure-fire ways are a bit harder but are 100% guaranteed. The less expensive of the two methods is to install a second, identical drive and set up a RAID in level 1 format. You'll need to have quite a few things present to deal with this method though; a motherboard with RAID support or an add-in RAID card two identical drives I've heard people tout that they can be different but in my experience getting a perfect mirrored setup is hit-or-miss on mismatched drives. This is a back-up; better safe than sorry. You'll also want to add support software (or use your motherboard's) to make an initial clone on reboot. Once configured you'll always have a clone in case of emergency.
The third option is the most expensive but easiest of all; a 1-button back-up. Seagate/Maxtor has a couple of options (sizes) avalable for you to chose from as well as other brands. Given that a single hard-drive costs less than $200 in most cases; this is an expensive option. Expect to spend at least $500 to as much as a few thousand. You simply plug it in; load the software (reboot) and push the button. If you have a fire-wire port or eSATA; get one that uses that as they're the fastest but there are also USB versions to chose from.
Backing up your harddrive
by gregjahn - 8/17/07 6:09 PM In reply to: How to back up and restore my PC to the exact same condition it was... by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
Well, I think the best way and "fast" way is to "clone" your harddrive. I use Norton's GHOST and an USB connected external harddrive. Make sure you have all the fixes and patch on all of your programs and Windows, then run GHOST utility and it reboots into a good old DOS interface and clones your harddrive into an image disk. that's all! so if my harddrive fails, all I have to do is plug the Ghost CD and boot off of it and copy back my image onto new harddrive.
How to backup ... AND RESTORE .... your computer
by Watzman - 8/17/07 6:33 PM In reply to: How to back up and restore my PC to the exact same condition it was... by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
Re: "I have never seen an article that tells me how to do what I would like to do most, and that is to restore my computer to the exact same condition it was in before my hard-drive went belly-up!"
It's actually easy, but you have to purchase some software, I'm not aware of a GOOD freeware program that does this.
What you do is make an "image" backup of each partition / drive. When an "image" backup is restored, that drive / partition is exactly like it was before. So if you have 3 partitions on your hard drive, you would make an "image" backup of (for example) C:, D: and E: (most commonly as 3 separate backups). When the drive dies (or when you simply have a bad virus attack), you restore the "partitions" from their images and you are back up fairly quickly (your concern about "I definitely do not want to have to reinstall Windows, download all of the "patches," get all the drivers, etc., etc." was well founded).
Ok, how do you do this, you ask? There are three widely respected programs that do this. They are Symantec Ghost, Acronis True Image and PowerQuest DriveImage (Symantec bought PowerQuest, much of it's "guts" went into the latest versions of Ghost, and Drive Image is no longer being sold, but many copies of it are still out there).
The "image" backup is in the form of one big (HUGE, possibly) file. Since you are backing up an entire partiion, the backup file might be tens, possibly even hundreds of gigabytes. It can be written to any device, or all 3 programs can be break it up into pieces of a user-specified size. It can also be written to optical media, either directly (as it is made, directly by the Image program) or as a subsequent operation after (if desired) it is first written to some disk device. On average, the size of the image file (or all of the pieces of the image file if you have it broken up) is about half of the size of the partition being backed up. The one caveat is that the image file cannot be written to the partition being backed up .... if you want it written to a hard drive, it has to be either to another drive or at least another partition of the drive. If a drive has multiple partitions, each should be imaged separately (some versions of some of the programs will backup an entire hard drive (multiple partitions) as a single "backup job").
To restore, say your hard drive failed and you have a new (and very blank) drive. Physically install the new drive, boot from either the image program CD (the one you bought) or bootable media it made (floppies or a CD ... some versions of some of the programs can make the backup image bootable if it's written to optical media), and it will boot up a non-Windows "restore environment" that is able to restore the backup of the old drive or partition to the new drive. It will take care of both creating the partition and restoring it's contents.
I mentioned that you had to buy some software, but I should add that I think Vista Ultimate (and perhaps Business) has a built-in image backup utility as well. But for XP, and the Home versions of Business, you need a 3rd party product.
Regards,
Barry Watzman
Watzman@neo.rr.com
Freeware Backup
by elcon10342 - 8/24/07 6:31 PM In reply to: How to backup ... AND RESTORE .... your computer by WatzmanI've used this for 18 months....
<A HREF="http://www.educ.umu.se/~cobian/cobianbackup.htm#BTutorials">Cobian's site - The home of Cobian Backup</A>
FrankZ
Image backup and restore.
by mrhoads - 8/25/07 7:17 AM In reply to: How to backup ... AND RESTORE .... your computer by WatzmanI used Drive Image for years and it worked great however it does not work with Vista Ultimate. Since symantec bought Norton and changed the program to Ghost I found many problems. I really would like to use Ghost except it blocks other programs that secure your PC. It blocks your ability to update antivirus software. I contacted Symantec and they confirmed this. If you are willing to use all Symantec products for security then Ghost would work fine. But their other programs cause so many other problems that they are just unacceptable.
I also used Acronis True Image 10 for some time but it will not restore from a Infrant network drive. It will backup to the drive but their disaster recovery program can not find the drive and they are not helpfull in resolving the problem.
I then moved to Retrospect 7.5. It is an EMC company and I used them at work. Their program does a good job. It has some scheduling problems and they also have not helped in resolving these problems but if you are willing to manually start it, it is a good program. It also will not allow you to use a Disaster recovery DVD because they say that they only support CD disaster recovery and Vista will not fit on a CD.
I also tried Genie Backup professional but it did not work well.
I tried Windows Image Backup but it appears to be limited to local drives. It will not backup to a network drive.
As of August 2007 I have not been able to find a Disaster Recovery program that does a good image backup and recovery.
Off topic commment.....Symantec
by bus - 8/26/07 12:34 PM In reply to: How to backup ... AND RESTORE .... your computer by Watzmanbeats competitor by buying them. This bugged me because I owned a copy of PowerQuest's Go Back and when I went to get support at their web site, that was when I learned they had been bought out. I was still okay with that but Symantec would not support it.
Your post is well written and very clear.
dd
by janicenino - 8/26/07 9:20 PM In reply to: How to backup ... AND RESTORE .... your computer by Watzmandd is a utility included with most distributions of Linux (a good recovery specialist Live CD is Knoppix. Google it for more info, and Google dd for more info on it). It can be used to directly access a hard disk. For example:
dd if=/dev/sda of=/media/disk/sda-image bs=4k conv=sync
This will copy your entire first hard disk (not first partition) to an image named sda-image on /media/disk, a typical external hard disk path. To copy the first partition on the second disk:
dd if=/dev/sdb1 of=/media/disk/sdb1 bs=4k conv=sync
Keep in mind that when you copy partitions, you won't copy the partition table, so when writing back to the disk, make sure the new partition is the same size or larger than the original. To copy back, reverse the if and of values. Be careful when doing this, however, because it will completely overwrite anything on the disk.
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