On 08/04/2012 12:13, NT wrote:
On Apr 7, 11:13 pm, John wrote:
On 07/04/2012 22:36, Martin wrote:



On Sat, 7 Apr 2012 09:45:42 -0700 (PDT),
wrote:

On Apr 7, 4:29 pm, wrote:
wrote in message

...

On Sat, 7 Apr 2012 15:43:17 +0100, "Mentalguy2k8"
wrote:

wrote in message
o.uk...
Can I use something like this to backup my PC. Its making funny noises
at
the moment and I would like to back up the hard disc including the OS.
I'm using Windows XP.

http://www.tekheads.co.uk/product/32...e-Black-Slim-E...

Yes, as long as it's big enough to hold all your stuff.

Just remember that you need to "clone" your C: drive if you want to copy
your OS onto another drive to use as you were before. This creates an
exact
copy, if you just drag and drop the files from C: to a backup and then
onto
a new C: , it won't boot or work properly.

If you buy a 1 or 2 terabyte Samsung USB external hard drive it
includes back up software.
--

Martin

Cheers guys :-)

I've also never seen the point in backing up windows. If you need to
reinstall it, do it the windows way. Yes its slower, but youre asking
for trouble otherwise, IME its just not worth cloning.

One thing I did to save time was to copy the apps in /program files en
masse, and just copy them straight back into windows. Its surprising
how many work fine this way - some will still need reinstalling the
windows way.

The way to backup your data is simply to add the 2nd drive, control a
c in one pane, control v in the other. Job done, software pointless.
Yes you can restore bookmarks, but I find its not usually worth it, I
just redo the ones I want.

Switching to linux makes this process easier, this distro is a dream
to install compared to win.

Unless you have boards/peripherals which aren't supported.

Sure. PCI cards are handy for that, or just pass the machine on to
someone else that wants windows.


Installing Win7 is straight forward.

But very sloooow... that's before you apply all the monthly patches, and
reinstall apps. Bit of a mugs game when recovering from an image is so
much faster and easier.

Linux is /so/ much easier. It makes cloning pointless.

No really it doesn't...

There is no way I would like to have to rebuild our dead rat server from
scratch if it went tits up. It took tens if not hundreds of man hours to
get everything setup on it as required. As it stands we can recover the
main drive from the cloned version in about 20 mins (well rackspace can
since if it were hosed completely we could probably not log in anyway!).
That stuff matters when their are contractual penalties for exceeding
certain amounts of down time.



--
Cheers,

John.

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