I was looking at the CMS portable drives (http://cmsproducts.com/), which seem to have the fastest disaster recovery (simply replace your failed notebook drive with the drive in the backup unit). But assuming my current drive lasts a year or two, I would probably want my replacement drive to be the current technology at the time I actually need it.
So now I'm leaning toward an external 3.5" 160-200GB FW/USB drive, which I can also use for archives other than my notebook backup set. But I'm wondering how messy a full recovery would be. For example:
Assuming Window Backup (or 3rd party utility) lets you create an emergency boot CD, will that CD contain the USB/Firewire drivers necessary to access the backup device? Or do you need to reinstall Windows on your replacement drive first, along with any 3rd-party backup software, and then restore the data set over the top of Windows? Does this cause problems if, say, the replacement drive is not exactly the same as the original failed drive (or does Windows fix up the restored registry after the next boot)?
Thanks for any thoughts/experiences on the subject.
So now I'm leaning toward an external 3.5" 160-200GB FW/USB drive, which I can also use for archives other than my notebook backup set. But I'm wondering how messy a full recovery would be. For example:
Assuming Window Backup (or 3rd party utility) lets you create an emergency boot CD, will that CD contain the USB/Firewire drivers necessary to access the backup device? Or do you need to reinstall Windows on your replacement drive first, along with any 3rd-party backup software, and then restore the data set over the top of Windows? Does this cause problems if, say, the replacement drive is not exactly the same as the original failed drive (or does Windows fix up the restored registry after the next boot)?
Thanks for any thoughts/experiences on the subject.
