How do I back up software on my computer to my portable hard drive?

g portable hard drives image

jkvbmc

I recently bought a Western Digital 160g portable hard drive and I want to back up some of the most important programs on my computers hard drive to my portable drive in case my computer crashes, how do I do that?

Answer
Plug it in first then open explorer.
It should then show as an extra drive on the list. e.g. External drive (D:).
Now choose a program folder you want to keep and click, hold and drag it to the external drive.
It will not remove the original folder. It will make a copy on the new drive.
That's the easy bit but there's a big but.
A lot of programs when they are installed scatter files around the computer.
If this is the case with a program you are backing up it won't work on another computer because some of the files are missing. You would need to have the original installation file. That's a lesson I learnt the hard way. The only way you can check is to try running it from another computer. If you run it from the external drive while it's still connected to your host computer it will run because it finds the needed files on the internal drive.
Some programs are self contained and have all the files they need to run.
At the very least you should also back up all the files you have self generated such as text, graphics, photo's, music etc. You're thinking ahead so I reckon you've already thought of that.
What I do now is each time I download a new program I put a copy on the external before installing it. Once I've got enough to make it worthwhile I burn them to disk. Double protection!

Can a portable hard drive be formatted as a bootable USB?

rubixmaste

I know that Flash USB's are capable of being formatted into USB's that the computer can boot from the BIOS, but can the same be done with a Portable hard drive such as one from Western Digital (the passport types) ? And if so, will it completely work?

Thanks in advance!

Answer
yes, it will work perfectly. but there are procedures to be done. follow the steps

** creating a windows vista/7 bootable USB drive

* this can only be done using machines with vista or 7

* run command prompt as administrator

c:\diskpart

DISKPART> list disk

DISKPART> select disk 1 (assuming usb drive is disk 1)

DISKPART> clean

DISKPART> create partition primary

DISKPART> select partition 1

DISKPART> active

DISKPART> format fs=NTFS (this will format the usb drive)

DISKPART> assign

DISKPART> exit (this will exit diskpart command)

* insert windows vista/7 into ODD

c:\cd d:\boot

c:\boot\bootsect /nt60 g: (assuming usb drive is named g:)

* use windows explorer to copy all windows vista/7 files and folders from CD

* restart PC to be configured and locate BIOS setup & change the boot sequence to USB drive as priority

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