Backing up my C: drive

[ilovepiano]

Right, I had a bit of an issue this morning with a corrupt registry, and although I seem to have fixed it, I thought it would be an idea to make a back-up of my C: drive.

So I'm guessing that I can just copy the whole lot over to an external drive, and then should anything go wrong again, I can just copy it all back and everything will be sweet?

That'll work won't it? Sounds to easy, I'm wondering if I've missed something really obvious!

 

[Sheikh Yerbouti]

No mate, unfortunately it won't work.
You won't be able to back up any files which are in use (ie files which windows needs to run).
It'll work for your data files though, but you'll have to pick through your C drive manually to make sure you've got them all copied over.
Best way I reckon is to use summat like Ghost which will take a snapshot of your whole drive, compress it & store it as a single (big) file.
All you do then is format your drive, use Ghost to restore from the file, and it'll bring everything back exactly as it was when you took the snapshot

 

[ilovepiano]

Ah... thought it sounded too simple.

What if I boot from a spare drive with an emergency copy of windows on it, and then transfer everything off my regular drive to an external one? Will that work?

 

[Sheikh Yerbouti]

Yep

 

[ilovepiano]

Nice swan mate, cheers

 

[jimmycobra]

also search for power quest drive image, it can restore your whole engine in 5 mins.

used it for years