learning to swim before falling in the pool.

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hello everyone;
i DO apologize IN ADVANCE for the (perhaps) stupidity of my question, but i DO confess that i need some guidance:
i am a subscriber of the windows secrets newsletter, and following Fred Langa advice, i created a repair disk for my W7 HP running machine.
every weekend, i use todobackup (the free edition), for my c: and e: partitions into an external HDD.
i have never experienced a HDD crash (yes folks, i’m knocking wood), and given that situation, i confess that if and when it occurs, i know i will panic, so please those who might have experienced it, tell me what / which are the steps to follow (because then I will not have this machine accessible to ask for help / guidance).
once booting from the repair disk; then WHAT?

TIA for your help / comments

danielr2

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I would connect the external disk, boot from the CD and see what comes up. You should be able to run todobackup and view the available backups and the internal disks. As long as you can see all these you should be able to successfully restore your machine. Now it’ll be OK to reboot into Windows.

cheers, Paul

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I’m going to turn this around for you and ask YOU some questions.

You’ve made an image of your OS, that great I wish everyone did that, but…
1.
*Did you also made a restore disk specifically for the EasUS backup program that you are using.
(a Windows restore disk isn’t going to help much when it comes to restoring an EasUS image)
*Have you read up on all the EasUS Todo how to articles?
*Have you read the instructions on how to use the restore disk in the event you actually need to use it?
*Have you tested the restore disk to ensure that you can; access the image, restore the image, & verify the image?
2.
As for that Windows 7 repair disk you’ve created, have you actually tested it by booting with it to become familiar
with it’s UI?
*Is your computer capable of booting to a USB or DVD/CD ROM, have you ever done it before?
*Do you know how to how to successfully boot to a rescue disk of any kind?
*Do you know how to access your BIOS/EUFI to change boot, and other applicable settings?
3.
What are you gonna do in the event you can’t restore your image to a new hard drive when/if the old one fails?
(sometimes this happens, and it’s happened to me more than once)
*Have you ever done a clean install or it’s OEM equivalent?
*Do you have an operating system disk from your computer’s manufacture where you could reinstall everything?
*Have you looked into how to go about doing so from the HP website should that need arise?
*Do you have backups of all your programs and data independent of the images you’ve made.
*Do you know where to download drivers from on the HP website?

If you are unable to answer some of these question then that should be YOUR red flag, telling
you where you need to start/focus on improving your knowledge…and thereby dispelling some of that panic.

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hi Clint;

thank you very very much for your questions.
i believe that’s exactly what i needed.
will go through them and reply to you you accordingly.
thanks again.

danielr2.

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