Back up to external hard drive

Sonny Jenkins · Post by **Sonny Jenkins** » 25 Oct 2009 10:24 am

When doing a usb transfer of data (documents, pictures etc) can the whole program be transfered at once,,,or do I have to do one document or ?? at a time?

Wiz Feinberg · Post by **Wiz Feinberg** » 25 Oct 2009 12:26 pm

Transfer as much data as you want, in any size or number of files. The operating system will index everything as it transfers the files and folders.

The speed and throughput of the USB port will determine how long the process takes.

Sonny Jenkins · Post by **Sonny Jenkins** » 26 Oct 2009 7:17 am

So,,,,do I just go to "My Computer" > C drive, right click on each program or application on that drive and then click on move or copy???

Mitch Drumm · Post by **Mitch Drumm** » 26 Oct 2009 7:25 am

Sonny:

You can do that or you can highlight anything you want to move or copy with the mouse and just drag it to the destination.

But beware: if you are moving an installed program (usually in C:\Program Files), that doesn't help you and is usually pointless. If you were to drag an installed application to another folder or new drive, it may not work well or at all.

Uninstalled programs are another matter. They are just data like a random mp3 or picture and can be moved around wherever you want with no negative consequences.

Backing up Uninstalled programs is good practice--particularly for programs you downloaded or when you have no original disc.

Backing up installed programs is either not done at all or is done as part of an "imaging" process (with a program like Acronis), which normally includes EVERYTHING on a partition or drive, not just installed programs.

Storm Rosson · Post by **Storm Rosson** » 26 Oct 2009 9:41 am

you cannot transfer an "installed" app .You must have the application/program install disc(s) the only apps or proggys that can be transferred are applets such as cpu-z, hw-id, etc. , these are called portable apps and do not install as such, but merely run on the os shell with a windows .dll hook

Storm Rosson · Post by **Storm Rosson** » 26 Oct 2009 9:43 am

you cannot transfer an "installed" app .You must have the application/program install disc(s) the only apps or proggys that can be transferred are applets such as cpu-z, hw-id, etc. , these are called portable apps and do not install as such, but merely run on the os shell with a windows .dll hook ....as noted above u can "image" the complete drive with os and apps but this process is substantially different than backing up info

Wiz Feinberg · Post by **Wiz Feinberg** » 26 Oct 2009 10:54 am

You definitely want to avoid moving any installed programs! Stay away from your Program Files and Windows directories. It is fine to move audio and video files, pictures, downloaded setup files and unnecessary documents to another drive to make more room on your boot drive.

If you are looking for more complete backups you can try Acronis True Image. It can be setup to automatically backup either selected folders, or an entire hard drive, bit by bit. You can select your backup location, be it another disk drive, or memory device, or even an online location. Read about it on my aforementioned web page.

John Cipriano · Post by **John Cipriano** » 26 Oct 2009 3:36 pm

Just to expand on this a little, when you install a program you are running a program that profiles your machine, asks you certain questions, and then proceeds to litter files all over the place. Shared libraries end up in c:\windows\system32 and get registered in something like a database, for instance. A lot of programs used to throw their configuration files in c:\windows. Anything unique to the user ends up in c:\documents and settings or c:\users. Shortcuts go in the "Start Menu" folders. There are registry entries that are spread around the various registry hives in a similar way. And so on.

While technically if you keep a log of every single thing that changes on your machine during an install, it might be possible to put everything back in the bottle, in reality it's a far better use of your time to just reinstall programs from the CD or the downloaded installer program.

Some programs are simple enough to consist of a single .exe file, in those cases you can move them but you'd still lose your shortcuts and such.

Jack Stoner · Post by **Jack Stoner** » 27 Oct 2009 2:39 am

If you want to do a "real backup" of the hard drive to an external drive (everything) - and you do need backups - use a "ghost" program such as Acronis True Image Home (what I, Wiz and most techies that I know use). Periodic full backups will allow you to rebuild (recreate) your hard drive from the backup.

If you just have the "user data" backed up that is great but if the hard drive dies or is corrupted and must be reformatted and reinstalled it's much easier and faster to do it from a full backup.

Backups are not for "if" they will ever be needed, backups are for "when" they are needed.

Sonny Jenkins · Post by **Sonny Jenkins** » 27 Oct 2009 10:06 am

This techno-challenged dummy appreciates these opinions soooo much,,,,and this acronis thing was exactly what I had in mind,,,,but a while back I posed this scenario and found out that it was NOT what I had thought it was,,,,Let's say I use Acronis to put an exact image of my hard drive onto an external hard drive,,,,and lo and behold my computer (with XP) crashes,,,,I go buy another computer (most likely with win 7). It is my understanding that I can NOT hook up that external hard drive to that new computer and transfer everything right over???? So it seems like I have not gained much with the back up,,,unless I want to put a new hard drive into an obsolete computer? Maybe there is something I am not understanding??

Mitch Drumm · Post by **Mitch Drumm** » 27 Oct 2009 11:06 am

Sonny:

Suppose you used Acronis to make an image of your current C drive, containing XP, and saved that image to your external drive.

