I have n 80Gb HDD containing Windows XP Home Edition 2002 SP2 with 2 accounts set up (one for me and one for my wife). I would like some suggestions on how to periodically back up my system in case of not being able to boot into windows. I especially need to make sure that I can back up my wife's settings, like her outlook express configuration and saved emai and also her Firefox browser settings including bookmarks and saved passwords for commonly visited sites so she would not have to re-setup these things if I was to have to reinstall windows or something. So basically I would really like to set up the complete system including settings so that if I had to reinstall windows, I could just copy my backup into it and it would be exactly the same as before. All I have for backup now is a blank 20Gb HDD and blank cd and dvd media. What programs, hardware, or both do I need to do these quickly and reliably on say a week to week or month to month basis? Thanks in advance.
Windows XP has a backup utility that gives you the option to back up "everyone's settings including my desktop, favorites and emails"...All Programs>>Accessories>>System Tools>>Backup and run the wizard. Or you could get rewritable dvd's and cds with an appropiate burner and just redo the backups whenever. If you have cash to blow consider a RAID system but someone else can tell ya about that.
Windows backup is only for the one-time backup really. I'd get a better backup utility if its serious. If you want to create an image of your HD so you don't have to reset anything at all then try [google]Acronis True Image[/google] or something similar which creates an archive file of your whole disk, so you can just reload the archive when something goes wrong. But it isn't really practical if you want to constantly backup as it takes time.
