Backing Up Your Hard Drive

Keeping a hard drive backup protects you in case of system failure. It is thus important to back up your hard drive regularly, especially when adjusting partitions. Refer to the following chart to determine the most appropriate method for backing up your hard drive:

Backup Options

Option 1: Windows Complete PC Backup

 Windows Complete PC Backup is available to users of Vista Business, Vista Ultimate, and Vista Enterprise. It copies an image of the computer's hard drives to another hard drive or multiple DVDs. It does not include automatic compression software, but is simple to use.

The first four minutes of this instructional screencast on Microsoft's Channel 9 blog demonstrate the process. Be advised, the video requires Internet Explorer and the Microsoft Silverlight plug-in.

Option 2: g4u Backup Software via Local Drive

The second backup option is called g4u and is available to all Vista users. It includes an automatic compression utility but is more complicated to use than Windows Complete PC Backup. This tutorial explains how to use g4u to back up a hard drive to a local disk.

Download g4u Backup Software and Create a Bootable CD

1. Go to http://fbim.fh-regensburg.de/feyrer/g4u/ and download an ISO image file of the g4u program.
   The ISO file is only about three megabytes large.
2. Use disk writing software to write the ISO file to a CD.
   If your Windows computer does not already have CD burning software, the free version of InfraRecorder will suffice for Windows users. The resulting CD should be bootable from the ISO image.

Copy the Primary Drive to the External Drive

Warning: this process describes how to copy a disk to an external drive. All data on the external drive will be erased. The two disks must be of similar size and architecture (ie, IDE, SATA, etc.).

1. Insert the g4u CD and boot the primary computer.
   The machine loads a kernel from the CD and prints assorted information to the screen. Upon completion of this process, a shell prompt and a list of commands appears.
2. Examine the computer's available hard drives with the disks command.
   g4u> disks
   Look for disk names like wd0, wd1, or sd0. These might be different names than you are used to because the g4u program is based off of UNIX, as opposed to MS-DOS.
3. Identify both the primary drive and the external drive.
   Write down this information.
4. Copy the primary drive to the external drive with the copydisk command. The primary drive is listed first, and the external drive is listed second. Here is an example:
   g4u> copydisk wd0 wd1
5. Verify the backup.
   Test the external drive to ensure that the backup successfully loaded.

Option 3: g4u Backup Software via FTP Server

The g4u program can also be used by all Vista users to back up a hard drive to an FTP server. As previously mentioned, the software includes an automatic compression utility but is more complicated to use than either of the first two methods.

Download g4u Backup Software and Create a Bootable CD

1. Go to http://fbim.fh-regensburg.de/feyrer/g4u/ and download an ISO image file of the g4u program.
   The ISO file is only about three megabytes large.
2. Use disk writing software to write the ISO file to a CD.

If your Windows computer does not already have CD burning software, the free version of InfraRecorder will suffice for Windows users. The resulting CD should be bootable from the ISO image.

Set Up an FTP Server

1. Create an FTP account named install on a server with enough space to store an image file of the primary system's hard drive.
   This is the destination for your backup file, so write down this address.
2. Verify that the primary system can log in to the FTP server via the install account.

Copy the Primary Drive to the FTP Server

1. Insert the g4u CD and boot the primary computer.
   The machine loads a kernel from the CD and prints assorted information to the screen. Upon completion of this process, a shell prompt and a list of possible commands appears.
2. Examine the computer's available hard drives with the disks command.

g4u> disks

Look for disk names like wd0, wd1, or sd0. These might be different names than you are used to because the g4u program is based off of UNIX, as opposed to MS-DOS.

1. Upload the primary machine's hard drive to the FTP server with the uploaddisk command, the address of your FTP server, and an end file name ending with .gz. Here is an example:
   g4u> uploaddisk your.ftp.server.com computerbackup.gz
2. Verify the backup.
   Log in to the FTP server to ensure that the backup successfully loaded.