Windows 7: Backing up EVERYTHING

Hi

I've bought an external hard drive and I'm wondering if there's any way of backing up everything on my hard drive? By everything I mean all of the programmes that are installed as well. If something went wrong with the laptop or it was stolen etc, I'd be able to drag everything off the external hard drive back over to a machine again.

If there is a way of doing this, can I then do it once a month or so, so that it would just update what has been changed rather than doing the whole thing again?

(Sorry, I'm not too clever on these things as you can probably guess).

Thanks for looking.

Hi geezawolf, welcome to the forums

Have a look at This tutorial from Brink. It should answer your question.

Hope it helps


OS

Hello geezawolf, welcome to Seven Forums!





Most agree that Macrium is a lot more dependable than the Windows backup utility, have a look at this tutorial at the link below.


Imaging with free Macrium

I did both the Macrium and the Windows 7.
I already ran into a glitch with the Windows 7 System Image. I probably caused the mess up being new to Windows 7.
So this time I have both with the Macrium Boot CD along with the Windows 7 repair disk.

With 640GB of internal storage why not.

Mike

OK, I've found lots of articles on this topic, but they are all full of jargon. I need this explaining in lamens terms. What's the difference between the 2? I'll give you a clue to the sort of information I want:

If my laptop were to need reformatting or got stolen, I'd like to be able to plug in my external hard drive and restore all my programmes, files, settings etc. I basically want to be able to get up and running again asap. Which is the best option for me?

Thanks for looking.

C (Running Windows 7)

This is still the best option.

Thanks, but I'm still not getting the information I want. What I'd like is some info (i.e. based on the scenario I gave) and reasons why one would be better than the other. I can't seem to get a clear answer on the differences and am starting to wonder if all the long winded answers are a smokescreen because actually no one actually knows!!!

The differences between the Imaging Programs?

Basically, features. But theres also other things such as how well the compress the Image.


For example, Lets say all your DATA is on 1 single Hard drive, and you have your images on a external, or even a secondary Internal.

If you were to accidently delete something, (lets say the entire My Pictures folder) you may be required to completely restore the entire Image to get them back.
I think this is how Win7s will behave. (Please correct me if wrong)


Others, that offer more features and are more flexible will allow you to browse the contents of the Image, and restore selective files or folders. In this case the entire Pictures folder, or just a Image.

Im not that familiar with macrium so Im unsure if it allows this.

Some are only capable of Imaging partitions, others can do, not only partitions, but the entire disc (including the reserved 100MB partition) and restore it all in 1 go including the disk signature.

Additionally, some may offer other features such as Incremental, Differential backups, Automatic Scheduling.

Also, you will not be limited to just creating Images of a drive, but can also set schedules for Backups of target areas. Perhaps just the documents folder or Videos etc.

Most of us have answered all these same questions 100 times and you won't get much help being insulting.

Get in there and learn it as the rest of us have done.

I wasn't being insulting. (Or certainly didn't mean to be). I just can't find a simple answer. Getting in there and learning is what I'm trying to do. Isn't that what these forums are for? Sorry if I've caused offense. Just been trawling through pages of this stuff without getting the answer I'm looking for.