Re: reformatting external USB drive

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Dang! I thought xcopy could copy to any "real" drive although not to a CD or
DVD. I Googled xxcopy; I assume you're referring to a freeware program that
I would need to download rather than something that comes with
Windows--right?

Thanks again!

Jo-Anne

"Lil' Dave" <spamyourself@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
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"Jo-Anne Naples" <naples@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
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"Lil' Dave" <spamyourself@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
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"Lil' Dave" <spamyourself@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
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"Jo-Anne Naples" <naples@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
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I recently bought two external USB drives for backing up the internal
hard drive on my Windows XP SP3 computer. I also bought Acronis True
Image 11 Home to do the backups. I thought that when the program did
its first backup, it would reformat the external drive from FAT32 to
NTFS. However, it didn't. I asked on the Acronis forum and was told
the program doesn't reformat drives but that it might be a good idea
to do so myself; I was also told that this reformat won't affect data
on the drive.

Should I do the reformat? If so, how do I do it? (If you could point
me to a website offering this information, that would be wonderful.)

Thank you!

Jo-Anne


Just some tech jargon info to add to what's been said alredy in reply.
The partition contains the file table information and that file table
is the format, whether FAT32 or NTFS. Normally, with standard
partitioning tools, you have to remove the partition and create a new
one with a file table appropriate to what you want. XP has a
converter to get around that for FAT32 to NTFS. If you're starting
with a blank hard drive, no files, you might as well just do it the
old way in XP's disk management. This will map out any bad areas
during the process. Converting tool in XP does not.

Since you have 2 large hard drives, I would consider using one for an
imaging target. The other, I would use as a monthly clone target,
leaving disconnected/off otherwise. If your onboard hard drive fails,
you can toss in the clone for quick recovery. If that fails, you can
wipe the clone with TI, and restore your latest image to that hard
drive.
--
Dave

Thank you, Dave! You've put it very clearly. One more question: If I
can clone to my hard drive (and I'm not sure if Acronis True Image does
that), I assume I'd have to take it out of the case to put it into the
computer--right? That doesn't look possible with the two drives I
bought (WD Passport).

Thank you again!

Jo-Anne


Cloning will make an exact image to whatever the hard drive you choose
for a target. Using the clone onboard your PC for a boot drive is a
factor if your bios doesn't support 48 bit lba (large hard drives). If
that is a problem, the imaging software, if you make the imaging
restoration the exact size of the original (default), you should have no
problems.
--
Dave

Thank you, Dave! Anna on this list said that my Dell should support large
hard drives; I think she's had experience with the same model I have.
Nonetheless, for now I'll stick to imaging with Acronis--and might well
do some regular backups at least of my data, either with my old Easy CD
Creator or with xcopy (which I used back in the pre-Windows days).

Jo-Anne


xcopy won't work. xxcopy will most of the time.
--
Dave



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