Possible To Backup Installed Applications To External Hard Drive?
Dec 10, 2012
Can you backup installed applications to an external hard drive, then restore them to another Computer without Reinstalling them? For example, My computer Windows 7 Home Premium has many softwares, applications, programs, utilities, etc. That I purchased and don't want to Reinstall them on new computer. Is it possible for them to work without Re-entry keys?
I have been using a commercial company to back up my computer for the last 2 years. Now I have decided to do my own backups. I already did the first back up to the external drive. Now its time to back up again, when I back up again, will everything be backed up again? Or just the files that have changed?
I am running "windows backup and restore" on one of my external hard drives and WDsmartware (western digital software that came with my other external drive). WDsmartware eats up WAY to much resources. Would I be better off just using "windows backup and restore" for both drives? are there any free programs out there that are "better' than windows 7 "backup and restore"?
I'd like to automatically backup certain folders to an external hard drive every time it's plugged in. I've tried Windows 7 Backup tool but it creates an icon and I would like the folder to be able to be navigatable (for the reason that I need to know what has been backed up and what hasn't, also I don't want to restore an entire folder at times, sometimes I just want to restore a couple of files).
How can I make this happen? Using either Windows 7 backup or another tool
I am acquiring a 1.5TB external drive. I will be basically have a single 1.5TB file on this drive. It will be a Truecrypt encrypted archive.
Given that the entire hard disk will be occuppied with one huge file, what is the best way to format it? Is NTFS still the way to go? Does it make sense to increase the cluster size above the 4KB default?
I am concerned about both performance and not wasting space, but the performance is the lesser concern.
I'm looking for an external hard drive to backup all of my documents that can do the following:Say I have the hard drive already. I have all of my documents on my laptop and a copy of each of them in the hard drive. When I finished writing a new document and plug in the external hard drive, the hard drive will automatically detect that I have a new document and will make a copy of that document in the external. The hard drive will also automatically copy and replace any new version of the existed older documents.
First time poster here. I messed up big time trying to get my dell 1747 to dual boot in xp and win 7, i think. I installed xp on to an external hard drive via and esata connection. Now it won't boot without the external hard drive connected and of course will only boot in xp. The xp disc manager say that windows 7 is the primary os which confused me. I Tried the windows 7 recovery disc but it won't boot. I'm completely lost here, and I'm looking for the first step to take. AS it stands I have a C:RECOVERY, D:Fantom(my external to which i installed xp) and E: OS, why is E labeled OS? I could really use some help here.I can't uninstall xp in safe mode with administrator access. I'm wondering if i format the D drive containing Windows xp, if I will Automatically boot from my previous windows 7?
Last week I've reinstalled my Windows 7 because my notebook was slow and I wanted to went back to the factory setting. I've picked my Seagate external HD (2TB) and moved everything I had into a folder called "[Acer]".
Well, I had some problems with external hard drives this year, I've lost many information from an external HD, and I found out that it was because I've connected this HD in a Macintosh. I really DON'T KNOW WHY, but every folder that I had opened in my Macintosh went CORRUPTED in Windows 7, with no chances to repair the files.
Since then, I haven't plugged my external hard drives into my Macintosh.
I don't know if it's a Windows 7 problem or a problem with my Seagate HD, but the quantity of issues that I had with this external HD since then was crazy. Every time I disconnected this HD and then connected again, Windows asked me to repair and scan the files. And the amount of time to scan everything was, like, one and a half hour... so it was bugging me a lot. But the real problem is: yesterday I've plugged my external HD and my backup folder (called "[Acer]" simply disappeared from the drive. I've tried to run "chkdsk E: /F", with no success.
Now I'm running a "chkdsk E: /R", and it will take me a lot of time, and I'm really not positive to recover my backup folder.
All the old folders are there, everything is fine, but this folder disappeared, only this folder (and everything that were inside of it) disappeared.
I've also tried Recuva (Recuva - Download) to recover my folder, but it haven't found it.
I'm about to get a 2 terabyte external hard drive and I would like to move all my user installed programs to it without uninstalling them and reinstalling to the new drive. My question is....1. Is it safe to drag and drop the program files from C: to the new drive, and 2. If it's not a good idea to perform a drag and drop is there another option?
I have a WD5000D032-000 pocket 500 Gig. It worked on my vista 32 bit home. I updated to windows 7 home premium 64 bit edition and now my computer can't read it. It is displayed under Device manager just not My Computer
I use an WD external hard drive (1TB) for additional storage and it was working fine with no issues. The small USB connector broke off the board yesterday and I purchased a new enclosure and installed it. Now my computer does not recognize it as a storage device. I have all the data still on the HD and really do not want to loose it. I tried adding a letter for the drive, but it does not show up to change the letter of the drive.
I'm running Windows 7 64x Home Premium on a Toshiba Qosmio X505 laptop. I just got it back from the warranty repair center, where they replaced the hard drive and graphics fan & heatsink, and reloaded the factory windows version. Before I sent it out for repair, I used Windows Backup to create a backup of all my files on a Toshiba casio 500GB external USB drive (I had over 300 GB of files, so it was easier to use Windows Backup than drag and drop all the files, at least at the time). Now that I have the laptop back, I'm having trouble restoring my files. When I go to Control Panel-> Backup & Restore, a message appears in the restore section, saying "Windows could not find a backup for this computer." I've tried reconnecting the drive as well as restarting my computer, but to no avail. I can see and explore the files in My Computer, so I know the hard drive is properly connected.
