XP Pro on virgin PC

There have been some good suggestions for backup. The first time I had a system failure and wanted to use Ghost to retsore the system, the program said the image was corrupt . I had a second backup method in the form of Drive Image and was able to restore with that. It would be good to have two methods.

The way I would go in your situation would be to do regular backups to the second partition on the HDD, but make a copy of the image to the USB drive occasionally, like when you were about to make changes in software, drivers or do some repair work on the system. That way you would be covered if the HDD or boot system failed.

I think Tony T mentioned it. It would be good (at least in my opinion) to get your system set just right, all the drivers installed/updated, the main programs you use the most, Windows Updates, etc...make an image, then burn that onto a DVD. If your future backups get a "bug" in them that you can't identify, you may want go back to this original "system setup ". It's a lot easier than doing a clean install of Windows and reloading everything.

Matt

 

Hi All,
I wasn't going to join this discussion because it is obvious that there are as many ideas on backing up as there are BBS members!
However, as the unlucky owner of two HD failures, and one Mobo failure this year, I think that I have something to contribute. In my machine, a home built, I have two HD's and several partitions roughly as follows:
On disc A is 'C' Xp Home, 'E' Progs, 'O' Backups, 'V' Vista, and 'N' Photoshop scratch.
On disc B is 'D' Progs, 'I' XP Page file, 'G' Poco (My Mail prog), and 'J' Backups.
Photoshop is installed on Disc B in 'D'.
'C' and 'E' are backed up to Disc B once a week, and to an external HD at the same time.
'D' and 'G' are backed up to Disc A once a week.

I have other partitions too, for things like photographs and documents, videos etc, not regularly backed up.
Set up like this, and using an Acronis True Image boot disc, I have survived the failures with the loss of no data at all, and all programmes have kept working. I always get True Image to validate its back-ups after making them, and twice it has declared a back-up corrupt, and necessitated a re-imaging.

Just my .2€ worth.

Roger

 

Thanks Charles, done, all just above Z: it is.
TonyT and Matt - that's exactly the correct advice for me, a regular backup procedure to a partition and an occasional 'main' backup outside the computer. Seems very logic.
I will now start working towards the "just right" target for the first DVD burn.

I want to thank all you folk, and especially Charles for leading me here, for all yr valuable input and reducing the learning curve so effectively.

Matt - I hope to see you over at the Windows section when I start with Ranish?
Roger - yr input noted, the Photoshop scratch partition very interesting, will have to look at it again to resolve that typical hassle.