Rebuilding Harddrive and Backing Up

[GLOC]

I am now suitably fed up with the slowness of my XP SP2 system and I really need to back up and rebuild the hard drive in the next few days.

Recommendations from the masses for a backup tool to use.

Also anything that will allow me to list all the software I have installed so that I can just download the latest versions and clean install them.

I have plenty of external drive space to drop the 160Gb onto so that isn't too much of a problem.

Regards

[wilbo]

To list all the software - type appwiz.cpl from the run prompt. all 'installed' software will be shown - ie. that you have run an installer for. Failing that a trawl through the "program files" folder might help.

Backup software - no idea - but once you've rebuilt it and are happy with it - install something like Norton Ghost - which will take a snapshot of your system when you have it at its quickest - and then simply restore back to the snapshot image when you get fed up/break it. take additional snapshots as you install software you want to include in a restore.

you should find this on the Groups.

[GLOC]

Thanks Wilbo. Re: ghost, I have got some similar software

[Julian Goffin]

If you use Ghost, then you will literally GHOST your drive in the state it already is.

I suggest the you google "belarc" and run the software to see what software you have, this will also give you the serial numbers that you have used for the software.

I would personally drag and drop the data that you need to be saved to your external and then format and reinstall.

If you use the Windows XP Disk that you have then make sure you deleted the partition using the XP Setup, this will clear the total drive and you can do a totally clean reinstall.

Hope this helps

Julian

[wilbo]

Originally Posted by Julian Goffin

If you use Ghost, then you will literally GHOST your drive in the state it already is.

Thats why I said *after* he rebuilds it..

Deleting the partition and then creating a new partition using the XP disc is a good tip..

[GLOC]

Thanks Julian. I will look into that.

One of the reasons my drive is in such a poor state is because I did a Ghost previously when I upgraded from a 100Gb to 180gb drive.

[Julian Goffin]

Sorry Should have..RTFA (Read The F****** Answer) Doh!

Ghosting it afterwards is def a good idea

[the_negligent_snail]

I have always found Ghost to be a bit of a cumbersome application. A far better one (IMHO) is Acronis True Image. If you have a spare drive (or partition to save the image to) then reinstall XP and you can transfer the back up data as you wish, even file by file.

Belarc advisor is a good little program, and so is Everest Enterprise edition.

PM Sent.

[jb2cool]

XP has it's own built in backup software. Not sure how good it is though. I've always used ghost at work.

What i'm planning on doing at home is building up my PC onto a clean hard drive (So i don't lose anything) and gradually get that up to speed with software and what-not. If i forget something or lose some data i've still got my old hard drive intact.

[GLOC]

Thanks Jason.

XP does have something but I would rather have something that works

That was my plan too, to build as I go along, but never got around to it!!

So a new build, then ghost, then bugger around with it!!