backing up a drive

chameleon · 10 Jun 2008 at 18:45

I want to create a complete backup of my C drive onto an external HDD as I have never had much luck with hard drives in the past. What would i need to use to create a complete, bootable copy that I could just plug in and the computer will recognise? will NTbackup in XP copy everything including boot and system files? Or do I have to use something like Norton ghost?

AbsenceJam · 10 Jun 2008 at 21:31

You have to use software that will clone things proeprly as there are files in use, partition tables and boot records. I would recommend Acronis True Image for this.

chameleon · 11 Jun 2008 at 16:44

I used Norton Ghost and the image on my other drive dosent match the original? It's about 3-4G smaller. (About 24G instead of 28G)???

rpstewart · 11 Jun 2008 at 17:27

The image file was smaller than the source drive or when restored the target drive had less on it?

AbsenceJam · 11 Jun 2008 at 17:59

chameleon said:
I used Norton Ghost and the image on my other drive dosent match the original? It's about 3-4G smaller. (About 24G instead of 28G)???

Compression.