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First timer, need advice

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This is the first time I've been on any forum so excuse me if I ask silly questions. I am trying to find software to totally restore my hard drive in the event I have to format it again. I am able to reinstall windows xp from cd but it has taken a long time to try and get my programs back on. I don't fully understand the difference between "restore", clone or make an "image" of my hd but my goal is to be able to save a total copy of everything on the hd to a usb external hd and in the event of a disaster, be able to copy the external hd back onto the internal hd and have a working computer. I have seen this company's software mentioned in several articles I have googled. Can anyone tell me if this software will do what I think I want it to and is it simple enough for an extreme beginner to use? All help will be appreciated.

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John,

In a short word YES!

Clone:

A clone is where you have another hard drive of at least the same size as the old drive which is copied to the new drive as is.

It is possible with True Image to actually clone to a smaller drive, but the thing to remember is it is an exact copy of the original drive.

Image

An image is a copy of the used parts of your drive and stored as a file (think of a zip file that stores copies of programs - just much bigger).

The advantages of an image are that you can image a complete disk, a single partition if using a multi partitioned drive, or any partition. You can also just image files and folders. With an image you can Explore and Mount complete partitions or disks and drag and drop files as needs be onto your system (you can't mount a files and folders image but you can still explore one). An image can be stored on another hard drive internal or external and you can have more than one image. So you could have an original image and then updates to that image.

Restore:

A restore is quite simply takign the contents of an image file and either putting them onto a new drive or replacing the contents of your current drive.

Thanks for the info ! If I understand correctly, in the event my internal hd had to be formatted and I had an image of the entire hd pre-format, I could restore the internal hd by copying the image from the external onto the internal?

John wrote:
I could restore the internal hd by copying the image from the external onto the internal?

Put it this way.
"I could restore the internal harddrive by booting from the TrueImageHome Rescue CD and using its restore program to restore the backup onto a new dirive which would be a duplicate of the old drive."

Acronis TrueImage Home 2011
Check out the "How to's"
http://kb.acronis.com/content/13414#