Backing up Primary Drive in XP

[coldfire]

When I try to back up my primary hard drive on to a DVD-R/RW, I get a reading in My computer, with a right click on the drive, and selecting properties, the pie chart displays, 3.85GB Used. But when I launch Veritas Record Now, and select the entire contents of my primary hard drive, I get a total reading of 2,703.37MB, this is about 1GB of difference. What am I doing wrong, and what is the proper way to back up your entire primary hard drive, so the next time it crashes, I can do a write to hard drive from DVD-ROM and do a faster install.

By the way I do have the system and hidden files set to view, so I should be getting the whole ball of wax.

Thanks in advance for any and all replies.

[milctoast]

Maybe Veritas doesn't read the contents of Recycle Bin, the pagefile and the hibernate file (if you have one).
The proper way to backup is to use a dedicated backup program (can't remember one now) or use Norton Ghost to make an image of your system partition and then save the image to a DVDR.

[TRILIGHT]

As was said, you will have to use a utility such as Ghost. You won't get what you're looking for by trying to burn all the files to disc. It won't work that way.

[coldfire]

Thanks to both of you, very much for replying. I thought that there was a perticular program that would do the trick, I've never done it before, as I couldn't be bothered with multiple CD's, now that I have a DVD-R/RW, I thought I would try that route.

Again Many Mahalo's,

[TRILIGHT]

You're welcome, Coldfire. While Ghost has the ability to let you access individual files it's really not the right way to go in this situation. Your main focus is that you want to get yourself a clean install with no corruption causing you headaches. The only way to do this effectively is to reinstall the OS and all your software.

If you were to do an entire partition backup with Ghost, you'd get exactly what you had before. If you just copied files and tried to copy them back in, you would not only not have the correct boot structure, etc. but you would be copying questionable files over good ones. You'd be in worse shape than you probably are now. That's why it's best just to back up your documents and start from scratch.

Now you have a really good opportunity here! Once you complete your install of the OS, create a Ghost image of it. You could also create another Ghost image when you get some of your basic software installed. From that point on, you would have a clean Ghost image to go back to in the future. THAT would give you the ability to save a lot of time. Since it would be a new install, nothing would be accidentally corrupted yet. You could start from that point on! :)

PS... If you have XP, you have the unique ability to set restore points that you can bring the system back to. It's a WONDERFUL feature. You can access it by clicking "Start...Run..." and typing the following in the box: C:\WINDOWS\system32\Restore\rstrui.exe

[TRILIGHT]

LOL!! Sorry if some of that doesn't make sense. I was thinking I was replying to a VERY similar post in the PC Hardware forum. You may or may not find anything I just said useful in your case. :)

[coldfire]

Quite right!, I do, actually that is what I have had in mind. Since I do have a tendancy to over load trivia programs,(subsequently aventually hampering system responce time) and I only do use primary ones. I thought is best to do a good install, load those primary programs and utilities, and do an disc image type of backup. So this would greatly cut down on that long road of doing the tedious task of OS installation thru rebooting with every detailed utility/program. Thus allow me to do a nice re-install every other month or so as needed.

Again, Thanks!!

[TRILIGHT]

You're welcome! Something else you might want to consider is automating a command line instruction in an autoexec.bat file. Create a bootable CDROM and all you would ever need to do is simply boot to the CDROM and wait. :) I created such a disc last year for my desktop technicians to use. Anytime we got a new system in, all they had to do was boot it to the CD and the system was imaged with the OS and all core apps. It was also very helpful if an entire system failed and had to be rebuilt. It saved a lot of valuable time.

[avih]

@TRILIGHT:
i know it's possible, but didn't investigate this possibility. can u shed some more light on 'how to make bootable (ghosy?) cd'? :)

also, take into account the 700M limited size of the cd, and the minimun ghost file size than can be created with xp-pro (i made a ghost (with compression) after a fresh xp install, and got 800+M :( )

thx
avi

[TRILIGHT]

At the time, our workstations were NT4 so there wasn't a problem fitting it on one disc. You can, however, span the image across more if necessary. You can find more specific info on doing this HERE (http://service4.symantec.com/SUPPORT/ghost.nsf/docid/2000110312324125).

[avih]

thx for the link. i did span my ghost image on 2 cds using winrar though.. so i can decompress it from command line..

thx again
avi.