Thread: my passport essential

Hi,
you can't download the 'whole hard drive'.
To be running your original HD you have to have some files open, and these wont back up.
You can get around this by starting your computer from another drive (eg cd or another hd) but this is getting messy.
Usually you only backup files you have created, eg email, photos, documents etc and reinstall the programs and operating system if you have a fatal failure.
You should have all the install disks, (operating system and programs) stored safely for such an event.
Program and operating system updates that have occurred can be re installed once on line again.
Another reason for not attempting to back up the whole hd, is that if you want to 'clone' it to another disk, the new disk will need to be identical in every way to the original or it will be faulty.
It may be difficult to obtain exactly the same disk some years down the track.
Yes, you could buy two disks with the new computer, and this does open the opportunity to 'mirror' them, but it is all getting very difficult and perhaps over complicated.
Backing up the created files, and reinstalling programs is the usual way of doing things.
cheers

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Mike

You can take an image of your whole hard drive so yes you can copy your whole hard drive
Download Clonezilla live cd I use the Ubuntu version it is fantastic and will do what you want.
I would turn off system restore and then run the backup that way you will minimise the size of the image.
Read up and understand what you are doing if you overwrite you o/s with your external drive you will not be a happy boy

Oh sorry in the spirit of Linux its free

thanks guys , i do have all the orignal disks etc , have to give it a lot more thought

Microsoft should be strung up for doing this to their "valued" users. All versions of their OS should come standard with quality backup software.

Have a look here.

Hard disk drive backup and system recovery tools allow you to instantly restore the entire machine