difference between backups and transfer wizard

[Linny40]

Ive just had to get a new pc due to mine being broken. I'd like to know what the big difference is between backup ( restoring files from an external hard drive) onto the new pc and using the transfer wizard in windows to transfer stuff. I have managed to get a backup from about a moth ago but it has not given me back the likes of my Firefox and all that goes with it.

Until my old pc can be powered on i cant do much with it But wondered exactly what both do and if one is better than the other and why

 

[axxxo]

Hi Linny, warned ya bout not gettin to many responses for this question lol

Backup means many things and depends what you backup and also what you use to backup.

Transfer wizard is basically moving what you have from one place to another which would only include files and folders and not previous settings or configurations.

Backups CAN be the exact same thing but as i said, it depends what you use to "backup" and this is where things can broaden and expand.
You can do a simple backup of your files folders pictures movies etc to the likes of dvd's and cd's or another external hard drive.
This can easily be done through windows which i believe you have done before.

The other option for backups is to make an EXACT IMAGE of your hard drive of your PC or Laptop.
This would be the best option to go for.
Certain programs will take a picture if you like of your hard drive as it is.
On the result of something going wrong the IMAGE or SNAPSHOT of your drive can be restored to the exact state it was in before something going wrong.

Now, the downside to this is that you would need to renew your image of the hard drive as you go along when you add new music, pics, films etc to your computer otherwise when restoring the image it could erase anything new that had been added since the original backup. The same for all backups really although there are some ways to retrieve that sort of stuff, maybe, but we wont go into that now :)

This IMAGE or SNAPSHOT is great because all programs and such will be as you had left them originally so no need to download and install everything again, cool eh ;)

MAYBE someone might do a tut on how to do a drive snapshot, I aint :)
Someone that loves acronis maybe ;)
I've done one myself before with Hirens boot cd which came out very well.
Its a good idea to do this and save it both to a seperate partition you can create yourself on your hard drive and on an external incase a fault with your pc's internal hard drive occurs.

I hope this explains things a little better for ya

Any questions ask away an someone else can answer them lol

 

[Linny40]

Ok yes a great help!. when my pc broke and i got the new one i put the EHD on and backed up( restored) - image in my EHD file is

but with arrow going down only( assume means it backups up), so assume that to be windows backup. However when loaded to new pc for some reason i could then NOT do further backups. I managed to get old pc to switch on ( by playing with it) and did a transfer to EHD and then transfered to new pc. Thankfully by doing that it did NOT take anything off old pc. This happens on a weekly basis. so technically everything that is on my pc gets backed up to this, so if i list anything it should only loose what has been added since the last backup - the week before. Many yrs ago i did back up files onto cds but had a house full of cds as i was told to back up once a month ( drive back then was not an RW so could only write the disk once!
Old pc now working as i managed to figure out that it was the on/off switch that didnt work and got it fixed. - So old pc back up and running with the above icon now twice ( one saying new one saying old pc) need to delete one so will have to look it up.
So basically if this happend again and i put the EHD onto a new pc and restored the backup from the old pc should windows backup automatically pick it up and start auto backup.
New pc had problems kept crashing when i tried to write a disk, so going to a clean install and start again. That one will be used to download everything on, then any progs/music i need on the old pc i can move via my homegroup, so how would be the best way to backup that pc