externel harddrive

[the kid]

I hope some one can tell me if this will work

can I do a backup and put it on a external harddrive ,,then change internal harddrives and put it all back on the internal drive
the reason I want to do this is the internal drive is making noise ..  so I think it is on its last leg ...
will I have trouble doing this ?

It is a    w31o7 desktop pc     with a 100 gig drive

how big of drive can this thing hold
 Im not the best with computers but have changed drives befor

thank you all for reading my post

[RayMarler]

Since you are planning on opening up the pc anyways, then don't do the backup to an external drive. Just install the second drive, and use a drive imaging program such as norton ghost, as an example. The imaging software will image one drive to the other completely with boot sector information and all. Then remove the original drive and put the second drive in it's place and boot up.

If you use the windows backup program to backup to an external drive then put that drive in the pc, it won't boot, won't work. You'd have to install windows onto a third drive and use the windows backup software to copy the backup over to the newly windows loaded drive.

[davedill]

Using ghost is the easiest approach.  I prefer to get a new drive and reinstall Windows on the new drive then make the original drive a slave.  It takes a lot longer to reinstall windows and requires all the original CDs but it will make the system faster and cleaner!!!!

[the kid]

I'll have to use ghost ,,  as we do not have the disk  ...
I do thank you both and all that took the time to peek .
now that I have a way to get this done ,, with out ending up with a big paper weight . I have all the paper weights I'll be needing for a few years , from other things I've tryed  .. any one need one??
thanks again for the info  and advise
tom

[Titus]

What ever you do, do it fast.  Sounds like that drive is about to crash, then your really up a creek...

[KD4MOJ]

I've used Ghost and Acronis.. mainly for backups. But I've actually had to use Acronis on one of my backup images to restore a hard drive that failed and it worked flawlessly. I do a full image about once a week and incrementals during the week.

...DOUG

[the kid]

does norton 360 v3 have ghost in it as thats what I have and I was told that it does have ghost 14