Back-up solutions

[Stryder]

I use DriveImage from PowerQuest. First of all, I keep nothing, NOTHING, on my OS partition. My documents, pictures, downloaded program installers, music, email folders, etc. are all on their own seperate partitions from the OS just in case of a sudden crash and burn. I make disk images in stages:1st: After installing the OS and getting all the Windows Updates I make an image.2nd: After I install my "Core" apps and tweaks(things I will always install, and tweaks I will always make) I make another image. 3rd: After installing everthing else I make another image.4th: I make a weekly image of my OS partition there after.5th: I also make a weekly image of all my other partitions containing the things I mentioned above that I keep off of my OS partition in case of a crash and burn.I make my images and put them in a partition I have set aside for them on my PC and burn them from there. That way I have a copy on one my hard drives and one on CD.The reason I make the different images is so I can restore my system to a pristine condition, as in stage 1. Or if I have not changed any of my "Core" apps I can go to the stage 2 image. If not too much has changed I will use my stage 3 image. And then stage 4 if I want to return my PC to the last state it was in. I like having the options available as to what state I want to return my system to. And considering with DriveImage I can restore any of the above mentioned images in 10-15 minutes, it sure beats spending hours/days getting things back to the way I like them. So. There is my back up solution. I would like to hear from everyone about theirs. Hopefully we all might learn a little something from one another and find other ways that we have not thought of from each other.Thanks for you input!!

[Arena2045]

Hey Stryder,I bought a copy of DriveImage from PowerQuest a long long time ago, and I’m sad to say I never got a chance to use it. And the funny thing is I don’t know why!I’ve been burned a lot from not backing up my information. And my backup plan isn’t as complex at yours, but I’m sure just as time consuming.Every week (if I’ve done a lot of work) or every two weeks (if little work has been done) I make CD’s of all my information (excluding music files). Typically it takes about 6 CD’s (I work on a lot of high end graphics).So I have stacks of CD’s as back ups, and at least two sets a month go offsite.I have a question though. I’m going to build a computer this summer and would like to set up a backup plan like yours. How large are the images that DriveImage makes? Just curious.

[Stryder]

Hey Stryder,I have a question though.  I’m going to build a computer this summer and would like to set up a backup plan like yours.  How large are the images that DriveImage makes?  Just curious.

Hey Arena, Drive Image offers varying degrees of compression for your images. So that helps. The Images vary in sizes due to how much data is on the drive when I back it up. Right now my C: drive is at 4.2 gig. That is with everything installed. I have that image compressed down to 2.6 gig. I am getting the Sony DVD burner soon. Just trying to give it a little more time for the price to fall. Then back-ups will be a breeze.

[hhpc]

I am the lucky owner of a Desktop and a Laptop PC, both equipped with 100 Mbps Ethernet NICs, so I set-up a synchronization in such a way that one PC is backup for the other. Kind of "mirrorring" the manual way. In case of a disk crash on either one, I can restore my user-data over the network. I would still have to re-install everything though... I wonder if Drive-Image would allow me to create an image over the network ? More importantly, how would I restore ? After all you can spend a lot of time taking backups, but what are the real-life experiences with restore ? I use Laplink Gold 11 to do the synchronization. My intention was to synchronize once a week, trying to limit the "burns" to "first fegree", but I find Laplink too slow and resource consuming, and requiring too much attention... It also lacks the option to delete the "mirror" files if the original was deleted. I stick to Laplink because I paid for it. If I could do it all again I would buy Handy Backup (www.handybackup.com) which I tried and actually found much more feature rich.

[Guest LilBambi]

I backup up onto CD-Rs. No real plan, just periodic.Important things I backup frequently, other stuff less often.I also back a backup of all drivers, and burn them.I also burn all aps I download to CD-R so I can reinstall them if necessary....or should I say when necessary with Windows

[Stryder]

I am the lucky owner of a Desktop and a Laptop PC, both equipped with 100 Mbps Ethernet NICs, so I set-up a synchronization in such a way that one PC is backup for the other. Kind of "mirrorring" the manual way. In case of a disk crash on either one, I can restore my user-data over the network. I would still have to re-install everything though... I wonder if Drive-Image would allow me to create an image over the network ? More importantly, how would I restore ? After all you can spend a lot of time taking backups, but what are the real-life experiences with restore ? I use Laplink Gold 11 to do the synchronization. My intention was to synchronize once a week, trying to limit the "burns" to "first fegree", but I find Laplink too slow and resource consuming, and requiring too much attention... It also lacks the option to delete the "mirror" files if the original was deleted. I stick to Laplink because I paid for it. If I could do it all again I would buy Handy Backup (www.handybackup.com) which I tried and actually found much more feature rich.

