> I can take a product like this and save my complete hard drive on say > a usb hard drive and it will automaticly backup the complete hard > drive when ever I want it to do it.
1) The backup can be stored on your disk, in the secure partition which is not visible to Windows XP / Vista. On the screenshot below it is shown as "Logical Disk - Unknown (BC) and has no drive letter: http://img166.imageshack.us/img166/7749/01032009160435kv5.png 2) Another method is to store the backup on an external hard drive. USB drive is not a good idea because they are not very reliable. > Then if I have hard drive problems, I can put the copy that is on the > [external] hard drive on my machine hard drive and it will be just > like it was, with all programs and files the same as the last backup? That's right. The backup copy has it's own mini-OS (it doesn't need Windows). You boot into the external drive (or into the secure partition) and follow the prompts. My Windows XP takes about 8 GB of disk space and restoring all this from Acronis secure partition takes about 4 minutes. > This type of software is something everyone should have. Absolutely correct. > ----- Original Message ----- > From: Lester Vanhoff > > Microsoft's System Restore is very unreliable. It's just dumb luck > that it worked for you. Consider getting a disk imaging application > and do the disk image backup every day. One of the best programs is > Acronis True Image, I've been using it for years. The way it works, > when you get into a problem, it wipes out (formats) the whole disk > (or selected partitions), including your operating system, and then > restores everything from the backup image. > > http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/products/trueimage/ >
