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External Hard drive

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by richardt

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Hello, I would like to wipe off my hard drive and do a clean install of XP Pro. If I purchase an external drive, can I copy my internal hard drive(with the OS and everything else) to the external drive. I am thinking that if there are problems installing the new drive that I will be able to put everything from the external drive back on the internal HDD. Does this make sense. Thanks, Bert

7 replies

by ed woychowsky

I copy the individual folders to an external drive. These folders are things like photographs and articles, basically the documents and web sites. I tend to err on the side of caution because the next step is to re-install everything starting with the OS and once the process is started all of the files are gone.

by mayhem1969

I'd recommend that you copy an image of your HDD to the external drive. Use Norton Ghost or something similar. That way if you have a problem, not only will you be able to return your HDD contents but it will be an exact copy of your HDD.

by thevirtualone

this is the easiest thing to do. It's almost brainless.

All Programs > Accessories > System Tools > Files and Settings Transfer Wizard

or WIN+R %SYSTEMROOT%\system32\usmt\migwiz.exe

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