Want To Back Up Entire System To External Hard Drive
Dec 23, 2005
I want to back up my entire system to an external harddrive and then reinstall windows on the internal one.My question is can I use a program to put programs back on to the internal drive from the external harddrive. I heard ghost copies everything even registry is this true?
I want to back up my files to an external hard drive using Windows Backup, but it is not shown as an option. The only options shown are the floppy and f: drives. Can you use this program to back up to an external drive? If so, how do you tell it where to send the data?
I added a 120 gig Western Digital USB external drive and used Acronis to create a backup of my hard drive. I then used Windows XP to remove it as a USB device so I could power it off. Now, when I power it back on it is not recognized by XP and does not appear on My Computer or on Disk Management (where I originally formatted it for NTFS). All I get is a sound like a single "KERPLONK" when I power it on.
I turned the PC off to reboot when I though I was going into safe mode and went into regular mode instead. Now, it thinks one of my external drives is the C drive. On boot, I am getting a message that it cannot recognize find the system 32 windows config file (I'm paraphrasing).
I used the repair utility to get to the C prompt (which is pointed at the external drive) and checked the drive letters. I don't think the PC bios knows the hard drive is there.
I tried going into setup and reverting to factory installed configuration and that didn't change anything. I could not get it to recognize the hard drive.
I'm connecting a 30GB Travelstar Hard Drive via an external USB 2.0 case to my Thinkpad T40 with Windows XP (pro). Windows immediately recognized it. However, the hard drive does not show up under Windows Explorer. I can go into Device Manager, click on Disk Drives, and it does show the new drive there (along with my main hard drive, which is a 80 GB hard drive).
I cannot figure out how to make it show up in Windows Explorer with an Drive Letter assigned to it and thus, how to actually use it.
I had a duel boot system running Windows 2000 and linux, I decided to get rid of linux for a while but stupid me just went in to fdisk and deleted the linux partition. Now my 80 gig hard drive only shows as 40 and I can't think of anyway to get it back without reformatting the entire hard drive
My USB External Hard Drive suddenly decided to stop working monday before last, it is weird, like it will turn on and all, but it doesnt get recognized and while its on none of my programs will load like Ventrilo and games(ventrillo will half load but not all the way) and the computer wont shutdown while its on. but the moment i turn it off they all start running smoothly agian and the computer will shutdown immediatly (if i am at the shutdown screen). Any idea why/how this happened and how to fix it?
I guess I have a few options (as I have backed up my entire hard drive before the problem started), including hiriing someone if need be. System info: Win XP Pro. For security use KIS 09 and Webroot SpySweeper (henceforth, WSS). This is my desktop. Laptop the same except for Win XP home. After I upgraded the WSS to their latest version (6.1.0.128) I had problems only on desktop and only with MSWord. After two days of working on desktop problem I discovered it was the WSS upgrade, as no problems if WSS shut down or removed via Windows add/remove.
Running Windows XP home, well-protected from viruses and spyware with all the usual recommended programs. I have a 160G external firewire hard drive, NTFS system. Cannot access data all of a sudden, I am getting an error message, "file system corrupt and unreadable." In disk management, the drive is listed as healthy, 160G, but no NTFS listed. What could have caused this, and is there a way to retrieve the data? Are there any low-cost or freeware programs to do this, or is it inevitable to spend a "fortune?"
I am on the road and trying to do a system restore. I use an external hard drive in my office but I do not have the external hard drive with me now. I can not get the restore to complete and I can not get the undo to fully complete. Is this not working fully because I am not hooked up to my external hard drive? When I initiated the restore it asked something about the external hard drive.
An external hard drive. When it is on & I try to boot,I get the following error : Invalid system disk Replace the disk, and then press any key I then have to turn off the external & press any key to get it to boot. Is there a way that I can boot with that external turned on. Some setting I need to change perhaps? I have an E-Machines computer about 2 years old.
I have a Dell computer where one of the loading .dll files came up 'missing' one day, so it won't boot. I want to get all the photos and other docs off the hard drive. I had downloaded one version of linux and was able to see the files on the internal hard drive, but was unable to copy them to a memory stick or external hard drive. Now I've downloaded ubuntu and booted off a memory stick... this time, it's telling me that the internal hard drive has all kinds of bad sectors and won't let me access any of the files on there.
I have Dell XPS w 2 hard drives. the master is 80gb(NTFS).."C" drive, and the slave is 120gb(FAT32)...."F" drivethe other day, after a re-start, Windows gave me the not so friendly message "Checking file system on F...the volume is dirty...windows is verifying files and folders.......0 percent complete"now, the problem is that it took 30 HOURS! before it completed its checkup! well, so before i panicked too much, i decided to buy an external drive to back up some stuff from the slave drive. after backing up about 20 gb worth of stuff, i re-started, and it did the same thing! tho this time it took "only" 18 HOURS to do its checking! it did say that "windows replaced bad clusters in files"
I am cloning my existing hard drive in my laptop (sata) to an external hard drive (pata) in preparation for installing a new larger hard drive (sata)in the laptop. Can I, or how do I transfer the cloned data from the external (pata) to the new internal hard drive (sata)? Thanks in advance and I apoligize if this is a rudimentary question as this is my first time attempting something like this.
Need something to back up & restore the entire Windows Registry, with emphasis on ENTIRE.I have been using a utility called ERUNT to back up and restore the Windows 2000/XP registry; but, I dicovered today that it doesn't restore the entire registry.Is there a utility anywhere that will back up and restore the entire registry, preferable a free one but doesn't have to be free if it's cheap?
