How to create bootable backup HD

Please help -

I've been asking on 24supporthour.helpdesk, but the answers aren't helping me. I suspect I don't know enough to take full advantage of them.

I wanted to have a backup HD. I thought I did because I had two HD's. But both were connected in my computer, and somebody told me that a slave connected in my computer didn't constitute an emergency backup.

So I bought a third hard drive. My Master is a Maxtor 30 GB, my 2nd (now the slave) is a WD (Western Digital) 40 GB, and my new HD is a WD 120 GB.

I have HD copy software from WD. I wanted to copy my master HD to my slave, and have the slave as a bootable backup. I copied all the files. Then I decided it would be smart to make sure I could boot to the 2nd drive before I set it aside as my emergency drive. My system detected the drive correctly as a WD 400BB as my primary drive, but it wouldn't boot. Somebody on the 24hrsupport.helpdesk asked if I made it bootable. I didn't, nor did I understnad that you could or could not do this. Another person told me that when I copied all of my files I didn't copy my Master Boot Record (MBR). And again, I couldn't understand how if WD Digital Lifeguard copied my Master HD files to my slave HD, why it wouldn't have copied everything including my MBR.

Can someone explain to me in a stepwise manner what I need to do so I can turn my slave into a bootable master (with all of my files intact) if my current master fails. I have over 20 GBs of various files on my master, so putting in my extra drive, formatting and reinstalling Windows is something I don't want to have to do. And I should mention now that I've thought of it that I'm running Win XP Pro.

Thanks to all of you for your time and patience.

 

go to the bios..its easy ull see it

 

What's the EASY part? My primary boot device is HDD-0. So I plug in my slave as HDD-0 after transferring the contents of master to it, moving the IDE connector to make it the master and changing the jumper setting. But it still doesn't boot. People tell me that I don't have a MBR on the 2nd drive, so hence it won't boot. I've been reading about FDISK, but I'm not sure how to apply it. I don't want to give a command line order that will accidentally screw up drive C:/ instead of fixing drive D:/.

As I said, can someone give me step-by-step walk through so I can have a bootable backup drive for emergencies, instead of screwing up both my current slave and my current master, and having no drives for my efforts. I could probably figure it out myself, but it would take six ot eight hours a day of research on the internet for the next several days and many exchanged messages on various computer forums and newsgroups before I knew what to do.

 

Get this Acronis True Image 8.0:
http://www.softwarestore.com/dr/sat...Image_exa&DSP=&CUR=840&PGRP=0&CACHE_ID=159494
Or just set your back up HDD as the boot drive and load windows to it from the CD, then set what ever HDD you want as the boot drive.

Another option is you can make One HDD have two partitions, load windows on to each partition and have dual boot system, you can set either as the default OS.

 

I looked at the Acronis software yesterday. The majority of users (3 out of 5) said do not use it unless you don't mind reinstalling your OS again. They say its worse than a total waste - its actually dangerous.

I don't want to reinstall Windows. That means I have to reinstall all of the device drivers too, and then make sure all the settings are the same as what I have now. Plus reinstalling every update from Microsoft.

Various people have asked if I've used fdisk. The answer is no. I know very little about DOS. I went to a DOS help page but didn't find out how to boot to DOS. I also read the Microsoft article on fdisk. When I asked my computer for a Command prompt and switched directories to C:/, it would not let me use the fdisk command. Others have asked about my MBR. I copied the contents of my master to my slave with WD Digital Lifeguard. When I did, I assumed it would have copied everything on my master. Perhaps it didn't. I don't know. I wouldn't know how to check and see if my MBR was on my slave. Another person said it was simple - just go in and change the BIOS. I changed my BIOS so my primary boot device was HDD-1 instead of HDD-0 and the computer booted fine. Then on a hunch I changed the primary boot device to HDD-2, and the computer still booted normally. So that was no answer.

