aka How to
completely backup and restore your Windows configuration
without reinstalling anything (almost).

In an ongoing search
for easy and free ways (well almost free) to maintain a smoothly
running system, I’m presenting a procedure that I use a lot, and
recommend to anyone with enough hardware and the guts to try it.
It’s a relatively painless, easy method of completely backing
up your whole hard drive, thus making a system restore as
painless as possible, and without reinstalling Windows!

Actually there are
two different ways of doing this, and I’ll present them both. The
first one requires a second physical hard drive, and with the
prices so low, everyone should be able to afford a smallish (1-3
gigabyte) drive for less than the cost of a new floppy drive. The
second is for those who have a large hard drive, with multiple
partitions.

Although this may
appear "techy" at first, even a computer novice can
utilize one or the other of these methods. Don’t be afraid of it,
there are ample warnings, and they’re included for you to notice.
All typed DOS commands are in italics.

Making a backup
wouldn’t be much good if you couldn’t restore it, so I’m
including the restore method(s) at the end of this article..

Method 1.)
Recommended for those who already have, or plan on getting a
second hard drive in their system. The advantages of this should
be obvious. More room for data storage (yes, that includes
backups), pictures of Grandma, and anything else you really
should be keeping in more than one location (don’t keep your eggs
all in one basket type of thinking).

1. Make sure you
   have a good running system, with all your software,
   windows tweaks, documents, etc., where you want them on
   your C: drive. Do any shuffling of files and folders now,
   uninstall the useless stuff, and scandisk and defrag
   would also be a good idea now.

2. Delete
   everything in the c:\windows\temp folder. Delete
   everything in the c:\windows\temporary internet files
   folder as well.

3. Grab your
   second hard drive, and remove your C: drive from the
   computer. *****Note: If your computer’s BIOS setup allows
   for booting from multiple drives, see Method 3
   below!*****

4. Install your
   second drive as C: and boot to the Windows startup
   diskette. You don’t need CD-ROM support at this time.

5. Fdisk the
   drive, making sure to make the first partition active!
   Choose "YES" when asked if you wish to use
   large disk support. Partition any way you like, but
   you’ll need a partition at least as big as your whole C:
   drive’s contents.. At the A:\ prompt, type: fdisk MAKE
   SURE you don’t fdisk the wrong drive!

6. Format the
   drive. At the A:\ prompt, type: format C:

7. Sys the
   drive. That is, to put the system files on the drive to
   make it bootable. At the A:\ prompt, type: sys c:

8. Remove the
   drive from the computer. Put your original C drive back
   in, and put the new drive in as either a slave to C: or
   as master on the second channel. Read the owners manual
   for your hard drive(s) to get jumper settings for this.

9. Boot your
   computer. No, don’t kick it, turn the computer ON!

10. Open
    Explorer. Drag and drop everything from C: to D: except
    the c:\windows folder, and the recycle bin. Ignore any
    messages about overwriting files, you want
    the files to be overwritten.

11. Make a folder
    on D: called Windows.

12. Drag and drop
    the entire contents of the c:\windows folder to the
    d:\windows folder except the file called
    win386.swp

13. Done. You now
    have a complete, identical copy of C: on D: Both drives
    are bootable with a fully working Windows, and all your
    current settings, folders, everything intact. If you like
    playing with windows settings a lot, or installing and
    uninstalling lots of questionable software, you now have
    a complete backup of your original system to restore if
    you crash beyond the other normal repair options.