advice on hard drive mirror image please

Hello,

Can someone pleasse advise me on how to backup my entire hard drive,
registry & all, so that I can recover if my hard drive destroys itself ?

I am not a computer professional. I

I have bought, downloaded, installed, configured, modified, tweaked,
optimised so much over the last year or 2, and I am terrified of how much
work I would need to do if my pc were to fail & I had to get a new one.

I suspect I need to buy an external hard drive (my own is 160GB) and make a
mirror image ?

Can someone tell me the best way of doing this , what software ?, hardware ?

Thanks

K

"KRK" <> wrote in message
news:...
> Hello,
>
> Can someone pleasse advise me on how to backup my entire hard drive,
> registry & all, so that I can recover if my hard drive destroys itself ?
>
> I am not a computer professional. I
>
> I have bought, downloaded, installed, configured, modified, tweaked,
> optimised so much over the last year or 2, and I am terrified of how much
> work I would need to do if my pc were to fail & I had to get a new one.
>
> I suspect I need to buy an external hard drive (my own is 160GB) and make
a
> mirror image ?
>
> Can someone tell me the best way of doing this , what software ?, hardware
?
>
> Thanks
>
> K
>
>

A third part utility such as Acronis should do the job

KRK wrote:

> Hello,
>
> Can someone pleasse advise me on how to backup my entire hard drive,
> registry & all, so that I can recover if my hard drive destroys itself ?
>
> I am not a computer professional. I
>
> I have bought, downloaded, installed, configured, modified, tweaked,
> optimised so much over the last year or 2, and I am terrified of how much
> work I would need to do if my pc were to fail & I had to get a new one.
>
> I suspect I need to buy an external hard drive (my own is 160GB) and make
> a mirror image ?

Purchase an external hard drive and Acronis True Image. The home version is
very inexpensive. You'll make an image of your system with Acronis and
store it on the external drive. Acronis can also do incremental backups.
You will be able to restore your system in very little time then.

Malke
--
MS-MVP
Elephant Boy Computers
http://www.elephantboycomputers.com/#FAQ
"Don't Panic!"

Vista Business and Ultimate both contain the ability to create a "Complete
PC Backup", assuming you have a DVD burner, or (better) a second hard drive
in the system.

--
Please use the Communities guidelines when posting.
http://www.microsoft.com/wn3/locales...help_en-us.htm
Use the "Ratings" feature. It helps the new users.
Mark L. Ferguson MS-MVP
https://mvp.support.microsoft.com/profile/Mark.Ferguson

"KRK" <> wrote in message
news:...
> Hello,
>
> Can someone pleasse advise me on how to backup my entire hard drive,
> registry & all, so that I can recover if my hard drive destroys itself ?
>
> I am not a computer professional. I
>
> I have bought, downloaded, installed, configured, modified, tweaked,
> optimised so much over the last year or 2, and I am terrified of how much
> work I would need to do if my pc were to fail & I had to get a new one.
>
> I suspect I need to buy an external hard drive (my own is 160GB) and make
> a mirror image ?
>
> Can someone tell me the best way of doing this , what software ?, hardware
> ?
>
> Thanks
>
> K
>
>

"KRK" <> wrote in message
news:...
> Hello,
>
> Can someone pleasse advise me on how to backup my entire hard drive,
> registry & all, so that I can recover if my hard drive destroys itself ?
>
> I am not a computer professional. I
>
> I have bought, downloaded, installed, configured, modified, tweaked,
> optimised so much over the last year or 2, and I am terrified of how much
> work I would need to do if my pc were to fail & I had to get a new one.
>
> I suspect I need to buy an external hard drive

"Need to'"? No, but I think it's far and away your best choice.to buy at
least on eexternal drive. Better is having two or more and alternating
between them, so the act of backing up is not also the act of destroying
your onlt backup.


> (my own is 160GB) and make a mirror image ?
>
> Can someone tell me the best way of doing this , what software ?, hardware
> ?


The best software is a matter of opinion, but I recommend Acronis True
Image. If you want an external hard drive, you can either buy one or buy a
regular drive and an external case for it (a case is around $20-15
US).Installing the drive in the case is extremely easy, and even someone who
is all thumbs can do it in under five minutes.

In article <>,
KRK <> wrote:
>
>Can someone tell me the best way of doing this , what software ?, hardware ?
>

2 best ways:

1. Buy Acronis true image (or norton ghost) and use it to
create a disk image on an external drive (USB or whatever).

2. Temporarily remove the hard drive from the windows box, install
it in a linux box, and use dd :-)

In article <7C375010-8F2C-4CAF-AA60->,
Mark L. Ferguson <> wrote:
>Vista Business and Ultimate both contain the ability to create a "Complete
>PC Backup", assuming you have a DVD burner, or (better) a second hard drive
>in the system.

You can't really use that to easily recreate a destroyed system,
though. A bare metal quick restore is best done with an imaging tool IMHO.

Complete PC Backup IS an imaging tool. It creates an .vhd and several .xml
files and repartitions the target in prep for restore. I don't really see
how much closer to bare metal it could get. As for easy, it's a press of F8
on restart and a few selects from the menu. I have no problem with your
preference for Acronis, but if the user already owns imaging software,
telling them it's there is called for.

--
Please use the Communities guidelines when posting.
http://www.microsoft.com/wn3/locales...help_en-us.htm
Use the "Ratings" feature. It helps the new users.
Mark L. Ferguson MS-MVP
https://mvp.support.microsoft.com/profile/Mark.Ferguson

"the wharf rat" <> wrote in message
news:gen7e5$jr9$...
> In article <7C375010-8F2C-4CAF-AA60->,
> Mark L. Ferguson <> wrote:
>>Vista Business and Ultimate both contain the ability to create a "Complete
>>PC Backup", assuming you have a DVD burner, or (better) a second hard
>>drive
>>in the system.
>
> You can't really use that to easily recreate a destroyed system,
> though. A bare metal quick restore is best done with an imaging tool
> IMHO.
>

An image from one computer is not usually much good when trying to install
it on a replacement computer - unless the replacement is the "exact" same
(M/B, peripherals etc.).

--

Richard Urban
Microsoft MVP
Windows Desktop Experience


"KRK" <> wrote in message
news:...
> Hello,
>
> Can someone pleasse advise me on how to backup my entire hard drive,
> registry & all, so that I can recover if my hard drive destroys itself ?
>
> I am not a computer professional. I
>
> I have bought, downloaded, installed, configured, modified, tweaked,
> optimised so much over the last year or 2, and I am terrified of how much
> work I would need to do if my pc were to fail & I had to get a new one.
>
> I suspect I need to buy an external hard drive (my own is 160GB) and make
> a mirror image ?
>
> Can someone tell me the best way of doing this , what software ?, hardware
> ?
>
> Thanks
>
> K
>
>

Vista has a backup utility. Make sure you do shadow copy and syste
state (registry). You can backup to an external hard drive. You ca
also use system restore

--
SCSIraidGUR

Michael A. McKenney
'www.SCSIraidGURU.com' (http://www.SCSIraidGURU.com)