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Vista Newbie
Group: Forum Members
Last Login: 11/28/2008 5:49:10 PM
Posts: 10, Visits: 27 |
| I am new to the system back up seen. I have a new desktop (HP) that has two internal hard drives. I just started to back up system to the unused drive. Scenario: Lets say my system crashes, how do I get to the backup and how do I use it to restore computer.
Windows Vista Home Premium 32 bit
CPU: AMD Athlon 64 X2 6000+ dual core @3.0 ghz
Motherboard: ECS Nettle2 1.0
PSU: 350 watt
Graphics: Nvidia Geforce 8400 GS 512MB DDR2
Ram: 3Gb PC2-5300 DDR2 @ 667mhz
HD: 2x320 GB SATA 3.0 Gbs @ 7200 rpm
Optical: Super Muliti DVD burner w/lightscribe
Extra: Hauppauge WinTV HVR-1800
Monitor: HP W1907 LCD 19" |
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Lead Forum Moderator
Group: Vista Forum Moderator
Last Login: Today @ 3:13:43 PM
Posts: 2,077, Visits: 1,991 |
| When you say "restore the computer", I'm presuming that you mean recreate the OS partition along with all accounts, programs, setting, and system-related data. That would require replacing the Vista OS partition on your desktop with a copy that had been saved.
In order to do that, you would first have to "image" your OS partition to another "drive". If your second drive is large enough to save an image of the first, you could do that. If it's not big enough, you will have to do the imaging to an external drive.
I don't have Home Premium, or access to a copy, but I believe that the only Backup options it provides is one of saving files (data). I don't believe it has the full image capabilities present in Business and Ultimate. If that's true, then you can not use Vista to do the backup and restore function.
Two third-party products that do the image backup and restore are Acronis True Image (ATI) and Ghost. ATI provides a bootable CD and the ability to make a custom boot CD -- which you will need in order to restore the Vista OS partition. I believe that the new version of Ghost does the same -- but I haven't used in in years and you would have to check the Symantec site for details.
As to the amount of disk space you need, using either product, it would be no larger than the amount of space already in use in the Vista OS partition. Additionally, both products provide various degrees of data compression, so the actual space required would be somewhat less.
BTW, despite what others may tell you, System Restore does NOT completely restore the machine to a prior state. I have tested and confirmed this. Which I why I rely entirely on third-party products to backup and restore my systems.
ASUS A832nSLI-Deluxe, AMD 64X2 4400 OC 2.4GHz, 3GB OCZ,
Running: XP Pro, Vista Ultimate 32-bit, Vista Business, Ubuntu 7.10, Ubuntu 8.04 LTS
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