I am thinking of getting either Ghost or Acronis True Image backup software
to image my C: drive to reduce down time if my hard disk crashes. I have been
told that I need to re-install my external backup drive as an internal
primary drive to get my computer to recover. In such an emergency, can't I
restart the system from just the external backup drive for the shortest down
time? Appreciate your advice.

I think what you are talking about here is an external usb hard drive. Let me
know if i'm wrong here. If it is it should automatically be detected by
windows as a hard drive which it can boot from. To address the case of an
image backup and to have the shortest downtime i would prefer to use the xp's
internal mirroring capability.

yogi

"Sen" wrote:

> I am thinking of getting either Ghost or Acronis True Image backup software
> to image my C: drive to reduce down time if my hard disk crashes. I have been
> told that I need to re-install my external backup drive as an internal
> primary drive to get my computer to recover. In such an emergency, can't I
> restart the system from just the external backup drive for the shortest down
> time? Appreciate your advice.

Thanks Yogi for your reply. Yes it is an external USB backup drive. The
common advice I get is that it is unstable to boot from an external USB
drive, if it is possible. If this being the case, the external USB backup
drive seems to be good for cloning a new harddisk to reboot my computer in
which case I need to have a standby harddisk ready for such emergency or that
I reinstall the external drive as the new internal primary drive for the
shortest downtime solution. The crux of my concern is whether XP can
recognise the active partition in my external USB backup drive and be able
to boot from it with or without help from some recovery disk from my 3rd
party backup software like Ghost or Acronis True Image. My consideration is
for a shortest downtime solution to get the computer up and going when my
harddisk crashes.
"yogi" wrote:

> I think what you are talking about here is an external usb hard drive. Let me
> know if i'm wrong here. If it is it should automatically be detected by
> windows as a hard drive which it can boot from. To address the case of an
> image backup and to have the shortest downtime i would prefer to use the xp's
> internal mirroring capability.
>
> yogi
>
> "Sen" wrote:
>
> > I am thinking of getting either Ghost or Acronis True Image backup software
> > to image my C: drive to reduce down time if my hard disk crashes. I have been
> > told that I need to re-install my external backup drive as an internal
> > primary drive to get my computer to recover. In such an emergency, can't I
> > restart the system from just the external backup drive for the shortest down
> > time? Appreciate your advice.

Sen wrote:
> I am thinking of getting either Ghost or Acronis True Image backup
> software to image my C: drive to reduce down time if my hard disk
> crashes. I have been told that I need to re-install my external
> backup drive as an internal primary drive to get my computer to
> recover. In such an emergency, can't I restart the system from just
> the external backup drive for the shortest down time? Appreciate your
> advice.

Both Ghost and Acronis can make a bootable CD that can restore your image
from the external drive. It is a good isea to test that you can boot from
this CD and access the image on the external drive before you need to use
it.

Kerry

yogi wrote:
> I think what you are talking about here is an external usb hard
> drive. Let me know if i'm wrong here. If it is it should
> automatically be detected by windows as a hard drive which it can
> boot from. To address the case of an image backup and to have the
> shortest downtime i would prefer to use the xp's internal mirroring
> capability.
>
> yogi

Mirroring is not a viable backup method. Many of the things that may damage
one hard drive will also damage the other drive. There are many reasons not
to use software mirroring. If one drive quits you will not be able to boot
from the other drive. In any case the point is moot. Software mirroring is
not supported by any version of Windows XP. It is only supported with Server
2000 & 2003. Hardware mirroring is possible with many newer motherboards.
Again this is not designed as a backup method. It is designed for servers to
keep a system up and running until downtime can be scheduled to replace a
defective drive.

Kerry

>
> "Sen" wrote:
>
>> I am thinking of getting either Ghost or Acronis True Image backup
>> software to image my C: drive to reduce down time if my hard disk
>> crashes. I have been told that I need to re-install my external
>> backup drive as an internal primary drive to get my computer to
>> recover. In such an emergency, can't I restart the system from just
>> the external backup drive for the shortest down time? Appreciate
>> your advice.