BleepingComputer.com: Vista Ultimate -Complete Back up to external USB HD

Can a complete backup be made to an external USB2.0 hard drive?

If the answer is yes then would it be incredibly slow in the event a restore was ever required?

Would i be able to create a back up to two sources i.e. one to the external hard drive and one to a set of dvds?

You can create as many backups as you need.
Backing up to a USB 2.0 drive may be "slow" - but it's a whole lot faster than a DVD!!!

thanks for the reply...

will usb2.0 be really slow or ok?

It may deepens on the backup utility that you use.

If it's something like Ghost then I expect that it will be faster than than Vista's total backup utility.

In either case,

-sense Vista seems to have leaped tall buildings in single bound as far as providing better backup utilities,

-I think the speed will be OK!

John

PS Someone like usasma may know a bit more though.

This post has been edited by Johnz414: 06 February 2009 - 09:22 PM

FWIW - I backup everything to external USB drives. They're faster than DVD's and are easily reusable.
I even use it for my Acronis True Image drive images - 20 minutes and the image is restored. That's 15 - 20 gB (but it's done outside of Windows).

Thanks Johnz414 and usasma!!! I'll be using Vista Ultimates tool to back up to an external USB HD in that case!!!

Helps been much appreciated!!!

As with any backup/image utility - the key is that you test it to be sure that it works. A backup/image that doesn't restore when you really need it is cause for tears and bad words. So, be backup safe and test the restore capability BEFORE you really need it.

by testing you mean running a restore after you've made a backup

I'm not sure that you can do this with a complete backup but I know that you can do this with file and folder backup using Vista's backup utility.

For restoring file and folder backup you can instruct the restore utility to put the restore anywhere that you like.

I've tested it by putting the restore on my Desktop in a "New Folder".

I have yet to use Vista's backup utility for a complete backup so someone with a little more experience will have to shed some light on that.

But, if need be you could do a complete backup and then try the restore for it and see if you can restore it on any partition that you like just to see if it will work.

Just a thought.

John

purplemonkE, on Feb 7 2009, 11:25 AM, said:

In the ideal situation you would be fairly close to "factory condition" so that you didn't lose too much if it didn't work. My XP system got hosed due to virus so I took the opportunity to install XP Pro. I researched the image backup programs around and bought one. I installed a 1/2 dozen or so small applications I was very familiar with so that when I did the restore I'd sense it if stuff was weird.

Ok, I did the image backup with the program I bought. Then I booted a partitioning CD and deleted my C: partition.

I booted up the Restore CD from the image program and restored the partition from the backup. Everything seemed fine. Since then I have tried out W7 beta and when done playing, just restored my XP back to where it was.

The trick is research. Go on the program's forum and see if people with configurations like yours just can't seem to get the thing to work right. Every product will have a few unlucky customers but if you read a bit you can get a good idea if the program will work well with your setup(unless you have some home built PC then only you would know.)

The one I got was Paragon Drive Backup Personal. Since then I bought a PC with Vista 64 bit and got their free Express 64 bit version.

You can have more confidence if you know the thing works by trying it.
If you're going to try it, better to do it before you have 2094 programs installed.

You test it by restoring it. If you do the restore right after making the image - there shouldn't be any issues about lost stuff. You're just resetting the computer to the way it was 20 minutes ago.