Hard Drive Backup Software 54

Eli Coten

What I was saying basically is if you format your second hard drive as FAT32 (for compatibility-portability issues this might be a good option) copying the files from NTFS to FAT32 would destroy the file permissions, putting them in an archive file (zip,rar,tar,gz,etc) would compress them and also give you the option of keeping the file attributes.

tar is just an archive much like zip, rar etc.

if you wanted a backup image that could be fully restored onto a new hard drive then GHOST and True image are the way to go. it would leave you with a single image file, that can be restored.

I buttume copying the files from one hard drive to the other effectively giving you two hard drives the same is your goal, however I think this would be a waste of your second drive as a compressed image file would take up far less space and give you enough leftover space for other things.

the only things I backup are things that cannot be restored from there original sources such as documents. however each to there own.

The Linux stuff I was referring to would only really be useful to someone who uses Linux allot or does not mind experimenting, it would have the same effect as ghost and true image without the cost.

I think one of the other posts mentions the fact that you can brows through the image files on one of the backup programs to retrieve individual files, I know Norton Ghost definitely has this its called GHOST EXPLORER.

JD