External Hard Drive

gears

I've just bought an external hard drive and I have what is probably a dumb question but I'd like to just copy the entire hard drive from my pc on to it so I can make a complete copy of everything in one go but I can't figure out how to with out going into every folder and selecting the items and then copying them across.
Being lazy I'd like to preserve all folders and so on so can help me to do this. Thanks.

Diddy Kong

Software like Norton Ghost would be the best option to clone the main drive and backup it up to external drives. Some free alternatives here.

gears

Thanks for that. I suppose it's an obvious question but would it be better to invest the €69 rather than going for the free option. I'd be concerned I might loose everything instead of saving it.

cooperguy

Maybe im wrong but could you not just plug in the hard drive, open my computer, right click and drag your C: drive onto the external and select copy here?

Either that or open the C drive, highlight everything and drag onto the external?

goodlad

cooperguy wrote: »

Maybe im wrong but could you not just plug in the hard drive, open my computer, right click and drag your C: drive onto the external and select copy here?

Either that or open the C drive, highlight everything and drag onto the external?

Well that can be awkward.
If he is using XP then that wont work as some files on the c will be in use and if XP detects one file in use it ends the entire copy operation.

However if he is running Vista then you can just copy the c drive and select skip when it trys to copy a file that is in use.

gears

goodlad wrote: »

Well that can be awkward.
If he is using XP then that wont work as some files on the c will be in use and if XP detects one file in use it ends the entire copy operation.

However if he is running Vista then you can just copy the c drive and select skip when it trys to copy a file that is in use.

Unfortunately I tried to just "copy and paste" if you like to call it but it wouldn't work and yes I'm using XP, pity that would have been too easy.

goodlad

Well i guess the answer to your question really depends then on what exactly you want to backup and for what reason.

If your looking to backup the entire drive in a way that if you get any problems you could just format the drive then restore everything then a program like mentioned by Diddy Kong would be best.

But if you just looking to backup things like pictures, movies etc.. then you could just search the c drive from all files of a certain type then copy and paste them over. I admit that will take some time but it would still accomplish the task.

EDIT: XP also has a build in backup utility.
Start-> all programs- -> Accessories -> System tools -> Backup.

You can tell it to backup everything then tell it where to save the backup. Just point to the external Drive.

cian1500ww

A RAID setup is what you need but your probably better going for a software alternative.

gears

goodlad wrote: »

Well i guess the answer to your question really depends then on what exactly you want to backup and for what reason.

If your looking to backup the entire drive in a way that if you get any problems you could just format the drive then restore everything then a program like mentioned by Diddy Kong would be best.

But if you just looking to backup things like pictures, movies etc.. then you could just search the c drive from all files of a certain type then copy and paste them over. I admit that will take some time but it would still accomplish the task.

EDIT: XP also has a build in backup utility.
Start-> all programs- -> Accessories -> System tools -> Backup.

You can tell it to backup everything then tell it where to save the backup. Just point to the external Drive.

I had a look at the back up but I dont think it's what I really want as it would be good if I could access the data on the drive directly or even on another machine. Oh what I' m backing up is a mix of work plus personal so it's all over the place in different folders and so on, so the idea just copying the whole drive in one go would be best. It looks like a software option would be the one to go for, any one used one of these before ?

knuth

Ghosting to a USB will copy all the data across but he won't be able to boot from it.

Obtaining a second internal drive (preferably same connection, sata / ide), installing it in the computer and then ghosting it would be a much more fool proof solution.