I have a second hand ACER desktop which came from my local computer shop, pre-loaded with XP but with no discs. There seems to be no facility, within the installed programmes, to do back ups. It suppose that I could buy a programme but can anyone recommend a free one?
I have a very large capacity external drive - could I copy the complete computer onto that or would that not achieve anything useful?
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you can "image" the entire computers drive over to the external drive.
www.thefreecountry.com/utilities/backupandimage.shtml
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>> There seems to be no facility, within the installed programmes, to do back ups.
There should be something in Start>All Programs>Accessories>System Tools>
Called "backup"
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>> >> There seems to be no facility, within the installed programmes, to do back ups.
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>> There should be something in Start>All Programs>Accessories>System Tools>
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>> Called "backup"
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I've just checked my laptop (XP home SP3) and surprisingly it's not there; by the looks of this page it isn't always installed by default, and needs the original Windows disk to do an install:-
support.microsoft.com/kb/308422
Normally I would say use the free/trial version of Acronis TrueImage, but I don't think the recent versions include disk imaging, so not much use.
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XP Home didn't install backup by Default as is the case with XP Pro.
To Enable it see:
support.microsoft.com/kb/302894
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>> XP Home didn't install backup by Default as is the case with XP Pro.
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>> To Enable it see:
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>> support.microsoft.com/kb/302894
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That still needs the Windows install disk PP hasn't got.
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Its a pretty crap program anyway, with plenty of superior free alternatives, so if its not there its no loss.
If his drive is large enough, PP should image his hard drive for basic "back to stage 1" recovery, and then obtain a free backup program, do an backup of user data, then do incremental backups thereafter into another part of his drive.
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>>That still needs the Windows install disk PP hasn't got.>>
That's a rather important point...:-)
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My brother had an Asus netbook running XP.
I remember I couldn't find a back up program on it.
Frustrating because I was convinced one must be there, which made me spend even more time looking for it.
Just goes to show you should never assume anything, particularly with computers.
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Here's a genuinely free (for home use) synchronisation program - allwaysync.com/
The benefit of sync being that you only copy the files changed since last run.
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Thanks to you all, especially smokie, I have been away for a short while.
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>> Here's a genuinely free (for home use) synchronisation program - allwaysync.com/
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>> The benefit of sync being that you only copy the files changed since last run.
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Cheers, I was after a different synch program as I can't get Synctoy or syncback to do what I need.
But surely PP needs a full on disk imaging program to back up the OS, rather than just file sync.? - without swapping HDDs between PCs anyway.
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Yeah you are probberly right spammy, zero gave an answer in the first reply which may or may not do that. I didn't read the post thoroughly but hopefully someone will benefit from my post, even if the OP doesn't :-)
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It's solved a sync. problem for me anyway :-)
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Backing Up Windows XP - Zero
