FYI: DIsk Image your hard drive

Hi all,

I was reading the posts of people whose recovery discs did not work nor even the ones that HP sent out to them. I think it best that people buy a disk imaging software solution, then make 2 images of your computer:
1) While it is still a virgin, right out of the box
2) After you have done all your windows updates, installed antivirus/spyware, firewall, relevant programs like scanning software, word processors, Nero, etc

After you have made your images, ALWAYS do an image verification. This is to ensure that the image does not have any errors. After you have done all of this, you can then go ahead and attempt to take out any unwanted software that manufacturers usually put on computers. If anything goes wrong, then just go back and install the image and you will be back up and running in about 20 minutes. I recommend Acronis True Image. I have used it for the past year. Also, I would advise to buy an external drive to store the disk image on instead of the drive of the computer.

 

Very good advise all around. One of the first things I bought once I got my new laptop was Acronis True Image and an 320gb external hard drive. I created an image of the factory drives, then formatted and dual booted my machine, next I created two more images (one XP and one Vista) and stashed all the backups on my external drive. It took me the better part of a day just to reinstall both OS, setup drivers and tweak the OS the way I wanted it. By creating the images I can fix anything that goes wrong quickly and easily.

-Reby

 

Hi Reby, Acronis has saved my butt a couple of times. I highly recommend it.
Also, I find it useful to group your data (ie word documents, excel documents, music files, scanned documents, etc) into 1 folder to make backing up easy. Within that folder have subfolders that are descriptive of its contents like: Word Documents, Music, Excel Docs, etc.
Windows does have the "My Documents" folder, but for some reason, I don't like it. I guess I don't appreciate software just putting things in places without telling me so I don't have to hunt for them. Anyways, there is a free encryption tool that is available at
truecrypt.org

What this does is create an encrypted vault in which you can store your important files on (hint hint, that folder I was talking about above). It has very very strong encryption on it. And, it acts just like a virtual hard drive when you access it. Check it out. You will be surprised about its features and its all free. I have been using it for about a year now. I store all my data in this vault, so if my computer gets stolen or if you have nosy neighbors, they can't access your data unless they know your password to the vault.

 

hehe same here