Backing up a hard drive

So I know there are various software suites out there, for example “Ghost” that do this for you, but I am wondering if I can back up my brother-in-law’s hard drive the old way, by simply copying and pasting it to another drive. The drive is not being used at the time, so no files are running at the time of copying, and I have set hidden and system files to be shown, so they should all be copied.

As far as I know, the main point of Ghost, is that it can back up your files, even if that drive is the main windows drive on your computer, since copy/paste would be impossible in this case.

So if his computer goes apeshit (it’s already done it twice recently, both times requiring a full Windows (and other stuff) install), can I just format and paste back what I’ve copied?

If not, why not?

newer versions can do that indeed. booting from dos with an older ghost version works fine. it requires just a floppy.

if the drive you want to backup is not in use (you’re backing it up with another drive/windows), it could work. it could also work if you do the same to copy the data back to the same drive (again, not in use).
i dont think it’s worth the hassles since ghost (or your fav backup application) can backup/compress/verify your drive in a few minutes. i doubt you’ll be able to do that the way you describe… i suggest you use an older version of ghost (on a floppy disk) and backup the entire drive on another partition. it’s way safer!

Thanks, 5566. As it happens, I did the manual back-up last night. Didn’t take long at all, since it’s a fresh install of Windows, a service pack and a few necessary programs. I took the drive out of the brother-in-law’s computer and added it to my PC on the secondary IDE channel, so yeah, nothing was in use at the time.

I guess I’ll let you all know if and when I have to fix his computer again next month. :stuck_out_tongue:

P.S. I don’t have Ghost, so that’s why I went for this approach. Are there any freeware utilities that do the same as Ghost?

In addition to the files and folders a hard drive has other information on it, such as the partition table, file system table(s), and the master boot record. This information is not copied when you just do a copy and paste under Windows, so even if you get around the issue of ‘locked files’ you’ll likely still end up with a drive that doesn’t boot.

The better solution is to find out what is causing the ‘crap outs’ in the first place, and solve it.
Most likely the following easy steps should work:
Make your brother in-law’s user account a “Limited user” not “Administrator”
Install Thunderbird and Firefox and teach him how to use them instead of IE and OE
Set Windows Updates to install automatically
Install a good Antivirus program and set it to update automatically
Configure Windows Firewall properly for the programs he needs. Tell him that other progams “Can’t work with his computer anymore.”
Sit by him during a typical online session and hit him on the head every time he clicks on a link that claims, “You have won $1,000! Click here!”

If you copy HDD1 from computer1 to HDD2 by Windows file copy (so with the mouse) and connect HDD2 to computer2, you cannot BOOT UP the system with the Windows system on it (if there is one), but you can use all data like pictures and word documents.

If you use this HDD2 to boot up the computer, it is likely to freeze / be unstable. Because the file fragmentation tables do not match the real state of the files on the HDD.

I have tried it and the system became more unstable, the more time had passed since having made HDD2.

This aging result probably related to other HDDs which did not match anymore :stuck_out_tongue:

[quote=“bob_honest”]If you copy HDD1 from computer1 to HDD2 by Windows file copy (so with the mouse) and connect HDD2 to computer2, you cannot BOOT UP the system with the Windows system on it (if there is one), but you can use all data like pictures and word documents.

If you use this HDD2 to boot up the computer, it is likely to freeze / be unstable. Because the file fragmentation tables do not match the real state of the files on the HDD.

I have tried it and the system became more unstable, the more time had passed since having made HDD2.

This aging result probably related to other HDDs which did not match anymore :p[/quote]

Hold on. I’m not sure I totally understand what you wrote, bob. My aim would be to replace all files on the original HDD, should those files become corrupt. In the end it will be the same HDD on the same original PC.

This is a purists point of few. The very old but still very useful Unix tool called “dd” can make a bit-by-bit copy of your entire HDD. Here are the links to 2 useful wikis. I am sure you can google for more.

xbox-linux.org/wiki/Hard_Disk_Backup_HOWTO

gentoo-wiki.com/HOWTO_Backup