How do you guys back up your HD?

[daddog]

I am looking at two things actually.

1st how to clone my HD. Things are running well and just in case I want to clone my C drive and be ready to revert back to a working system.

2nd how to back up my information. Say every day things that are in "My Documents".

What do you guys do?

[Ghosth]

Easiest way I've found to "clone" a whole drive is to boot up with your hd utilities.
ie I use Western Digital as I have WD drives, boot up into it (normally uses caldera drdos or similar os)
However I've never made a full backup copy of my entire existing HD to a second drive just as a backup.
I have however once I had windows and all drivers installed and working copied most of my C:\ drive to a DVD disk.

That way if needed registry or whatever could be copy/pasted etc.

I don't save much in "my documents" but I never put anything there.

As to backup, I save everything that I download to a !download folder on my C drive.
Different files get sorted out to diff folders from there, ie Games, Apps, utilities, mods,  etc.
When I want to backup I start by saving all that good stuff in those folders to a DVD.
Burn it, label it, put it in the case, put it on the wall so it will be there when you need it.

Bookmarks get exported and saved
email address book gets exported and saved
I go into firefox, tools, options, advanced, passwords, then take a screen shot of all the
sites that need passwords, that screenshot gets cropped, blown up, saved to a folder (backup 09, etc)

To me the key to backing up is to take your time, be methodical, don't get distracted.
Eventually all that assorted information will join drivers for hardware, the passwords, AH settings folder,favorite gunsights, etc and will all be written to a DVD.

I also keep a spare on my wifes machine in an out of the way place, just in case.

Now, that being said, I don't use the restore function, nor the backup that comes with windows.
But thats just me.

[trap78]

I use a program called Casper XP I've used it for years. I see it's up to fifty bucks a copy now but does it all. It makes a complete copy of your HD onto another back up HD. If I ever have a problem (which I've had once or twice). I just boot up the PC, go into the BIOS and select my alternate HD and I'm good to go. However, nothing's perfect and you may have to re-enter some of the license keys to your add on software. I'm talking stuff like my aquarium screen saver, a program called "I hate this key" which disables the window key and so on. A small inconvenience IMO compared to losing the real important data on my HD.

[daddog]

Thanks guys.
DVD's just might be the way to go with the family pictures. On my external drive I have pictures that go back 5 years.

I will look into Casper Trap.

[trap78]

I agree with you on the pictures dad. I forgot to mention that in my original post. I always keep a couple of hard copies (CD, DVD, etc.) of all our photos in various safe places.

[Ghosth]

Daddog if you have a lot of pictures, and a good dual layer burner, it might be worth buying a couple of double layer 8 gb disks. You can stack a LOT of stuff on them.