Computer starting to act weird - question about best type of backup

[ATHiker95]

I've been running aan XP Home machine (about 4 years old). I've started to get weird crashes (sudden reboots and programs crashing) and today it recovered older versions of the registry when rebooting and also had to retrieve a copy of the MFT (master file table) for my F: partition where my programs are installed. That's a pain because in some programs it has lost my settings and I have to recreate those. Can't trace it to anything in particular but suspect some hardware issue (possibly). I don't have a version of Retrospect that allows me to create a Recovery disk, so am wondering if backup sets are the way to go or whether maybe I should just erase the backup set I created for all my partions (called Backup Set A) and just do a duplicate of each partition. Wouldnt that make it easier to drag and drop to a new machine, if that is what I need? Don't backup sets require a catalog set to be on the machine and if I couldn't restore this one, how would I get a catalog set onto a new machine? All of this is rather confusing if you ask me and I'm looking for the simplest solution. I figure if I have to use my OEM Recovery Disk (no actual XP disks - bummer) to reformat and start over that I want to be sure I can move those data files,photos,etc over to new or reformatted computer. Or would it be even easier to just drag and drop folders onto my external hd and forget all the backup mess at the moment?

 

Thanks for any thoughts,

Mark

[ATHiker95]

Anybody have any thoughts? Am running out of time to figure this out.

 

Thanks,

Mark

[dld]

If I understand you correctly, both your OS and your HD are defective. If such is the case, then a backup would be of little use, because you would just be restoring an OS system that is defective. Furthermore, I think there are problems associated with restoring to a different hardware.

For these reasons, I would do a Retrospect Duplicate of your drive, replace the defective drive, reinstall WinXP and your drivers, SP2, and Retrospect in that order. Then you would access your data in the Retrospect Duplicate, and drag & drop to the appropriate folders on your new drive.

[ATHiker95]

I'm not sure if my HD is dying, if it is a short somewhere or power supply,etc. I have an intel fan monitor and power monitor and everything looks ok there. I've run 2 spyware programs and 2 virus programs on my computer - nothing.

 

How is a duplicate different than just a drag and drop? If you chose to just drag and drop, then you wouldn't need retrospect software on another computer would you? Of course, I realize it is easier to run a duplicate backup each night replacing just files that have changed than it is to drag and drop all your folders each time you make changes. I guess that is the advantage - I just want to make sure that if I move to a new computer, and install the retrospect software, that there won't be any problems accessing the duplicate files. No catalog sets are required for that, are they?

 

Thanks,

Mark

[dld]

You can read this to learn more about the features of Duplicate. You can only restore data files with a Duplicate. Programs will have to be reinstalled. There should be no problem accessing Duplicate. The duplicate data is treated like one large floppy disk. You drag & drop files to their corresponding folders on your new drive. As a matter of fact, I don't think you even need to install Retrospect in order to access your duplicated data.

 

 

 

Restoring to a new drive is possible according to Nate. See this:

 

 

 

#60629 - 09/15/05 09:59 PM

 

 

 

Hi

 

 

 

Restoring to a new drive is fine. Technically you should use the same partition scheme as when you ran the backup but it isn't that critical.