Hello everyone, how do I create a backup of my HDD as well as a restore disc on Windows XP? Home edition does not seem to have a backup utility.
Your correct, as far as I recall it doesn't have that feature nor can I think of any way to make one. Just keep backups of your files, that's about the best you can do on XP.
Well the problem is I don't have a physical copy of Windows XP. This is my laptop we are talking about by the way. So if the HDD were to crash or something I would be screwed. So is there really no way to make an image of the HDD or something?
If you need a simple way, then a program like acronis true image will be a good option, though it is not free.
If you need a free solution, then a program like gparted to close the drive.it is free, but requires you to boot into a linux live disk http://gparted.org/
I recommend using a ubuntu live disk since it comes with it, and offers many other functions. http://www.linuxliveusb.com/
then simply buy another hard drive of the same size (makes it much easier), then simply close to the new drive each time you want to do a full backup. This will not only allow for an instant restore by swapping the drive, but you can restore by cloning the backup drive, to your main one.
It is worth the initial investment for the convenience, as the backup drive will last a very long time since it will not be constantly used, you will backup to it, then take it out and put it into a fireproof safe, or somewhere safe.
I currently use 3 1 TB hard drives for my cold backup solution, 1 drive is imaged every 6 months+ while the other 2 drives, are imaged every 2 month or so in an alternating fashion. this is on top of the backups that I make to my NAS which is shared via bittorrent sync with a friends NAS and we each use half, thus free offsite backup for the both of us.
A good step to the direction of really good redundancy, is to have some cold backups which are only powered up at the time of a backup. this will prevent issues, for example suppose your system ever got infected with something like cryptolocker, and it went and encrypted everything on your system, as well as the network share that you have access to, well you will have a cold backup that can be restored. Furthermore, you will be able to store the drives in a safe location such as a waterproof and fireproof safe