Can anyone give me a walk-through on what to do??? I've spent the last two days working on this with no success. I have 25 GB of information, data, etc. on my HD, so I really don't want to screw up and have to start from square one again by reinstalling my OS on my master and going from there.

 

Someone has fed you with BULL S###!
You can use to Save, Exact bootable image, every last file & driver to your HDD/Partition/CD or DVD.
Very simple to use, you can even add to your saved image, tomorrow, next month, when ever, but must be used on the same PC/same hardware.

There are lot's of folks here at MG that use and love it.
Why dont you do a search here at MG, and you'll see.

Acronice is as simple as it gets.

 

Very fond of that program. Have used it for backups for a long time. Haven't had a reason to use the backups yet, but I have the program installed, and I enjoy working with it. It is a fairly easy program to use, with a userfriendly interface. You don't have to know a lot to use it and benefit from it.

How on earth could it screw up the system? Only if you have a screwed up backup already, and that is hardly something you can blame Acronis for!

 

Not a bootable harddrive but have very sucsessfully used microsofts backup for a while now.
Installed extra 120 gb harddrive on the computer we use for: internet connection,file sharing, printer sharing.
Have four computers all backed up to that harddrive.
just today restored daughters computer after we deleted some files by accident. Takes about 1/2 hour and everything is back as before.!!!

 

Not to be snide or rude, but the information on Acronis came from Download.com. 60% of the people who have used it (at least 25) said that it prevented them from booting, or majorly corrupted their drive contents. This usn't my opinion, but reported by Acronis users.




(Please dont mind ny typos. This problem, which I've been dealing with for at least 48 hours, has me hitting the bottle for stress relief)

I've gotten a bit farther. The WD software for Drive Copy said that the new copy of the old disc woud be bootable. I couldn't run Drive copy until I erased D:/. At that point it ran. It wouldn't copy 3 files. which it said weren't essential and would probably be recreated when I restarted Window. One was the System Restore boot directory, and I think one was page.sys.

Anyway, now I can get through the initial welcome screen to Windows XP, but it hangs up after that. I tried starting in safe mode, thinking if I didn't load all the device driver it may boot , but no luck there. I wanted to remove D:/ in hopes it was hanging up looking for the missing drive D:/, but D:/ was identified as my WD 400 BB drive(now my master) which I was trying to to boot to, so I didn't think removing D:/ was a good idea.

Any ideas now that I've gotten this far? At least the drive recognizes the os its supposed to load, but i have no error log telling me where its hanging up. I'm getting warmer, but still no prize.

BTW, offtopic, but the last respondent on 24hsupportdesk.help gets the award for rudeness. He should not be allowed to respond to newbies. I'm not a newbie, but I am 90% a newbie. Fortunately, I can take a few more day trying to figure this out. I am diagnosed with severe depression though. Succeeding would make me feel a little bit better, and failing would make me feel a little it worse. Not more than two hours ago I was asking myself why I even get oot of bed.

I don't want sympathy, but I would very much appreciate help in a form I can understand.

Tomorrow being MOnday, I probably call the Western Digital help desk. As you all know, not all the help desk members are highly trained. BUt since the drive I want to act as my emergency back and my new drive are both WD, I hope they are billing to give me some help without charging me $30 an hour for the phone support.

I'm getting so close. If I could only figure out now why everything won't load (the "new" c:/ is supposed to be an identical replica of the old "C:/") the problem would be solved.

Again, thanks for your time and patience in reading this, even if you don't have an answer.

 

1. In your Internet Explorer browser type in www.google.com.

2. Type in "Backup Hard Drive Image" and look for more information.

3. Be nice to Tech support people who make suggestions, especially if you don't know 90% of what you're doing, and remember - this isn't an emergency.

4. Check out this link:

http://service1.symantec.com/SUPPOR...00/NT/Me/98/XP&src=sg&pcode=ghost&svy=&csm=no

Step by Step instructions for Norton Ghost, check out the reviews, they may even have some on Download.com. =)