Re: cloning, imaging, and backing up

In article <u7n0IFexIHA.2292@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, naples@xxxxxxxxxx
says...
I use Windows XP, SP3, on a 5-year-old Dell desktop computer with USB2 ports
and a 60GB hard drive. I'm about to buy an external hard drive (or maybe two
of them) for backing up, and I'm confused about whether there's a difference
between cloning and imaging. I want to do a few different things and wonder
if one software package would do it all or if I need more than one:

* Back up or clone or image my internal hard drive to an external USB drive
in such a way that I can recover everything easily if my internal drive
crashes. That is, I'd like to be able to boot from the backup and/or copy it
to a new internal hard drive or a messed-up but functional old one so I can
seamlessly start working again, without having to reload programs and redo
my personal settings.

* Be able to do regular incremental backups as well.

* Be able to copy individual folders or files from the external drive to the
internal one if I simply screw up something rather than crash completely.

So...does any single program do all of what I want? I've been looking at
Acronis True Image and Casper 4 (at the suggestion of someone on one of the
newsgroups); years ago I had Ghost but never actually used it.

Thank you!

Jo-Anne



I can't speak about other programs for this task, but Ghost has a good
reputation. I use it, although I have never needed to call on it for a
system restore. It works by saving a "restore point" to a network or USB
drive. I do this automatically once a week. You also create a boot CD.
Then, if your hard drive goes loopy, you boot from the CD and perform a
restore from the external drive.

--
Peter Aitken
Author, MS Word for Medical and Technical Writers
www.tech-word.com
.

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