Back-up in winXP Pro

[chittnp]

I recently got a warning at start up that says hard drive failure imminent, so I Downloaded maxtors hard drive trouble shooter, ran it, recieved an error. When I looked up the error on their web site, it said that the trouble shooting software may generate those errors randomly, and to perform a low level format on the disk to see if the problem goes away. What I want to know is what I should save before I reformat in order to keep my XP settings as they are now. I am thinking that I must be able to save certain folders, then re-install windows, and copy the saved folders over them, reboot, and it will be just like it was before....is this right? what folders should I backup? I've already backed up all my mp3's and pictures, and most of my utilities. what do you guys suggest I do?

 

[zachj]

Registry is where most of your important settings will be. You can back that up easily. Also, backup your favorites if you want them, any programs you've got, any mail you can't live without, documents, and such. If you don't want to save all of your prgrams to disk and take up space, just make a list of all the things you know you want so you can put them back on when you get the computer up and running again.

Z

 

[LutaWicasa]

Doesn't Maxtor have some "ghosting" proggie for use with their drives?
If so, just save an "image" of the drive, after format, use the image to restore the drive exactly as it was.

 

[zachj]

speaking of ghost, does anyone here know how to use that? I was using it before and I could ghost a 40Gig drive and compress it to around 5 Gigs I think (don't know). Now it wants 20 . . .That doesn't make sense. Thought compression would be higher. Is there something I'm missing?

Z

 

[LutaWicasa]

speaking of ghost, does anyone here know how to use that? I was using it before and I could ghost a 40Gig drive and compress it to around 5 Gigs I think (don't know). Now it wants 20 . . .That doesn't make sense. Thought compression would be higher. Is there something I'm missing?

Z

This would of course be better served in the Other Software, but......as I recall, you had three options on the compression rate. Mayhaps you overlooked that option?

 

[zachj]

The only options I got were "none", "low", and "high".
I chose "high"

Z

 

[su root]

it completely depends on the types of data you have on the hard drive. If you have text files (which compress very small), then you can achieve extrememly high compression, but if you are trying to compress MP3s or JPGs (which are already highly compressed), then it will compress 1:1.

 

[zachj]

I'm trying to back up a drive with about 10-12 gigs of OS and apps and stuff. No songs and very few pictures.

Z

 

[The Revelation]

For settings, use the File and Settings Transfer Wizard to back up what you want. Then after the format, place it all back on the drive. I've done it countless times.

 

[chittnp]

this is gonna soud dumb, but with the files and settings wizard, do I have to transfer them to a hard drive with an OS installed on it, or should I just transfer them to an empty NTFS formatted drive?

 

[zachj]

Having never used it before, i cannot say with any amount of certainty, but I can't imagine why not . . . I know it's designed to help you move your files to another computer when you buy a new one, but one would think that people wouldn't always do direct computer to computer transfers all the time. I'm sure they took that into account.

Z