Best and easiest way to backup?

Question

Have XP Pro and am looking for feedback on the operating systems backup program. Is it as easy as the instructions display? I've tried two other programs and they resulted in lost data upon restore and one even stole drivers upon 'incremental backups'. The short story is that I just got done with a reformat and reinstall and am looking forward to starting out with a system that is not going to crash from program to program. I have a Maxtor 160 MB USB drive. And I found this morning that I can go to Explore>Send to>Drive 'F' and create a copy of the file I want to preserve. Am I Right in doing so? Would it be better ( seems obvious but I thought I'd ask) to just use the Full and Incremental Backups for keeping data secure (ie: are they stable enough to rely upon?).

The_Wippuh · Answer

I have had a lot of success with third party applications such as Ghost or Drive Image. They cost less than $100 I believe and are fairly easy to use. It's what they do and they do it well.

fireberd · Answer

I'm using Acronis 'True Image' backup and it's worked well and saved me several times. I backup to a second hard drive.

User97502 · Answer

Your external, USB hard drive is the perfect place for your backups.  You could also use CD's or DVD's.  For complete security and peace of mind, I would simply do the backup chore the old fashioned way.  Manually.  This avoids relying on any software solution to run the process for you.

fudgieguys · Answer

FYI,   I am a simple person, let XP do the work for you.   http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/setup/learnmore/bott_03july14.mspx   Since you have the space available, use XP backup routine. You can automate also. Message Edited by fudgieguys on 10-04-2006 02:48 PM

woochman · Answer

I back up to a file server on my network.  I use Acronis True Image to take an image of my C volumes, and MS Backup to back up the data on my D volumes.

tibailey · Answer

Yes, I agree 100% ! I've been using 'send to...' as the way to copy files to my external HD. Is that the way you do it? Sorry for the time lapse, but things have been very busy.

Windows General

Best and easiest way to backup?

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