Backing up boot drive.. quick questions
 

I want to back up my boot drive so that I can easily restore the windows installation with all of the programs still installed and everything

Can I simply back up everything from the root folder of C:\ ?? With all of the "don't hide files" and "show system and protected os files" ... ??

Then all I'd have to do is format a new drive, make it bootable, and copy the files over.. right???


C = 32gb Corsair Force 3 SSD
D = 500gb 7200 3.5" internal
G = 500gb usb3 flex external

I mirror D and G (not with raid) so essentially G is backup of D
I want to make 32gb partitions on both drives to back C up to

Is there any reason to use third party software for partitioning the disks?? Is windows 7 64bit disk manager okay? Is it important to fully format the drives before partitioning?


Thank you computer gurus of gfy

No you have to image it.

Please just get your fucking life in order though and stop posting.

If I make an image of it, any little bit can get corrupted and fuck the whole image, right?

Oh I'm thinking more like a zip file
I guess if a piece of the image gets messed up the rest would still be intact, yeah?

It's more or less the same as if a little bit of a hard drive gets messed up - it depends on which part. The master file table (MFT) is pretty damn important. A byte in the middle of a jpeg or mpeg would probably go completely unnoticed. Fortunately, the unimportant stuff, like video data, is a heck of a lot bigger than the important stuff luke MFT, so if you messed up any random byte you'd probably get one that doesn't matter.

Still, if you don't have a backup that you've tested recently, you don't have a backup, so test to see that nothing important is messed up.

Anyone know of good drive imaging freeware? What about "incremental backup" I think it's called??? Can an image file be updated instead of starting over every time?

Thanks :)

I wear boots on my feet.

I've used xxclone and it has worked for me. Can make a copy of your C drive while it is running and makes a bootable complete copy. No problems with windows at all.

http://www.xxclone.com/

You want to restore a windows installation - good. You want to format a new drive. You could image it. You could use third party software, but you don't have to. You could back up everything from the root folder of C:\. You could use that option to show all files. You want to make partitions on both drives. Interesting... more helpful replies will follow.

What is this, the seventies??
What are you? Wargames?? What was he called .. he was named after the inventor Dr. Falcon or Dr. Spock or something?

Acronis True Image Home
http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing...cts/trueimage/

Also at the same time get the Add on Plus Pack
Add-On - http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing...age/#plus-pack
Ability to Restore to Dissimilar Hardware - Whatever the make, model or installed components of your new computer, Plus Pack restores everything back to its proper form.



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I wasnt gonna bother because you can google for yourself. But there are free options that work far better than some of the windows shit for imaging. Like, create a bootable USB key and then clone the drive. I've tried a few, but long enough ago I don't recall the names, but I know there's lots of stuff that doesn't work very well. Mainly it was the windows based stuff.

Macrium Reflect works great and they have a free edition.

http://download.cnet.com/Macrium-Ref...-10845728.html

Creates an exact image of your drive to another drive (one big file). Later, if you need to restore you can restore the entire thing to your current HD or to a new HD.

Another cool feature is access to the image. Once you do the backup and have that large image file you can use Reflect to open it and it will appear as a new HD with a new drive letter so you can copy one or two files if you need to.

You need incremental backup or several copies, to avoid having the backup run right AFTER you're data goes to shit, leaving you with two copies of crap. Disk images aren't NORMALLY done incrementally, but can be. Clonebox works on that principle. Functionally, we keep for complete copies of your system. At the bit level, it's actually one complete copy and three deltas.