need help on backing up hard drive

[elny3680]

i think my hard drive may be dying on me...i cant be sure but some files that i download disappear as if i didnt download them, computer shuts down or freezes when playing games or watching movies, applications take a noticeably longer time to launch...

i know these instances are probably attributed to something else by themselves but they occur within short time frames of each other...

so id like to know if there was a way to backup everything on my 120gb hd without having to reinstalling apps & progs in the case where the hard drive does fry out...ive heard of norton ghost but from what i know, it only creates a back up image of your drive...does that work if you get a bigger sized hard drive? will the apps be able to work after transfer or would it only copy the data?

ive been trying to burn my movies & music off the drive but my discs are only 4x write & it takes about 20 minutes to burn...

thanks for any advice anyone can provide...

 

[montag451]

A ghost will work on any size drive.

Run the disk manufacturer's tool from their website, or seagate tool works on most HDD.

Of couse, back up settings/files on to cd/other hdd asap

 

[Biggerhammer]

Many HD companies include utilities to clone your old dying HD over to the shiny new one.

 

[Rottie]

I think you should back up any data you care about the most. You can fresh re-install windows os and then install your favorite programs that way it will clean up registry as well less defragment. I Don't know if Ghost will clone defragment and registry problems that you might not want them when you re-install it.