Copy ALL Contents of a Drive

[gamehead200]

Hello everyone!

I'm finally about to do a clean install on my computer after a year and a half (yikes!). However, first I am going to buy a USB 2.0/Firewire 160GB hard drive (I need one for other stuff too). Now, I need advice on which product I can use to make an exact duplicate of my drive, but on a bigger hard drive (mine is 80GB right now, the one I will buy to back everything up will be 160GB). I know there are many products like Ghost and some other stuff, but what do you think I should use in this case (using an external drive)?

I have about 30GB of stuff I need to backup (I know, it will take hours to copy to an external drive, but that doesn't matter)!

Any ideas?

[XtremeMaC]

I'm not sure why u're in need of a software. do u want to backup the current windows install as well or something?

I mean if u just want to backup files why don't u copy or move them to the external hdd?? that's what I often do for backup purposes....

anyways acronis true image would be a nice start for backup. it copies the partition but afaik u need to have an unpartitioned drive to make a backup, i'm sure u'd check but check to make sure

and if u haven't bought the hdd yet western digital has nice external devices for usb2/firewire (i'm not sure if for firewire 800)

http://westerndigital.com/en/products/ext_hd.asp

ow and in those pages u'll see options for the disk sizes on the bottom right, just so that u won't miss it

also the dual option ones have a built-in backup option (1 click backup? I'm not really sure what it does)

why am I advertising this well long b4 I found about these external devices I went out and bought a internal hdd 120 gb 7200 rpm and bought a nice dual enclosure and payed so much for both of them. now the price is like 30% when u get and external from wd instead of buying those separetly and having 8mb cache helps and never ever had a problem with WD.

@wd I want $ %10

Edited September 23, 2004 by XtremeMaC

[gamehead200]

Thanks, XtremeMaC! I'll be going to Costco tomorrow to pick one up... I asked the administrator at my school what he suggested, since he had like 5 of them stacked up on top of each other...

Well, I guess drap and dropping would be easier... How about the registry? I've been dying to find out where that's stored (even though I've made a backup)! (Yeah, I don't know... )

I've copied all the setup files I need to reinstall all my programs... Not a big fan of the unattended stuff (just haven't had the time)...

[CoffeeFiend]

Don't know how much costco will want for that (I don't shop there) but places like ncix have them on for 40$ ish (canadian) all the time (usb2, sometimes firewire too). Works well for me. Registry is a system.dat and a user.dat per user.

[gamehead200]

Don't know how much costco will want for that (I don't shop there) but places like ncix have them on for 40$ ish (canadian) all the time (usb2, sometimes firewire too).

Is that only for the drive enclosure? I don't see any external drives on NCIX for $40...

Costco (as I heard) sells the enclosure, wires, and 160GB HD all for $250 (Canadian). Considering a 160GB HD goes for about $140 here these days, I'm guessing its an OK price...

[CoffeeFiend]

No, that's just the enclosure itself, but you can find 200gb drives (8mb buffer, 5yr warranty) for 150$ everywhere. That's 60$ cheaper than costco (almost 70$ considering you're saving paying tax on that 60$ too), 40gb more, and I doubt that the costco drive will have that 8mb buffer nor that warranty Since I didn't need that much of an external drive what I've done is upgrade a HD in one of my computers, and toss the old one in that enclosure (a 60gb drive, enough for my use). If you were'nt upgrading your PC either (nor needed the big drive) then a used HD off a friend or locals newsgroup could have been really cheap too... (I set up a friend like this with a cheap used 40gb drive I didn't use anymore and he's quite happy with it)

[gamehead200]

OK, well, I'll check it out... Money really isn't a factor at this point... I don't even need more than 160GB either... I don't even have that much stuff...

[XtremeMaC]

well if u're looking for an enclosure i had bought mine from http://www.caloptic.com, i've speedzter 3 & 5 i love them, anyways but i bought these bc i didn't know how the quailities of those frequently sold models in ebay would be.. caloptics is expensive,....

[gamehead200]

No, that's just the enclosure itself, but you can find 200gb drives (8mb buffer, 5yr warranty) for 150$ everywhere. That's 60$ cheaper than costco (almost 70$ considering you're saving paying tax on that 60$ too), 40gb more, and I doubt that the costco drive will have that 8mb buffer nor that warranty Since I didn't need that much of an external drive what I've done is upgrade a HD in one of my computers, and toss the old one in that enclosure (a 60gb drive, enough for my use). If you were'nt upgrading your PC either (nor needed the big drive) then a used HD off a friend or locals newsgroup could have been really cheap too... (I set up a friend like this with a cheap used 40gb drive I didn't use anymore and he's quite happy with it)

OK, well, I decided to go with the one at Costco... Its a Maxtor 160GB drive with an 8MB buffer and 7200RPMs...

We'll see how it goes, and if I don't like it, I can return it! It came with some backup software, so hopefully it can make a duplicate of my C: drive in a subfolder...

[gamehead200]

OK, the drive works great... It took me a while to reinstall everything, but still, I got everything I needed...