If i drag the contents of my hard drive C onto my usb 250gb
portable hard drive and then restore my pc to factory settings
will every thing i need ie music, photos, updates, settings, anti virus etc be on the portable hard drive to put back on my pc again
Or is not as simple as that PS i have a drive c "main" and drive d recovery. On HP pavilion 423.uk
2007-09-29 04:05:23 · 4 answers · asked by Anonymous in Computers & Internet ➔ Hardware ➔ Other - Hardware
All persona data and settings can be "backed up" to your external drive, and can then be dragged back after you do the restore. Remember to save your Address Book and your Bookmarks. The bookmarks folder can be found in My Computer>"C">Documents and Settings>your folder>Favorites. You can simply copy and paste it to your external drive. The Address Book is a little different. You find it in Start>All Programs>Accessories>Address Book. Open the Address Book and then click File>Export. If you use or Outlook express, export as a "WAB".
Any programs will need to be reloaded after you have completed the "Restore".
And remember, Restore will set your machine back to the way it was when it came out of the box so be ready to clean up all the poopoo that came on the system.
If you save all personal date within the My Documents folder then all you need to do to back up this data is to drag the entire My Docs folder over to your external drive.
2007-09-29 04:17:45 · answer #1 · answered by Ron M 7 · 0⤊ 0⤋
You would be able to transfer files such as music and pictures to you external hard drive and transfer them back after you have recovered your computer. You would not be able to do this with applications however. What you should do is a fresh install. Then install all your software and update it. After this you should make an image of your system with something like Acronis Trueimage and save the image to your external hard drive. Then in future if you need to recover your computer, you recover it from this image. Software and all.
2007-09-29 11:17:00 · answer #2 · answered by Mick N 1 · 0⤊ 0⤋
actually it is that simple, but there's a catch
you'll have to install all your programs again after you restore the computer
also, it would be best to copy all the folders except program files and windows, or any other folders that might be critical to the computer
2007-09-29 11:09:36 · answer #3 · answered by shockdude 4 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Forget ab Xp and use vista.
It is more easier to do stuff like tht
2007-09-29 11:15:10 · answer #4 · answered by Tehno Dude 2 · 0⤊ 0⤋