Computer Help Needed For Backup Info

xp pro has some snazy backup software included...

It's quite usefull!

I have no idea


my external hd will back up anything

it's connected thru USB

I have used Acronis True Image 8.0
Works OK, Makes a copy of C drive, you then can replace Discs and Computer will start and run, Clones true image,

is it set to shown hidden folders?

Does anyone know anything about Norton Ghost?

Will you tell me what brand and model it is?

[link to www.acronis.com]

Norton Ghost is ideal for disaster recovery. It backs up an image of an entire drive or partition, which can be nice for being able to restore in minutes a crashed or otherwised foobared system OS partition/drive. I haven't used Ghost with external drives (I asssume yer maxtor is a usb drive, but the newer versions of Ghost should work with USB drives).

Oh, BTW, Maxtor produces the shittiest drives. Expect your drive to crash a month before or a month after its warranty runs out (ususally the latter).

The microsoft backup (Start - Programs - Accessories - System - Backup) is also decent, especially the (i think its called) automatic system recovery (ASR). You can also use it for disaster recovery however the only crapper is that you'd have reinstall MS OS, before you could run the MS Backup.

I'd recomend keeping a monthly or bi-monthly Ghost image backup for quick disaster recovery, and a second incremental backup such as MS Backup, where you can append your daily or weekly changes to an existing full backup.

Its always good to have two different backups, because I've had instances where shit went wrong with a single backup, and your basically screwed.