[pete21]

last nite i made a backup of my harddrive with windows and all programs ect. to another harddrvie.

if i was to burn the backup file to cd and one day i needed to re instal windows.. could i simply use this cd. would that work? also would all my programs & settings even my modified settings like windows fonts style that i have changed.

if this is possible how do i burn the backup file to cd (dvd) in order for my pc to boot from it as first boot device

thanks!

[thingie2]

ok, well if you copied the entire hdd onto the disk (ghosting) it should work, however if you only coppied select parts, it probably won't. And as for the getting it to work, well first you need to burn it to a CD (or DVD is CD isn't big enough) with one of the programs that should have come with one of your several DVD writers. Then when you need to boot from the disk, you should be able to set the bios to choose the optical drive before the hdd for booting, thus booting from the CD/DVD first.

I'm not 100% sure this would work, but in theory (atleast as far as I know) it should. And I don't know how you would go about changing the boot device on your motherboad because all bios's are different, just look through the menus untill you see an option saying something like "Boot priotity" Once you've found it you will know for next time, so exit without saving changs that time, just incase you made a change by accident.

[pete21]

arr write thanks i have nero i could burn it with but i think magic iso could have more of a chance as it will burn it as a bootabe image i think! the backup is at 11 BG's as my DVD cd's the limit on my hp dvd disks are 4GB's i will have to use more than one cd.. even if it wont boot to the cd i could always install windows then just put the cds in and then use my backups.. i think that would also work ill burn some and see if it works THANKS

as for the boot devices in bios. i more than no my way around there as i'm always in there lol :)

[philthomas]

The easiest way to make a complete back up of your HDD is to use an imaging program, such as Acronis True Image or Norton Ghost.
This will allow you to make an image of your partition, which can be imaged back to a new HDD and will be bootable. Any other method will not work, as you must have the boot files, as well as the data.
I have used Acronis True Image many times and can recommend it.