Backup advice/prgram sought

[Thump553]

Please exceuse me if these questions are elementary, I am way out of touch on backup software.

I'd like to backup most of a 200 CB C: drive to an external USB 400 GB drive. I'd like it to be pretty much a complete backup, so if the hard drive fails I can restore the operating system, programs, data, etc. easily. On the C: drive there is a very large music directory that doesn't need to be backed up, and I'd prefer it not be if possible.

Operating system is Windows XP.

Ideally I'd like to be able to partition the external USB drive so I can do two complete backups-unless saving the extra space for incremental backups makes more sense.

My questions:
1) Is it possible/advisable to to a selective "full" backup as I described above?

2) What software should I use?

 

[corkyg]

To do what you are describing, I would use TrueImage 9 or 10 (now at version 11) to create a bootable CDR. Then I would use that to CLONE the 200 GB drive proportionally to the 400. When you are done, the result is another fully bootable drive - no restore needed.

The term "backup" these days implies imaging to another drive - but that in turn requires restoration before it is useable.

 

[Navid]

Temporarily, move the folder you do not want to be included to another partition.
Use an imaging software to create an image of the C partition.

Now, if you restore the image to another drive and make the drive the first in your boot order, it will boot with everything else on it that was on the original drive except the folder you temporarily removed.

 

[1landshark]

I highly recommend Acronis True Image. You used to be able to go to their site and download free 30 day trial. It creates a true bootable hard drive that is a mirror of your original drive.

 

[Thump553]

Thanks for the replies. Corkyg, is there any reason why you reccommend version 9 or 10 of TrueImage rather than the latest one?

 

[homercles337]

I use "easy back it up" since its free and easy. My main disc is a raid0 and i have a second drive that is bigger for "backup." Every couple weeks i run easy back it up on C:\. I can boot to that backup disc if i have to. This is probably not the best solution, but if i have to restore my system im going to do it with a fresh OS install.

Edit: i should mention that this app does not encode the data in anyway. Its more of a "fast copy" utility.

 

[Skypix7]

I bought Acronis TrueImage HOme 11 and it caused all kinds of problems on my new XP installation.

I imaged my entire system drive, did several incremental backups, but when my hard drive died and I had to recover to a new hard drive with the bootable CD, it took 2 hours to verify my archive was good, than another 2 hours to restore...only the restore didn't complete, it just hung. And I was clueless what to do about it, since I didn't have a way to communicate with tech support.

When I finally did reach them by email (from a Vista 64 bit system that would not allow Acronis to complete installation, but which Vista said was installed...but Acronis wouldn't work!) , the friendly and helpful techie said I should have "disabled or uninstalled your antivirus program" before creating the images.

This is to me not an effective solution to someone who doesn't want to spend a lot of time doing techie things to accomplish simple and complete backups.

So isn't there a simple program that will make a complete "snapshot" or mirror or whatever of my entire system drive that I can then simply copy back onto a newly formatted drive if I have a crash? Without any more of this "disable this or uninstall that" BS?

thanks, sorry to gripe but I'm just fed up with $40 software solutions that require minor degrees in troubleshooting before you can get them to work properly.

 

[dclive]

I'd suggest Windows Home Server. Either put the $180 OEM install on an old dinosaur PC with a big 500GB HDD, or else buy the whole HP EX470 thing ($600, 500GB HDD and PC included), and never worry about backups ever again.