Best way to do a complete backup?

[zixxer]

I don't want to have to pull my HDD out and ghost it everytime I want a full backup (assume full HDD failure..) Does windows backup perform a FULL backup? Is there some other prog that will do this for me?


(This is for my laptop.. I have data I cannot lose, and cannot have downtime in the even of a hdd failure.)

 

[Shyatic]

Ghost the drive.

 

[RaynorWolfcastle]

Originally posted by: armatron
I don't want to have to pull my HDD out and ghost it everytime I want a full backup (assume full HDD failure..) Does windows backup perform a FULL backup? Is there some other prog that will do this for me?


(This is for my laptop.. I have data I cannot lose, and cannot have downtime in the even of a hdd failure.)

Buying one of those one-touch USB backup hard drives would probably be the easiest thing to do.

 

[zixxer]

I have plenty of extra hdd space on my pc... Ideally I'd like to back up my 30gb of data into a single file, then transfer the file over the network to my pc...

 

[boomerang]

Acronis True Image 7.0

 

[mikecel79]

NTBackup comes with Windows. It's basic but it will do exactly what your asking. Set it to backup to a file and then transfer that file to your PC.

Or why not just setup a batch file to copy the files from your laptop to your PC and then run it on a schedule?

 

[tomstevens26]

Originally posted by: boomerang
Acronis True Image 7.0

Seconded. True Image is awesome. Works so much better for me than Norton Ghost ever did.

Tom

 

[imported_raybay]

Many of the better external HDD units on USB 2.0 are excellent, come in sizes up to 200 MB, and have software taht makes the backups very easy. Much more efficient than using Ghost. They don't require nearly the huge amount of time, and speed re-installs by significant amounts of time. They are not perfect. There is no system that will automatically reinstall a backup without some attention and work. These external hard drives are running $130 to $200... Avoid the SimpleTech, but the Seagate and Western Digital are near perfect. The Maxtor so far is not far behind.

 

[mitchafi]

How exactly does ghosting a drive work. I know how to make the image, but when I want to "install" it, does it reformat the drive automatically, and then put the image on it? Does it overwrite the old data on the drive? Also, can you ghost a drive using a ghost program that is on that same drive?