Backing up & moving asp.net projects

I'm going to need to replace my hard drive soon (the warning signs are begining to show themselves), and the only thing that concerns me is my asp.net projects. Is there an easy way to back up my existing projects and get them up and going again on another system? I ask because when I open other people’s projects I find it difficult to get them up and running in visual studio a good portion of the time... and I'm a little concerned about running into issues with my own projects.

Any advice on the matter? Has anyone seen a good walkthrough on backing up and redeploying asp.net apps for development purposes?

From all i have been reading on both Microsoft sites and other development sites, ASP.NET works on an XCOPY skeleton, or in normal terms, just copy it and then copy it back. Everything should work just fine. I personally have just copied over the directories from server to server, reinitailized the IIS rules for an ASP.NET directory, and all worked fine.

Thanks... a bit paranoid I'm sure.... but I didn't want to take a chance on losing anything. So, copying the contents of my webs in inetpub is really all I need to get them up and running in visual studio.net again?

Thats what i do. Try it, create a new application, then copy it to another place, delete the original directory, move the copy back to your web root directory, and setup the asp.net thing in IIS Manager, and try to load it, shouldnt have any problems. Try a new application before you try anything important.

The only problems i have seen is if the inetpub is a different directory then you have to change the directory in the webinfo file.

Once you copy the directories into your Inetpub directory, you need to select each folder and make it an application.

After that it should all work properly.

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Originally posted by Negative0

Once you copy the directories into your Inetpub directory, you need to select each folder and make it an application.

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This is where I run into confusion (IIS is not the most well documented thing there is). I hear the tearm "Make it an application in IIS" quite a bit, but I'm not exactly SURE I know what this means. In Internet Services Manager, I can browse through my webs, but nowhere have I seen any kind of option to "make this directory an application". Creating New virtual directories in one thing... but I'm not so sure I know what I'm doing as far as turning my existing directory's into applications.

I'm sure I'm just over complicating issues. :eek:

Make a directory in your wwwroot folder. Call it MyDir.

From IIS right click on MyDir and select properties.

On the first tab that shows up there is an application settings section. In this section there is an application name which is greyed out. There is a create button next to it, create the new web application by clicking this button.

Viola, you have a new webapplication.

well I'll be damned... thanks for that, Negative0. As always, I overcomplicated the issue.