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General discussion

Backing Up a Laptop system.

Dec 7, 2003 12:56PM PST

I have 2 brand new laptops with windows xp home, Installed most of the critical updates, NAV 2003, Adaware, Spybot SD, Spyware blaster, etc. -- Which are not a standard software --

Since the recovery CD doesn't have the latest updates and other utilities that I installed.

To safe some steps, incase the laptop get corrupted etc, I would like to make a backup of the whole system (disk image).. to another HD.

Can I use 'copy' or 'xcopy' or do I need certain utility to do this?

Thank You

Discussion is locked

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Re:Backing Up a Laptop system.
Dec 7, 2003 8:10PM PST

This may be possible...
Attach another external laptop HDD to it and use Ghost to clone the contents of the HDD over to it.

But since Laptop HDDs are not as cheap as Desktop HDDs I would simply use the Files & Settings Transfer Wizard to backup the data & settings and burn that onto a CD-R.

Then if you want to go to Windows Update Catalog site and D/L SP1a + all Critical Updates and saved them to your HDD and make a copy together with your data backup onto CD-R.
http://v4.windowsupdate.microsoft.com/catalog/en/default.asp

This will help in speeding up any restoration which may only occur after a year or more?

If you restore CDs has an XP CD you can use slipstream to incorporate SP1 into it:
http://www.tacktech.com/display.cfm?id=160&object=article.cfm

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Re:Re:Backing Up a Laptop system.
Dec 8, 2003 11:56AM PST

Thank you for the tips.. but the real problem is the laptop user have no concern or knowledge or realized about virus and security threat, this makes the laptop will need to be restore a lot sooner than a year and more frequent.

So I need to have a whole system back-up (OS, Application, etc)

Just to make sure, I have a 20gb external USB HD, and the laptop is 60gb.. can I use this or do I need a 60gb too?

Anyway thanks again.