Give unto me answers, bitches!
 

Haha. So I'm about to buy a hard drive and external enclosure, but I've never set up a new HDD before and I'm looking for info. Key issues I don't know:

- I know I'll have to format it, but do I NEED to partition the drive as well? The basic purpose will be to duplicate my current HDD so I can reformat much easier. The enclosure comes with instructions and software (it has a 1 button backup feature) but I'm not sure exactly what the purpose of partitioning is.

- Will my OS transfer over with the HDD backup and, if not, do I even need to load my OS onto my new HDD? I don't have the OEM discs for my OS (Windows XP Home), but I do have the 5 system recovery discs which are basically the same thing.

I just have a ton of programs that it took me forever to find and I don't wanna lose them and I don't want to spend another 8-10 hours burning DVD discs and reformatting and loading everything back on. Anything I missed that I should be concerned with?

Get a program called Norton Ghost, it will X Copy your drive and make it a mirror copy of the drive you currently have all your stuff on. Thenyou can pull out your other drive, put the new drive in its place and start teh computer. Verry nice little program.

Norton Ghost would be near impossible for him to get running. If hes asking about partioning the harddrive he is obviously new to this.

Gt, I have hardware ans software that can do this for you. If you want to send me the drive I'll take care of it for ya. Let me know.

Well...I'm pretty familiar with what Norton Ghost is, I've just never used it. Then again I'm pretty good at figuring out programs. I guess I'll just have to get the thing and see what kind of software it has to create the backup before doing anything else. I guess I still don't get the point of partitioning.

Norton ghost is a partion copier. You need a partition for the OS to be able to read from the dirve.
ghost is no where near easy to use (although I have never used the home version) and depending on what kind of harddrive and what version of ghost it is you may need to use switch (-fni, -ar etc..) Also creating the boot disk is a pain in the ass.

Like I said, if you would like I can dub it for you and send it back, but if you want help with ghost, feel free to ask.

Dont forget the flux capacitor....... lol.....

I have no fuckin clue on what you people are talking about... ha ha

Don't expect your applications and OS to work with a backup program that runs within Windows. I've yet to see that work well.

Like was mentioned above, Ghost can do that. Its not that hard to use. In fact its become alot easier. It even has a wizard to create the boot disk for you. I say try it. It will work much better than any in Windows backup program.

lol

Vertias does very well at restoring windows from inside windows.

I have never used the home edtion of ghost, so it may very well be easy to use.

Yes it does. But I don't know many home users that have it.

Home edition is easy. Almost stupid proof.