Back Up Windows With External USB Hard Drive?
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Gazette reader ‘Holy Hal’ writes:
Dear Dennis,
I am, at best, an intermediate when it comes to computers - and I certainly do appreciate all the effort you put into your newsletter! With that aside, my question for you today is in regard to backups. I have Windows 2000 Professional, and I would like to back up my entire Operating System (Windows). Would an external USB hard drive that has some backup software be appropriate for this type of application? Or would I still need to use a software program like Acronis True Image with my external unit? I feel that a software backup program would be lost if the PC crashes. Or, at least, that was my sad experience with Ghost 9. Thank you for your time.
My response:
There are a few things to note before I answer your question, in case there is some confusion. With respect to external hard drives: just because a hard drive is “external” does not infer that it is a dedicated backup unit which is pre-programmed to image your operating system with the push of a button.
In other words: an external hard drive operates much like an internal hard drive (i.e. the “C Drive”) with one major difference: it’s external. Yes, it is true that some external hard drives have “backup” buttons which initiate backup software once depressed - however, this feature will not operate (usually) unless the backup software that came with unit has been installed, first…
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[tags]backup,windows xp,external hard drive,back up,external usb drive[/tags]
One Comment
Donna Barron
June 30th, 2008
at 9:30pm
In response to Holy Hal,
For what you want to do (backup your operating system) you do need an imaging software. Programs like True Image or EzBackup create an image of the drive which copies everything, including the operating system. Once the image has been done, the software can be used to perform regular file backups to keep the backup data up to date. The only caveat is that some Windows files are protected and cannot be copied during a regular file copy backup. So you will need to periodically re-image the drive to ensure that you have an up to date backup of all operating system files.
As for being able to restore from the backup software if your drive fails completely, programs such as True Image and EzBackup provide a boot restore CD that allows you to boot up and restore from the backup drive.