External Hard Drive and Backups!

[slowday444]

OK, so a couple months ago, with Unlocker, I was uninstalling some OpenOffice files I always noticed while doing malware scans, even though I had uninstalled it (OpenOff) after installing MS Office7 Beta. I foolishly kept my XP Restore files at 1% so there was only one restore point. This file(s) was of the type that Unlocker could only remove on reboot and "I think" that action was "set" in the restore point, because after the reboot I could not access the Internet, even after restoring. XP even warned me these files may affect other programs but I ignored the prompt! Anyway, ended up having to get someone to reformat my pc.

With numerous External Hard Drives on sale tomorrow, I have been thinking about this question! Can you move or copy 100% of you computer to the external hard drive, and then if something happened to your computer, and for some reason or another you could not use system restore, could you just repair it from the ex drive? Or, would you have to completely wipe your pc and do a complete reformat from the ex drive? If the answer is yes to the last question, how would you wipe your whole drive? Also (last question!), this copy that would be on the ex drive, would all programs, e.g. ccleaner, anti-malware progs, registry cleaners, etc. all function normally after reinstallation to the pc? Sorry for all the complicated questions! Thank You!

[1984]

im not sure about the whole system or anything, but i hold all of my games, movies, photos, music, personal files on my external drives, so when (and its happened 3 times now) that ive had to reformat, i dont lose any information. i even export my bookmarks to a file, and i keep a list of all the freeware i use with links, (and periodically download the installers) so that when ive reformatted its a whole lot faster.

 

but its still a pain.

[Glenn]

Check out Norton Ghost, Acronis True Image, etc. They create an exact image of the entire hard drive.

 

I used to use Norton Ghost with my previous OS and it was quite painless ... boot off a floppy, select the image to restore (you could save several) and go for coffee.