I am using Windows XP Home SP3.I have just bought a new 250gb external Hard disk and would like to back up my entire personal computer in case of any viruses or Hard Disk problems.I have heard of Acronis but it's 39.99 is there a any free software out there?
After stupidly (unknowiingly) downloading the new Chode virus I have had to format my HDD.I need to know is there any freeware available to allow mw to do this effectively.? I am a memeber of the latterday church of freeloaders, so it needs to be free
I've connected an external USB drive, but when I go to My Computer it shows it as a network drive. In addition, it gives it the same name as the mapped network drive that already exists there. When I change the name of the external drive there, it then changes the name of the mapped network drive, so again they both have the same name, although the drive letters are different. Any ideas how to make the external drive appear where it belongs in My Computer, under Hard Disk drives?
I have a usb external hard drive. Can I install windows os on this drive and use it.I am told that windows must be installed only on main hard drive 9i.e. drive 0).
Recently, my motherboard fired, but the Hard drive was uneffected. Since i had a lot of info on the hard drive i tryed to find people who could take the info off the hard drive for me. I then had this great idea of just putting my hard drive into a "Hard Drive Enclosure Kit". Well, i did that and it worked great. But theres one problem, I can't seem to get into the Owner folder of the hard drive, for evey time i do, it brings up.
I just recently purchased a 100 Gb laptop hard drive together with an outer case and a USB cable. I just wanted to upgrade my laptop's hard disk, by first making an image of my current drive into my new one through the outer casing. The thing is when I connect it to my laptop, windows cannot detect it. Whats wrong with it? Is there anything I have to do?
My problem is that I am trying to use a 60 GB ATA / 133 Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 9 Internal Hard Drive as an External Drive as a Slave and I am having trouble getting my bios to recognize it.The Hard Drive is hooked up in the same way as an Internal SATA DVD burner setup as an External DVD Burner that is running on Windows Office XP 2003 and it works fine. So what suggestion would you give me so that I maybe able to get the bios to recognize this drive?
Found some very useful info on here so decided to sign up and post a recent problem i encountered with an external hard drive. the hard drive has a capacity of 80GB and came from another pc. there was a 25/55 partition already on it from the old pc. i tried to delete the partition that was 25gb. now i can't find that 25gb at all. when i plug it in to the usb slot i can only see the 55gb partition it used to appear as 2 hard drives in my computer and nothing else. when i use disc management to format it i only see 55gb.
To anyone that might be able to help... I've had this external hard drive for a long time and I haven't been able to access it to store lots of music and videos on. My computer sees that it is there, but like I had said earlier, I can't use it. It won't let me see it unless I go to Device Manager. My computer is getting old on me and it's been places most labtops shouldn't have gone... Once in Purgatory, and now, it's on Hell's surface. I get the safely remove hardware icon down by my clock, but I don't want to remove it, I want to use it. I want it to show up in my drives so I can instantly see how much space I have left and what not... I went through the Troubleshooter, tried every possible way that I can think of, the ways the troubleshooter.
I have a Sony VAIO desktop running Windows XP. I purchased a Comstar 160MB External USB2 Hard-Drive and installed it. Since Windows XP is supposed to have the drivers that are necessary, no driver disk was included, and none was needed.The problem developed when my Windows XP began to give me problems later. I had to re-install Windows XP. I did that, and I downloaded all Windows XP up dates (including Service Pack 2). Now, this Windows installation does not install the external hard-drive. Windows recognizes that there is "a USB2 device," but Windows states that there are no drivers and asks me to furnish them.
I'm partitioning an external hard drive that's connected to my Win XP machine. I set an 80GB partition for XP (NTFS). When I tried to allocate the rest of the drive as a FAT32 partition (for my Win98 machines), FAT32 was not an option, until I reduced the partition size to 20 GB. I'm using XP's Disk Management. Is there a maximum limitation of FAT32 partition size?
I got a usb external hard drive 650gb where in it couldn't resist in the docs as it says it should be powered down unless in use. In this case how can i get back to the service pack.
I have a file folder that is 247 MB on XP that I'm trying to copy to my external Passport Hard drive. I've been able to copy all files to the external except this one, but every time I try it elicits an Error Copying File or Folder ie. "Cannot Copy File". What's up with that?
I copied my data files to my external Maxtor hard disk before I tried to reformat my internal hard drive and reload Win XP. However during my partition, I didn't realize I still had the external drive (160GB) plugged in and it showed up at the top of the list and the original internal (80GB) below it. So, I followed the instruction mistakenly and went through the process of deleting the partition(on the external hard drive) and tried to partition it into two drives. Then I got an error message as I continue to try to format the hard drive "Your computer's startup program cannot gain access to the disk containing the partition or free free space you choose . Set up cannot install Window XP on this hard disk." I stopped, reboot and tried to go through the delete partition several times with the same error message. After several attempts, I realized that the external hard drive was still plugged in.
So I unplugged the external hard drive and reboot to go through the process of reformatting and partition the internal hard drive into C drive and E drive and loaded Win XP. Now even though I plugged in the hard.After I installed the external hard drive's software,driver and restarted the computer, I connected the external hard drive and don't see the drive in my computer. I could find it under Control Panel/System/Device Manager/Disk drives but it doesn't show up as an external hard drive under "My computer" with a drive letter. Under the disk management, I see the drive as Disk1 but it was unallocated. Did I lose all my data due to the delete of partition? Can I recover my data and drive ?