On Apr 9, 5:07 pm, "Rock" <R...@nospam.net> wrote:
> "MariaL" <laypo...@bellsouth.net> wrote
>
> >I bought a 160 GB external drive for backing up my files. I want to
> > make a full backup of my entire PC. I have Nero installed and I also
> > have the Windows Backup program that comes with XP. I didn't try the
> > windows utility because it read it will make a bootable floppy, I
> > don't have a floppy drive on my new laptop. I used the Nero Backit
> > up program. My harddrive has 38gb used space, the backup came out to
> > 30gb..any idea why?
>
> > Also, anyone have any personal experience between these two backup
> > programs or any advice on any others available that are better.
>
> > Thanks for any and all help.
>
> You can use ntbackup, which is the backup utility in XP, to backup files
> without using the ASR backup wizard which creates and must have a floppy
> drive. This is a file backup, however, and will not restore the system to a
> running state. I also found the ASR process cumbersome to restore the
> system.
>
> Years ago I moved to a drive imaging program. I currently use Acronis True
> Image Home, version 10 which is compatible with Vista and XP. It can create
> a compressed image of a partition or drive. Images can be full, incremental
> or differential. Saving these to an external drive as you have is a good
> backup/recovery solution. It can also do file backup, and clone drives.
> Restores can be done on a file, partition or drive basis. I recommend it.
>
> I set up ATI to do a full image once a week and a differential image each
> night. I alternate weekly between two different external USB drives.
>
> --
> Rock [MS-MVP User/Shell]

How do I access the Ntbackup? Also am I correct that your saying
with that program you can't do a full system restore to how the pc was
before a crash or lost files. Doing an Image backup with something
like Ghost or this Acronis, is much better, is that correct?