Restoring backup after reformatting hard drive

Once I reformat my hard drive, will I be able to selectively restore my backup so I only put back a few programs instead of all?

Thx,
Gini

 

I personally think that is not a good idea. Better restore all programs, then uninstall them properly via Add/Remove Programs. Otherwise you will have uncount registry entries, program settings, and whatnot left behind.

 

You don't have the choice. If your backup is a file backup you can't restore any programs at all with it, only individual files and folders. If your backup is a disk image you can only restore it in its entirety.

 

When I reformat, will my OS still be there? I don't have a disk, as it was preinstalled.

 

Reformatting wipes absolutely everything off your hard disk. If you don't have a Windows installation disk or a recovery disk or partition don't even think about it until we have clarified the situation.

What exactly is this backup you have, where is it stored and how did you create it?

 

The premise of this thread is that something terrible has happened and either the hard drive is totally trashed, or Windows has gotten so messed up that only a RE-Install will fix it.

The answer is what us PC Pro's have been harping on for years.
BACKUP! BACKUP! BACKUP!

In other threads, we've gone into great detail about what programs to use and how to and how often to make a total backup Image of your C: drive.

The very first backup should be made of the entire C: drive the day you first set up the computer and install your programs, your eMail and get on-line.

Then another backup should be made at regular intervals, depending on how often you make changes to your HD. I've found that if I go more than four or five days between backups, I stand to loose too much data.

I use "Ghost" for my backup program, but there are many other suitable programs out there that will make complete backup images of your C: drive and store those image files on a second partition, second internal HD or an external HD.

In a more perfect world, everyone would have a backup of their main hard drive. (never more than a week or two old)

By the way, with Ghost, I can run Ghost Explorer in windows, which can go back into any old Backup Image File and restore any file or folder I wish.

When I ran an NCR mainframe computer for the county, we backed up the whole system to tape, every night. Most all banks, back up their systems daily.

Those who have decided to only do a backup every month :confused have already said, "I'm willing to loose everything I've done on my computer for the past month". :cry

So you have to ask yourself, "How much data am I willing to loose?" and set up your backup regimen accordingly.

Cheers Mates!
:cool

 

Shadow,

I think I've found the problem & won't have to reformat

For several months, I kept getting a BSOD, which scared me, so I moved all my working files to a 1 TB external hard drive - E: I was told that I probably needed to reformat my hard drive. My puter is a ThinkPad T60, 3+ yrs. old (8 mo. out of warranty).

I actually am probably over-backing up, as follows:

EVERY night, I do a Rollback RX snapshot of C: & a Clickfree backup of C: & E:

EVERY Saturday, I do a full Drive Cloner RX of C: onto E: (& all other days of the week, an incremental backup to Saturday).

EVERY Sunday, I do a full Roxio Backup MyPC of C: onto E:

As far as the BSOD, I've finally realized that this began right after I installed the Clickfree Automatic Backup. I uninstalled the software and am backing up manually to Clickfree now with no more BSOD's, so I think the Clickfree software was causing it.

My problem now is I don't understand what has filled up my hard drive (100GB), when I only have 27GB of program files installed & no working files. I only have 16GB of free space! My installed software consists mainly of Dragon Naturally Speaking & other voice-to-text software, MS Office & WordPerfect. I don't do any gaming, streaming or email on this computer.

I run CCleaner regularly, which gives me 1GB more free space - whoopee.

I've run WinDirStat to see what's on C:, but my problem is I don't know what I can safely delete

Somehow, I need to figure out how to get some of my available space back. Of course, reformatting would have solved this dilemma, but if I can avoid that, I sure would like to. Windows XP came preinstalled on this laptop, but I don't seem to have a disk - I'll keep looking.

I sure would welcome advice!

Gini

 

Shadow,

By "Ghost," do you mean Ghost 15.0 by Symantec? I went to Symantec & read about it. Sounded like with that software alone, I could backup to my external hard drive easily & forget about all this "over-backing up" I've been doing, as long as I configured it correctly.

Please advise.

Thx!
Gini

 

To find out what is saturating your hard drive you could use WinDirStat and I would think it highly likely that your voice to text files are the main cause. If you don't like the graphic representation (I don't) you can turn it off.

My own preference with backups is to firstly ensure that all of my personal stuff is on a separate disk or partition from the OS and my programs. I then use an imaging program (Ghost, Acronis, Easeus Todo, many others) to image the OS partition about once a week, storing the images on an external drive. This pretty well guarantees that a reinstall of the OS and programs will never be necessary and it keeps the backup compact.

For the data partition there are several different approaches but the one I prefer is to use a synchronisation program to automatically maintain copies on another drive. I use scheduling for this, twice daily, so don't even have to think about it. Useful free programs for this are Microsoft's Synctoy or SyncBack. There are many other ways to deal with the issue of data backup, though personally I wouldn't use any imaging program for it as they put the backup in a proprietary format requiring the presence of the original program in order to retrieve the backups.

 

Hee! Hee! Actually NO.
I started using Ghost when it was first released from its New Zealand based company back in 1997. As I get the story, Symantec bought it in 1998 and for a few years marketed it with very few changes. Up through Ghost 2003 it's still pretty much as originally written. It's a DOS program and runs nicely from a DOS boot floppy disk.

In about 2005, Ghost 11.5 came out, looking and running just like Ghost 2003, but too large to fit on a floppy disk. It runs great though, from a bootable flash drive or CD and will backup and restore Windows Vista or Win-7. It's actually the last version that runs in DOS and not windows. However, there is a version of it called "Ghost32.exe" that does run from within windows. Then there's also "Ghost Explorer" which lets you open a backup image file and restore any file or folder. That's a feature I've used rarely, but when you need it, it's worth its weight in GOLD.

When doing backups from within windows there's always that nagging question about what to do with and how to handle open files.
By always running Ghost from DOS, I get Windows completely out of the way and all files, and the registry, are closed, so that's no problem at all.

Ghost 15? Yes, I've got it and have tried it and I prefer to run it from a (DOS) boot disk. Once installed on the PC, it has an option to make the boot disk ( CD ). (It also installed a bunch of other things that I don't want or need, so I had to go back in and uninstall the extra stuff) Since I now have the boot CD, I don't even need it on my HD, so I've completely deleted it off my HD.

Then, from the boot CD, it runs pretty much like Acronis True Image from it's boot disk.
It didn't seem to have the option to save to a DVD, with compression, like Ghost 2003 will do.
I do want to use that option so Ghost 15 lost a lot of its appeal, real quick.

When I use Ghost 2003 to make my self-booting backup DVD, Ghost asks me if I want to make the DVD bootable and if I say "Yes" it copies the entire Boot Floppy to the boot sector on the DVD, making it boot up just like the Ghost boot floppy.

I know.....most of y'all don't have or use a floppy drive. You're loss!
Floppy disks are still very usable and very versatile. I use my own floppy disk drive almost every day. On my little Acer One Netbook, I can boot up from a USB Floppy Drive, using my Ghost 2003 boot disk.

I apologize if I didn't answer your question.

Shadow :cool