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J

J

I am backing up My Documents to an external hard drive. I installed ntbackup
from my Win XP Home CD. However, the icon it backs up to does not look like
a folder.
Am I better off just dragging the folder over instead of using this utility?
Also, how do you import if from the external disk if I ever had to?
Thanks,
John
 
J <j_thinkpad@msn.com> wrote:
> I am backing up My Documents to an external hard drive. I installed
> ntbackup from my Win XP Home CD. However, the icon it backs up to
> does not look like a folder.
> Am I better off just dragging the folder over instead of using this
> utility? Also, how do you import if from the external disk if I ever
> had to? Thanks,
> John

Not sure what you mean by "the icon it backs up to..."

Rather than using NTBackup, or dragging/copying in Windows/GUI, I suggest
you try copying the files over to your external drive directly via a command
line, so you wouldn't need to do a restore if you ran into trouble....I
personally like robocopy from the resource kit...

robocopy "C:\documents and settings\myname\my documents"\ e:\backups\mydocs\
/e /r:1 /w:1

Just my $.02.
 
On Jul 15, 1:26 pm, "J" <j_think...@msn.com> wrote:
> I am backing up My Documents to an external hard drive. I installed ntbackup
> from my Win XP Home CD. However, the icon it backs up to does not look like
> a folder.
> Am I better off just dragging the folder over instead of using this utility?
> Also, how do you import if from the external disk if I ever had to?
> Thanks,
> John

Using Windows Backup, what it does is backup all the contents in your
drive to a single Backup file which is only readable by Windows
Backup. You can store the backup file in a safe place and then you can
restore the backup using the Windows Backup utility. However, Windows
Backup isn't very good in compressing the file into an acceptable
size. What I would recommend is: If the contents in My Documents
aren't that large in size, then just backup the folder to a removable
device (DVD, CD, ZIP, etc.). You can then restore the folder backup by
just copying the Backed up My Documents folder back onto your HD. If
there is a lot of content in My Documents and the size is too big,
then use a good compression utility such as 7-Zip (www.7-zip.org) to
compress all the files into a single archive. Then later, you can use
7-Zip again to decompress the archive and load the contents back onto
your hard drive.

Hope this helps
 
"J" <j_thinkpad@msn.com> wrote in message
news:%23zoRl5xxHHA.4264@TK2MSFTNGP05.phx.gbl...
>I am backing up My Documents to an external hard drive. I installed
>ntbackup from my Win XP Home CD. However, the icon it backs up to does not
>look like a folder.

And it wouldn't.

> Am I better off just dragging the folder over instead of using this
> utility? Also, how do you import if from the external disk if I ever had
> to?
> Thanks,
> John

ntbackup creates a file, not a folder. You have to restore using ntbackup.
'

If you aren't aware of how to restore from backup, then you haven't done one
of the necessary steps, and that is testing a restore. A backup that
didn't work is much worse than useless. Find this out now, rather than
at the worst possible time.

Restore that file to another folder, first making a copy of the current My
Documents folder just in case you overwrite it by accident. After the
restore, open various files and verify that they are valid.

HTH
-pk
 
"Lanwench [MVP - Exchange]"
<lanwench@heybuddy.donotsendme.unsolicitedmailatyahoo.com> wrote in message
news:O1JWkA7xHHA.4800@TK2MSFTNGP05.phx.gbl...
>J <j_thinkpad@msn.com> wrote:
>> I am backing up My Documents to an external hard drive. I installed
>> ntbackup from my Win XP Home CD. However, the icon it backs up to
>> does not look like a folder.
>> Am I better off just dragging the folder over instead of using this
>> utility? Also, how do you import if from the external disk if I ever
>> had to? Thanks,
>> John
>
> Not sure what you mean by "the icon it backs up to..."
>
> Rather than using NTBackup, or dragging/copying in Windows/GUI, I suggest you
> try copying the files over to your external drive directly via a command line,
> so you wouldn't need to do a restore if you ran into trouble....I personally
> like robocopy from the resource kit...
>
> robocopy "C:\documents and settings\myname\my documents"\ e:\backups\mydocs\
> /e /r:1 /w:1
>
> Just my $.02.

Or, better yet, use SyncToy:
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/digitalphotography/prophoto/synctoy.mspx

For a full system backup, I use DriveImage XML:
http://www.runtime.org/dixml.htm
 
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