What do you use to backup windows?

Question

What apps do you use to create an "image" of your WIndows XP installation, so that if things go wrong you can just pop in a cd, and get things going again??

My pc's fine now, but some day...who knows, I got it just how I want it

Answer 1

I use Norton Ghost. It installs you windows back in 15 min if you have a medium performance PC. The time of the backup creation is form 1 to 4 h depending on the amount that you want to backup.
The Size of a backup is from 400 to 2000 Mb. A cool and easy use software.
Another good software is Nero Backup you can find it on your Nero Cd. It is free and dose a good job. It is slower then Norton Ghost but it is free. It makes good backups and burns them to the CD automatically. For more backup programs http://softpedia.com/

Answer 2

The best software for me is Acronis. The software is very easy to use and you can create a bootable disk that can help you in restoring the image (previous state) of your windows installation. It also support external USB devices such as hard disk where you can store your image or a DVD media.

Hope this one helps.

Answer 3

good solutions have already been presented. You could try buying an external HDD drive with backup software and has a boot option. You can completely copy your current PC installations from software to files and you can restore them anytime. The good thing if the external HDD is bootable, incase your internal HDD and OS installation fails, you can always boot through the external HDD...

Answer 4

You can't backup windows itself. But you can back up ur sys so u can recover from a failure at a later time. In fact u don't need to backup windows itself. Usually, ur sys ships with a recovery CD that u can run to restore ur sys to it's factory default installed applications and settings.
The most important thing to do is to backup ur working files. However there are a lot of approaches to that. If ur hard disk is partitioned into 2, always save ur working files in a drive different from the one on which windows is installed. This way if ur windows fails, you can easily format the whole drive without any worries if need be.
Another alternative is to back up your working files to an external media like an external hard disk, CD (CD-R/CD-RW), DVD (DVD-R/DVD-RW) etc. With this, you have complete peace of mind.
If apart from ur working files, you are concerned about backing up the complete sys, there are lot of commercial softwares available, that help you back up your whole sys. If however, u ar using Windows XP professional, it comes with that utility, you don't need to buy any third party software to do that. Go to Start> Programs> Accessories> System Tools> Backup and Restore. You can select to backup the whole of your C drive.
However, I'll advice you to always use the system restore utility that comes with windows. Anytime you are about to make any major change to your sys eg. installing a new software, set a restore point. If after that, u get into trouble, you can easily restore your sys to it's previous state.
Hop this helps.

ADDITIONAL COMMENT (2 DAYS LATER)

Hi,
I had a problem with my PC and had to format my C drive. Fortunately I hav a copy of all the applications I use and my working files are safe in a second partition.
My biggest problem as far as using the recovery discs that came with my laptop is I hav to remove all the useless softwares that come with the computer after recovering. So, I started thinking of finding a backup utility that I can use to backup my hard disk so that in the future I can recover from it, instead of using the original CDs that came with my computer. As you know, Windows XP Home Edition doesn't come with the Backup nd Recovery utility, and I don't like to download just any software that will cause me more trouble from the internet.
So, I decided to check Microsoft website to see if they have a free backup utility for genuine Windows users. I found out that the Home Edition also comes with the backup utility, only that it is not installed by default. You can find it in your original Windows media in: DriveLetter:\VALUEADD\MSFT\NTBACKUP.
I SUGGEST THAT YOU VISIT THE FOLLOWING LINKS AND READ THE INSTRUCTIONS THOROUGHLY BEFORE YOU USE THE UTILITY:
Installing the backup: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/302894/EN-US/
Making a backup: http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;320820
Restoring: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/309340/EN-US/
So if u are using Home Edition, u can still use the backup and recovery in Windows.
Hop this helps.

Answer 5

Norton Ghost and Acronis True Image are two of the most popular. You should be able to find reviews on the net, specifically at sites like PCWorld.com, and you should google as well.

Answer 6

i'm for acronis too. it's much better than ghost. here the comparison of these two backup progs:
http://www.techsupportalert.com/drive-imaging-reviews.htm