Copying Hard Drives

[arlojanis]

I have two laptops with Windows 98. I would like to copy the hard drive from one to the other. I have heard of ghosting and mirroring. Please explain which one to use and how. Also will the RSS and CPS run after copying?

[ka7wnf]

I use a program called Norton ghost that makes an exact copy of the drive. Everything works exactly the same. When I've had a crash I just swap out the drives and everything works. I just have to remember to recopy the drives from time to time.

[Jim2121]

Norton ghost is a good program. It makes an Image (which you also want to save) of your HD. I bought three Western Digital Hard drives 80gig (got a good price from newegg) for my three notebooks, that originally came with 30gig drives....
Just follow the instructions in the book that comes with the ghost program, its pretty much cut & dry. Now I never had any of my notebooks crash since I did the Ghost over a year ago. I hear if I have to load them again/Ghost them again, all the info start's loading from the day I did the ghost? which if I have it right means, without any backups, I'm going to lose info from the day I did the ghost! Don't know about the RSS? We have different computers for that... Let us know how it turns out? As for Win98 I don't think MS supports it anymore? If not? No hotfixs, MS downloads, ect... I stayed with XP, I think MS supports it till 2012 ----- maybe?

[alex]

Ghost is good, but it doesn't make a complete image of the hard drive. It will work for what you want your looking to do though.

What the poster above is saying is that if you use Ghost for backup, your essentially making a copy of your computer frozen in time. If you change anything after that and you restore from the Ghost image you will have lost any changes from that point on.

-Alex

[Jim2121]

Hi alex! thats what I was trying to say, I made a complete image onto a usb external Maxtor 200gig HD. but I hear from a few friends, without a current backup, and a laptop crashes and I have to put that complete image back in its going to put the image in from January of 2007.... the ghost process I did just by reading the book. then transfered it from the Maxtor to the new Western Digital HD... backing up is a process I always had problems with. I've seen posts where backups work not 100% of the time. So after a year old ghost, if you have any advice, on saving all the softwear that went in over the year. I need to know that part of it also... tia...Jim

[wavetar]

Saving drive images with programs such as Norton Ghost or my personal favorite, True Image, is a great way to both backup your computer, and to expedite new OS installations on multiple identical computers. For instance, installing XP & then loading it with all the various Antivirus, spyware scanners, office programs, etc, can take many hours, even days to get everything you want installed (such as CPS). If you create an image of it once it is setup exactly the way you want it and save it onto another hard drive or partition, re-loading after a crash can be accomplished in just minutes.

Jim, just Ghost your computer again, and the new image will contain everything you have on your computer right up to the moment you created it.

[Jim2121]

Thanks Todd! I wasn't 100% sure I can do another ghost & bring these laptops up to date. I really don't want to go back a year after a crash, to find all the new software I put in since January 2007. So I can just make another Norton Ghost Image of the current drive I ghosted a year ago And I'll be current up to date? Guess I can save it to my Maxtor external drive? Its about as safe as any place to put it...

[Grog]

For backing up anything, I use two external drives.



"two is one, one is none"

It don't take much for a drive to die, that goes for external drives as well. They are cheap enough, get a pair

[Jim2121]

For backing up anything, I use two external drives.



"two is one, one is none"

It don't take much for a drive to die, that goes for external drives as well. They are cheap enough, get a pair

Two just in case one ext. drive goes south? well I have two Maxtors (a 200gig + a 300gig)
that will hold my personal info...

[Grog]

Two just in case one ext. drive goes south?

Yep, never can tell when something will happen to a drive.