Copying the HD on a recent purchase

[fishmaven]

Sorry if this is too basic for this forum. I'm a Mac person.

 

I bought a HP-NC6220- 1.7 GHz, 1.5 GB ram, 40GB HD. The only software on it are Windows XP and some anti-virus stuff installed by the reseller. The contents are 4. something G. I'd like to clone this drive and use it as a back-up in case the laptop crashes and requires a wipe and reinstall. (I didn't get a bootable copy of Windows XP with the purchase) What I'd really like is to make a bootable CD of Windows XP from this drive. So far, cloning the drive is the only way I've come up with so far.

 

Could it be as simple as removing the anti-virus and copying what's left?

 

Can I put this on a Flash drive and reinstall the drive? Should I choose a CD? Should I put it on one of my Macs, store it there until needed? Obviously, once I've cloned it, I don't want to lose it or contaminate it somehow. I have an external drive of 10G , the original from my Pismo. I don't use it. If I were to use that what would I need to do? Reformat it as PC? What do you recommend?

Thanks,

Dan

[J.B]

you could make an image of it using a linux live CD, then format it and use it for whatever you want, just keep the image somewhere safe and you can restore it to a HD and set it to boot and it should work IN THEORY, i can't say for sure because i've never tried it, but you could if you wanted to

[Metrogirl]

you could make an image of it using a linux live CD, then format it and use it for whatever you want, just keep the image somewhere safe and you can restore it to a HD and set it to boot and it should work IN THEORY, i can't say for sure because i've never tried it, but you could if you wanted to

 

That should work, I've done it myself, but nowadays I invariably take an Acronis TrueImage copy of any new installation; you boot with the Acronis CD and make a full image of the HD onto an external USB drive. With compression the image isn't very big. If you ever want to restore, you boot again with the Acronis CD and use the external image to rewrite the HD. Acronis isn't free (about $30) but it's very good and it's never let me down yet. Generally I make the image after installing Windows with the current updates and after all those little customisations I like. Saves a lot of time. The restored image boots just like it did when you took it. You can do the same with other products like Norton Ghost; I just happen to like Acronis. Incidentally a lot of manufacturer's restore discs use a product like Norton 'under the covers' to do their stuff. Just be aware that if you are using an OEM version of Windows, i.e. the one that came pre-installed, you are in for trouble if you try restoring to a different machine (wrong drivers, no longer activated etc.)!

 

See also the other recent post in this section for more endorsements of Acronis - it's excellent software.