fulcrum Posted January 16, 2007 Share Posted January 16, 2007 [quote user="Cassis"]Hi Will - see my addition to the previous post - Acronis True Image Home 10 gets excellent reviews so I'm going for that.[/quote]CassisI think Acronis is a better choice. Do a Google of Norton Ghost problems.The Acronis software can be downloaded if you have broadband. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cassis Posted January 16, 2007 Author Share Posted January 16, 2007 I'm with you, Fulcrum - but for the record, I was not considering Norton Ghost but Norton Save & Restore. There again, maybe Save & Restore is no better than Ghost in practice! Is this confusing enough yet? [:)] Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Will Posted January 16, 2007 Share Posted January 16, 2007 Just to add to the confusion it appears to work out cheaper to buy the CD from amazon than to download it from Acronis. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AnOther Posted January 16, 2007 Share Posted January 16, 2007 [quote user="Cassis"]is any reason I should not use a laptop instead of a second hard drive to do this[:)][/quote]Not drivel at all and you are to be congratulated on having the foresight realise that you need to properly backup, many haven't and have paid the price.A statistic to ponder: The average failure rate of a hard drive is 100% or, in other words, all hard drives WILL fail. This is an absolute, indisputable fact, the only unknown is when.It's perfecly feasible to backup your PC to a laptop however, depending on what software you use to do it you may find you have some difficulty restoring if and when necessary.The basic problem is that to backup your PC to Laptop they will obviously have to be networked together (either directly or via a router or hub) and if the PC crashes you may find you have no way to access the network and hence the images on the Laptop just when you need them.You can avoid this potential problem by using something like Acronis True Image v8 or above. With this you create a bootable rescue CD which, when loaded, provides access to networked devices from which you can then restore.On my laptop I have an 80gb drive with multiple partitons and I create images to a secondary partition which I then copy off either to a network drive or sometimes a USB HD. That way I have the images resident on the laptop and available at all times but also have them safely tucked away on totally seperate media in case of total HD failure.It frightens me sometimes when I think of modern PC's with 100gb + hard drives but a single partition. All it takes is one Windows crash and it's possibly all gone....poof. I would never do it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cassis Posted January 17, 2007 Author Share Posted January 17, 2007 Well, Ernie et al, the laptop's arrived and it's got 120Gb hard disc. The desktop's got 230Gb but I only use a fraction of it as I'm not into video and music storage in a big way. I have seen a recommendation to create partitions on one's hard drive as you also mention here - I assume that would be advisable for what I want to do on the laptop, which is to create a copy of my desktop's hard disc on the laptop. Exactly what is a partition, and how do you create one? I assume it is like splitting your hard disc in some way? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AnOther Posted January 17, 2007 Share Posted January 17, 2007 Congratulations on your new toy, is that for last Christmas in arrears or next in advance ?Partitioning is like chopping the drive into 2,3 or more seperate ones after which each will appear in Explorer with it's own drive letter so instead of just C: you'll have D: E: F: and so on.Partitioning is best done before Windows is installed because afterwards you will need third party software to do it, the most common being Partition Magic, but of course you will have to buy that. There may be free partitioning programmes out there, I don't know because I have Partition Magic so have never gone looking, but I would tend to stick with PM because partitioning can be a risky business which I would prefer to perform with software which I know and trust.The first decision you need to make then is, do you want to spend the money ? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cassis Posted January 17, 2007 Author Share Posted January 17, 2007 I understand. I'll look into it. Thank you! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Le 47 Posted January 17, 2007 Share Posted January 17, 2007 [quote user="PossumGirl"] you can go with an online solution like Mozy. They give you 2 GB free,PG[/quote]Hi Possum GirlI looked at Mozy and will sign up. If you give me your referal number I will put it in and maybe help towards anothe GBthanks for the info. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cassis Posted January 17, 2007 Author Share Posted January 17, 2007 [quote user="PossumGirl"]If you are only interested in backing up your data and not programs, you can go with an online solution like Mozy. They give you 2 GB free, and you can subscribe to get more if you need it. It has a software that then automatically backs up your changes on whatever schedule suits you (I let mine run every night). [/quote]Thank you also for this tip, PG. I've ordered Acronis True Image Home 10 and Director Suite 10 from Amazon (I really could not countenance having to reinstall programs and set up everything as it was a second time!), but this looks like a great deal for anyone who just wants to backup data files and emails - especially if they have under 2Gb of files. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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