Backup!
Image/Clone Your Hard Drive

If you want to make a complete backup of your system you should invest in third party software to do it. There's not a lot of free software out there that will do what is called a "bare metal restore" so you're choices here are pretty limited if you're unwilling to pay for software.

If you have two hard drives and you do not mind setting one to do nothing but to backup onto then you can use this:

- clone maxx

Unfortunately Norton Ghost 2003 is no longer available and the newer product doesn't meet my expectations so it is not recommended. However, if you're wanting to make backups to DVD, spanned across multiple CDs, to another partition, or over a network, and compressed then it is in your best interests to consider a third party solutions from one of these two companies:

- Image For Windows

- Acronis True Image

Both are highly recommended. Of the above two you will probably find that you get better support from Image For Windows than you will from Acronis True Image. The company is smaller and the owners/authors are reasonably well known by a number of trustworthy people whom I associate with.

It seems that there are more features with Acronis True Image than there are with Image For Windows. One feature that stands out the most is that with Acronis True Image you're able to make a bootable CD and then do your backups from outside of Windows with most of the same features as you'd be able to have when using the program from within the Operating System. Note that at this point in time when you purchase a copy of Image For Windows you will also receive a copy of Image For DOS meaning you can do much the same but I am really fond of the bootable CD image that is easily created from within Acronis True Image and prefer that.

Note:
With the arrival of Windows Millennium Edition came System Restore. For those of you not in the know, System Restore is not a backup utility. Instead it's a handy tool to monitor certain system files and its job is to enable you to restore those files in case of an emergency. It can not be used outside of the Operating System nor is it of any value for restoring your data other than the few things that it does make copies of. However, don't turn it off just because of its limitations - leave it on because there may very well come a time when all you really need is a System Restore and thus it saves your bacon.

OS: All Platforms > Advanced
Date: 07/27/05

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