Suppose the next day your C drive failed. You could replace that C drive with a new empty one (yourself, Best Buy, whoever) and then restore that saved Acronis XP image to that new drive and you would be up and running with XP again.

Or--suppose the day after you made the Acronis image, your Windows installation develops serious problems--maybe from a virus, maybe because you accidentally deleted something significant. You could then restore that Acronis XP image back to your C drive to eliminate the problem.

That's 2 scenarios where Acronis would help.

But suppose you make an Acronis image of XP and put it on your external drive. Then the next week you buy a new PC with Windows 7 or maybe you install Windows 7 on your existing PC. Then suppose a week later your new PC has a major issue. If you restore the Acronis XP image at that point, it will revert you to XP, which you probably wouldn't want to do. In this scenario, you should have made a NEW Acronis image of the new Windows 7 installation on the new PC. You could then use this new image to restore you to Windows 7.

If you had Windows 7 on a new PC, I think you could still drill into the old Acronis image of XP and recover your personal DATA--pictures, videos, mp3s, piece by piece--this file, that folder, etc. To that extent, the old image would be useful.

But if you RESTORE the ENTIRE XP image as is, it would overwrite your new Windows 7 installation, which you wouldn't want to do. File by file on personal data would be OK, but not the entire image.

If you use an imaging product like Acronis, you should be SURE to make a bootable recovery disc that will allow you to restore your image EVEN if you can't boot into Windows, which is certainly possible. You can make a bootable recovery disk easily from the Acronis menu.

Savvy?

Wiz Feinberg · Post by **Wiz Feinberg** » 27 Oct 2009 11:46 am

One of the facts that is emerging from this discussion is that saved computer images are only useful for restoration on the same computer, but possibly to a new hard drive. The actual files compressed into a saved image can be viewed and extracted if the imaging program is installed onto a new computer and the saved image location is accessible to it.

However, user settings and storage locations vary from OS to OS, setup to setup. A program that was installed into an XP computer is not going to be installed the same way into a Windows 7 computer. The hardware components and drivers will be registered differently as well.

Acronis True Image and Norton Ghost are intended to make images of complete hard drives, to be there is needed to reinstall the exact working computer should the boot disk fail. They are not intended to be program movers from one OS to another, or one computer to another. There is a program that is designed to do that and I am an affiliate for it. That program is called PC Mover. PC Mover will move installed programs, as well as data files, for a one time, one move price. Contact me for more details.

Sonny Jenkins · Post by **Sonny Jenkins** » 28 Oct 2009 8:16 am

Hey Mitch,,,thanks for that very concise explanation,,,that's pretty much how I understood it.

and Wiz,,,thank you for ALL your help (and patience) for us "dummies".

OK,,so if I get acronis, back up everything on my XP to an external hard drive (set it to periodically update),,rock along for a week or years until my XP crashes (as long as it is operating ok I see no need to upgrade or buy a new computer) then I buy a new computer, probably with win 7 on it, install PC mover on it, which would allow me to transfer everything from the external hard drive to the new computer,,,(guess I would need to have PC mover on the XP computer, which would also be backed up on the external hard drive)???

Wiz,,,are these programs (Acronis and PC Mover) available from you,,,or should I download from the respective web sites?

Wiz Feinberg · Post by **Wiz Feinberg** » 28 Oct 2009 9:20 am

Sonny Jenkins wrote:<snip>

OK,,so if I get acronis, back up everything on my XP to an external hard drive (set it to periodically update),,rock along for a week or years until my XP crashes (as long as it is operating ok I see no need to upgrade or buy a new computer) then I buy a new computer, probably with win 7 on it, install PC mover on it, which would allow me to transfer everything from the external hard drive to the new computer,,,(guess I would need to have PC mover on the XP computer, which would also be backed up on the external hard drive)???

Yes, save Acronis computer images to an external drive. They are of little use if the C drive crashes. Contact me after you purchase Acronis if you need help getting started. The most important thing that should be done immediately after installing Acronis - is to burn a bootable recovery CD or DVD. The Program offers to do this during setup, or it can be done from its Start Menu program links.

PC Mover gets installed onto both the old and new computers, usually at the time you intend to move the files. It would be backed up if you saved an Acronis image after it has been installed. But, there is no reason to preinstall it if you have no immediate plans to use it. You pay for a license that allows one successful move, or undo operation.

I see that PC Mover now offers an optional add-on to assist people migrating from XP to Windows 7. It will save time and configuration problems, but adds about $20 to the cost of the move. Perhaps this price will drop later on.

Sonny Jenkins wrote:Wiz,,,are these programs (Acronis and PC Mover) available from you,,,or should I download from the respective web sites?

I am affiliated with both and can provide links to you. I already have an entire web page dedicated to Acronis True Image, here.

If/when you are ready to migrate to Windows 7 you can contact me through the Forum for a link to get PC Mover and possibly a discount code (they issue them periodically). By then it may be common knowledge how to use it to transfer from XP to W7.

BTW: PC Mover is from Laplink, the makers of the LapLink serial port crossover cables used to network two PCs. They still sell these cables, plus new USB networking cables, to get two PCs to see each other, through their software. I can't tell you how many times I used that (serial port) LapLink cable to fix PCs, before I setup a home network and PCs began shipping with built-in NICs.