XP Home Edition...no back up program??? (1 Viewer)

[Thane]

I recently purchased an external hard drive, and had intended to back up my computer's C drive onto it. I went into XP's system tools, and there isn't a program that I could find to do the backup...I looked in the "help" tab for instructions, and didn't find anything there either. Is it possible that the Home Edition of XP doesn't have a backup feature??? I have really enjoyed XP but will be incredulous if something as basic as a backup option isn't included!!

 

[Brett DiMichele]

Thane,

I haven't even researched that avenue yet but here are your

2 options if Home XP doesn't have a backup feature.

#1 Upgrade to XP Pro (it's free)

#2 Buy Norton Ghost (makes perfect CD Images of the HDD's and

a restore is as easy as sin)

Or just forget about it.. XP does have it's own Restore

Function.. Just manualy copy some of the more important

software to another drive.

 

[Keith Townsend]

I don't know about home addition but Professional has the traditional NTBACKUP.exe. Try running NTBACKUP.EXE from a command prompt.

Later,

Keith T.

Router's are what tigers do best you know.

 

[Thane]

Thanks for the suggestions, but I think I'm a bit too computer illiterate! I went to Microsoft's website & found where I could see if my XP qualified for a XP Professional upgrade (it does), but spent a long time trying to find out how to go about that & found absolutely nothing! Also, I typed "ntbackup.exe" in the Run field of the start menu with no results...was I supposed to be elsewhere?

 

[Keith Townsend]

Nope...that was it. Got to your search menu and try searching for "ntbackup.exe" if it's not there then it's probrably only available on Professional. BTW...All copies of Professional are eligible for the $99 upgrade to professional. You just half to go to BB or some place and purchase the upgrade version.

Also NT backup isn't the best of backup software it works but you may be better off getting CD-Burning software which usually have the same type of features.

 

[Brett DiMichele]

Keith,
Actualy the upgrade from XP Home to XP Professional is FREE.
It says so at www.microsoft.com but just as Thane concluded
I too can not find a link to the "free" upgrade info.
Thane just buy Norton Ghost.. Set your system up the way
you are most comfortable with and then run Ghost. Ghost makes
an image of the whole hard disk (or multiple disks) and then
sequentialy burns them to CD-R so that you have an exact
image of your PC from a certain moment in time. If you ever
have to "Blast" your PC you simply run the CD's and it takes
you back to the way you were at the time the disk image was
created.

 

[Rob Gillespie]

If you're considering Ghost, take a look at Drive Image instead. It has two advantages: It can create an image file in an NTFS partition and doesn't prompt you for a twelve character license key every time you want to perform a restore or clone.

Ghost: Great software ballsed up by Symantec.

 

[Scooter]

I can not even find where it tells me I can upgrade free!!! How and where do I go to find that out?