Whats the best way to do a full back up? I had to reformat due to a virus and I want to have everything backed up in case I have a problem again. I'm running XP. I don't see a back up option anywhere.

Look in Start - Programs - Accesories - System Tools


There should be a backup tool there.

Is this XP Professional?

That's where I thought it was supposed to be, but it's not. XP home.

The backup utility on XP Home is not installed by default, whereas on XP Pro, it is.

To add Backup to your XP Home install, you can find it on the CD in the \VALUEADD\MSFT\NTBACKUP directory.

Good Luck

Thanks Jugstah, that did it. Don't you love it when they hide stuff?:smash:

It's called "Microsoft Marketing"

It's such a small app, I don't know why for the life of them did they not have it installed by default with the OS.

They're hoping for that $250 tech support call..

I back up my HD twice a week. Boot partition only.
I back it up to a completely separate hard drive.

I use Drive Image 5.1 which probably you could get at a bargain bin now for elcheapo money. The company sold out to Symantec and they bucked the price to $70.00.

Backup takes 15 min and restore takes about 17. Restore completely reformats the hard drive and puts back on what you had when you backed it up. This ain't no system restore cuz if your mistakes smokes your operating system, how is restore going to work ?

Lee

I go on Ebay, buy the year-old version of Symantec Systemworks Professional 2003 for $10, use the included Ghost Image program. Works just fine for me.

I've heard that True Image is better than the rest, but this Symantec Systemworks Pro includes the NAV so it's all good for me.

For $10, you can't beat the price.