Hi, a friend's PC wouldn't launch when he started it and he's having to get someone in to sort it out. He thinks he's lost his data and will also have to reinstall his applications. I've suggested to him that he gets an external hard disk and he regularly backs up to this. I use a Mac and there are several applications avalable for this. For example "Time Machine". What application would people recommend for PCs?
Thanks Derek

Hello and welcome to PCHF.

The question can be split:
BackUp partition
BackUp HDD

For Partition, I use my Vista Ultimate BackUp, which is very good and free (if you pay for Ultimate, that is...), but I have used TrueImage and Norton Ghost at work without any issues and most people seem to prefer those.

For HDD, I use Casper at work, is a bit slow but has never failed me, even though TrueImage can be -far-cheaper and more user friendly.

Hello Derek100 and welcome to PCHF,

Il mark this thread open so it attracts our highly skilled tech staff.

If your friend has got windows XP, you can show him/her the link below to see if that helps.

How to Back Up a Hard Drive | eHow.com

Regards,

Clever_Duck

No need to mark it open now

Hi Derek100 - Welcome to PCHF!!!

It depends on what sort of backup he wants.

Do you want to be able to restore to a completely new hard drive as though nothing happened to the same hardware?

Or to different hardware, e.g. whole system gets burnt in a fire. He has a to buy a complete new pc. Most home user type ghost or backup tools wont restore to different hardware. Meaning he'd have try to get the exact same motherboard, cpu, graphics card, etc.

There's heaps of image tools that can be used to restore to a new hard drive to the latest backup but it depends on what capabilities your friend wants it to have. None of the good ones are free. Most of the free ones will only backup files, not the OS including installed software, etc.

Please post back with what sort of backup your friend is looking at getting.

Many thanks for the warm welcome!

I'm not sure what my friend wants, but I want to advise him, as he's not particularly computer literate.

I would have thought a system that has his whole disk backed up so that (a) he can launch it from another PC (is that possible?); (b) so he can restore the the whole thing to his PC when it's mended (assuming it breaks down again - I don't know what caused it in the first place, he said he turned it on the next day and it wasn't working!); (c) it backs up incremental changes.
Many thanks Derek

He won't be able to launch a backup from another pc. He'll need to restore the backup to another pc which won't be possible if it's a full backup including software unless the pc has the same hardware. There is software available that will restore to any hardware but it's expensive.

If he just wants to backup files and not software and operating system he can do that with Windows Backup. It will do incremental backups and he can restore them when he wants to any pc he wants.

My advice would be to use the Windows Backup. The only drawback is that he will need to reinstall and any software he has installed.