System Backup
 

Can anyone recommend a product / utility that will will enable me to do a complete backup of my system (including the O/S) and give me the ability to restore it to a new hard drive should the need arise and have a fully working system.

O/s is XP professional

Recommended HDcopy many times before, great free and simple.

Just check XP compatability though.

Cheers

Tim

Thanks Timmcat, looks just what Im looking for.

SLF 999,

One of the best programs out there (Even better than Ghost) is:

Acronis True Image 6.0

You can do the Image of your drive from within Windows and you do not need to keep rebooting in order for it to work. The interface is one of the best out there with full descriptions of everything it is doing.

Take Care,

Richard

Pixielabs XXCOPY [ http://www.xxcopy.com/ ] is free and great for cloning drives (and a lot else besides) - no problems with NTFS. Syntax of Xxcopy is arcane so RTFM.

I'm not sure how extensively XP checks the HDD before deciding that it has been pirated, but it almost certainly at least looks at the Volume ID (XXXX-XXXX) - you can change this with VolumeID from Sysinternals [ http://www.sysinternals.com/ntw2k/so...shtml#VolumeId ] to be the same on both disks.

Even this may not work - 2000/XP possibly looks at the (different) MBR as it wakes up and assigns a new (different) GUID. Pixielabs are working on XXCLONE and there is a beta release.

Dunno if XP gets upset if it sees two disks with the same Volume ID....

Acronis looks nice at $45 - worth reading the FAQ tho'

Mac,

The hardware checked is as follows: Serial number of system volume; NIC MAC address; CDROM; graphics adapter; CPU; hard drive; SCSI adapter; IDE controller; processor model; RAM size. There's also a check to see if the hardware is dockable or not.

You're only likely to have to repeat the activation process and get a new unlock key if you change more than three of these components.

I have used Ghost many times to clone a drive, when swapping drives in the same computer and WinXP does not even hiccup. If you clone the drive and put it in another comp, WinXP will at the very least need a repair, and trigger the Windows Product Activation (WPA) system.

Take Care,

Richard

P.S. Here is the Inside Windows Product Activation details.

I subscribe to a computer newsletter called LangaList. It comes in two versions; a freebe complete with ads and a subscribe version for about $10/pa with no ads plus extra stuff. I'd recomend it.

I did a google search of the freebe site and here's some info for you ;

http://www.google.com/search?sourcei...a%2Ecom+backup