Restoring from a backup

S

stefan-west1

New Member
Hi all I use livedrive as a backup for my pc. At the moment every single file on the computer is backed up to it. What I want to know is if one of my drives was to fail and needed replacing is there a way of restoring it in such a way that I have all my software back and things and everything was exactly the same as it was before.

I didn't know if doing a full restore of everything would work as obviously all the installed files would be back and the registry would be restored to how it was aswell? That's assuming that it would allow the registry to be overwritten when it downloads all the files.

Any help is appreciated whether anyone knows if this would work or whether there's another way such as backing up a system image without having to keep it on the hard drive in the first place?
 
I'll take a look. I was hoping to try and do it without taking up more space on my hard drive. The problem I've got is I've got 3 hard drives around 1tb each so to create a system image of each would take up a lot of space
 
Is it just files you wish to backup ?

I got the impression when you mentioned software you meant backing up your windows installation ?
 
There are DOZENS and DOZENS and DOZENS of ways to either make an exact copy (clone) of your entire hard disk drive or just a simple specific data backup.

For an exact copy (clone) of an entire hard disk drive I use:

-Windows CD
-Linux Ubuntu CD

Yes I know it sounds weird,but I found my own way of doing this without using the software designed for that.
Before (long long long time ago) I used a software for this called DriveClone Pro.It was great and simple.It's not free,but it is damn good.
But I like my own way a lot more than any software for this purpose.


For a simple specific data backup I use:

-Windows file called "xcopy.exe"
-A simple program I made in C# which uses the "xcopy.exe" file together with all the parameters (switches) I need and which produces the copying process in rich text box control which in real time shows the full path,folder names and files names for source and destination as the data is being copied.And during the process,everything is added (appended) to a simple RTF text file so I can use that RTF text file to later check if every single file and folder has been successfuly copied or not.

So as you could notice I also don't use any software for this purpose.I don't really see a reason since I can make it work exactly how I want for free. :D

So for a simple data backup "xcopy.exe" is really a great and simple way.If you don't know any programming then you can also use "xcopy.exe" for the same purpose by creating a simple batch file in notepad by adding all the things you want to backup.And then every time you want to do a backup,you just run the batch file.
Of course if you know programming then you can make this a LOT more advanced...for example...you can make that the software (the one you made) automatically performs a backup in a specified time of the day without ANY user interaction.




Cheers!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top