.I didn't wait for the computer to tell me it was ok to remove the drive in the usb port. Now my computer no longer recognizes the external drive After removing my external hard drive (without the ok) my computer no longer recognizes the external hard drive. What do I do.
I'm trying to backup Windows 7 to an external HD that currently is used to backup mac.eed to do to make this happen? I'm sure I'll have to format the ext HD then backup the mac using a different file format, but am unsure just what I'll have to do or how to do it.
I have Asus N55SF laptop, with Windows 7 SP1 64 bit. Also, I have 2 external hard drives. One with USB 3.0, and one USB 2.0. Following problems, I am going to describe below, happen to the both of them. Just to mention, external drives are tested on desktop computer and following problems do not happen.
Let me now describe what happens when I try certain actions: - When I try to copy large files (10 or more GB) I get an error that destination is no longer visible. External drives disappear from My Computer and I can't do safe remove. But when I copy files using programs FastCopy or TeraCopy everything copies well and drives do not disappear. - When I try to do Windows Backup and encrypt them using BitLocker drives also disappear, and are not visible within OS.
There is a difference between external hard with USB 3.0 port and the one with 2.0 port: - When one with 3.0 disappears after described actions I can't see it from Device Manager, I can see it only after windows reboot. USB 3.0 disk connects to one USB 3.0 port on laptop. - When one with 2.0 port disappears I can see it from Device Manager, and I only have to unplug it, and plug it in again to see it. USB 2.0 disk connects to 2 USB 2.0 ports on laptop.
Common to both disks is that when then disappear from My computer the diode on the external disk cases are still flashing, what probably means that they have some power. Both disk are formated to NTFS, and Allocation unit size is set to: Default. Their removal policy is set to: Better performance (default). On laptop I only have Windows, Office and Asus drivers. Antivirus is: MSE.
I have an internal hard disk not in use ,and I would like to make it as external disk !I looked on the net and I found I should have the " encelsure " butt I think I wont find it here in my city .So is there another way ? like usb -esata cable
Me and my brother built me a new computer from scratch (he did the building - i did the watching). I purchased an internal hard drive from Overclockers UK. It's a Samsung 1TB drive. I also have a 64 Solid-state drive in there as my primary hard drive that Windows was installed on and a couple of programs are installed on. My storage disk (the 1TB disk) is for all my music/films etc. Whenever I drag and drop a file into the Samsung hard-drive - it copies it rather than moves it instantly.When I had a laptop, I had 3 external hard drives and this is the way it copied files onto them.how I can get the internal drive to stop acting like an external drive?
My external backup drive is a SimpleTech StorageSync unit used with an XP OS. I recently purchased a Dell 64 bit desktop. Can I just connect the backup drive to the new PC or should I make other adjustments?
Windows backup is set up to not allow backups onto the C drive (or whatever drive windows is installed on), which generally makes sense. But I have a C drive with a lot of empty space, and an external hard drive that I need to back up. So... is there any way to get around the default behavior so I can back up FROM the external drive TO the C drive?
I have a networked shared USB connected HD on PC 1 that works fine on PC 1. However when I tried to setup MS Backup for the first time on PC 2, it does not list the external HD called Drive "L". When I open COMPUTER on PC 2, the external drive is shown. Drive "L" is also set for ALL USERS, and shared label is indicated on PC 1. So the million dollar question is, why doesn't it show on the list of available drives to select for backup on PC 2? Also, there isn't any way in the backup setup screen to browse or search for any drives.
I bought 2 new 3Tb Seagate Expansion drives model STAY3000300.I tried to "Create a system image" and both 3Tb drives were presented as possible destination discs. I selected one of them and after a couple of messages about preparing and starting the following message was displayed. (same message on the other 3Tb drive as well)The backup failedBIG RED BAROne of the backup files could not be created.(0x8078002A)Additional Information:The request could not be performed because of an I/O device error, (0x8007045D)The system is Windows 7 64bit and bang up to date with Windows update. The system disc is a OCZ Agility 3 120Gb SSD.Another strange thing is I have been doing backups to another external disc for many months - a 1Tb Iomega portable external.The MAIN BU file is about 26Gb and, yes, all my discs are formated as NTFS so it is not a file size issue.
I am replacing my HHD with a SSD and made a mirror image on my backup external drive. When I tried to do the system image recovery, it fails to find the recovery information. It says the no disk that can be used for recovering the system disk can be found.
I have a USB external hard drive that I keep all my documents etc on (had it for years)I upgraded from Vista Home to & Home Premium then had to upgrade recently to Professional to run my Sage. Through all these upgrades my ext. drive ran fine. Occasionally the drvie letter would change if I had something else plugged into the USB, this was always easily corected in disk management by changing the drive path.The connection on the case packed up so I had to get the drive put into a new case, now when I plug it in the drive is assigned G instead of F, I tried to change the drive letter allocation in Disk Management but it won't let me as the program still thinks I have a second ext. hard drive which is labelled F. I suspect this has happened because when the usb connection broke the drive was disconnected suddenly instead of a proper eject.How do I get Disk Management to remove the inactive drive - i can't find any obvious way - eject, delete etc are all missing when I click on tools or tasks.
At present I use Vista and will be upgrading to Windows 7 o/a 22 Oct.
My total C & D drives use 110 GB so I would like to puchase something in that area and it would only be used for emergency backup. I have looked at several but I noticed that all of them only function with XP & Vista and no mention of Windows 7.
I would appreciate a recommendation that will function with Windows 7.