Yes Drive Image allows for backing up over a network. And restoring takes 15 minutes. Your OS is back EXACTLY as it was when you made the image. Every program, customization, registry tweak, everything. Back when 98se was my main machine I used to format almost monthly due to me being a "Let's see what we can %@#^ with next" type person. So every month I was going though the 2 day reinstall of my OS and all porgrams and tweaks. Then I found Drive Image. Everytime I messed something up.....break out my back up image and 15 minutes later all was well. Which just encouraged me to try more and more different things without the worry of messing things up and having to do a complete format and reinstall. It actually helped big time in allowing me to learn.So yes, real life experiences..... are not just good.......they're GREAT!!

[Jim - TEG]

Stryder's post made it unnecessary for me to go through my backup strategy.A simple "Ditto" will suffice with one change. Substitute Ghost 2003 for DriveImage.It's to the point anymore I won't even build a system I have to support unless the client authorizes the purchase and installation of imaging software as part of the contract, including their obligation to image the system and data partitions weekly.

[Mike]

Ya'll have explained my setup as well.. I also use Ghost... 6, 7, and now 2003Works great... I been burned once and I will work to not have it happen again...

[Guest LilBambi]

I have an old copy of Ghost ... and since I recently got a new CD-R, I will see about using them now :)I just started doing my own backups on CD-R. I used to have to open a Share and my Jim would burn them for me over the network.Now that I have my own CD-R and you reminded me of my old copy of Ghost, I will try that out.I love it ... I won't have to buy anything else to do it

[Guest ThunderRiver]

Currently, I have two machines, so I synchronize between the two quite often through a 10 Mb LAN connection.Also, as part of beta testing, I am back up my files to my CDR about once per month or if I am lazy, every 6 months. So far so good. I have not actually lost any data yet.ThunderRiver

[imranj]

Hmm , well my routine is bit different.........i have made only one backup of my machine using powerquests drive image......and it did save my everything, as the Xp installation went bust after i installed one applicationand i just popped in the cd, booted through the bootable cd's and restored the partition and everything was just as fine as ever, and after that i never had to restore my installation everbut my back up is long over due since my last restore which was in october, so a another snapshot is due........just dont get the time to do it as i spend most of my time in linux and go to xp to do maintenance job's and keeping it up to date.I keep all my data on C:\ partition and make a backup of it, so when i restore i get everything in one whole order,although i do keep the data files of applications like outlooks data files backedup routinely......... .so this is my backup methodology.

[Grasshopper]

I'm a bad boy. I don't backup.Ouch that tomato hurt....Seriously, I've given it hard thought. I do have a question though.I understand the reasoning for the partitioning strategies and I know I should do it, but what if you had a large amount of data to image off a single partition?Say you had 15 GB of data on your C: and you wanted to image. With, say, Drive Image, how does that work if you have more data than the 700 MB on a CDRW?Also, does Drive Image work on an NTFS partition? (As in XP home)I'd like to buy a DVD writer but $$$$ <sigh>Still that's only like 5 GB isn't it?I really need to work on cleaning my drive up. Partitioning and all...Sorry for the dumb questions.TIAAllen

[Guest ThunderRiver]

DriveImage gives you the option to split up the gigantic image into 700 Mb or 650 mb or customized size. So it will have multiple files and you can then burn each image into CDR.. that works.

[dicknite]

This is a little different - I have parents in their 80's who are computer users. They rely on me to do all the major things that need doing, like replacing hardware, setting up some programs (although, my Mom has surprised the heck out of me - she recently bought and installed Norton 2003 all by herself!), and troubleshooting...A month ago, a hard drive began acting up, so I had to replace it. After the hassle of retrieving all the information off the old one and transferring it to the new, I had to come up with a no-brainer way of backing up every night.With the cost of hard drives as low as they are, I went out and bought 2 40G drives. I installed each as the master and installed Windows (one at a time, of course!). On the one that would eventually be the master, I restored the backup of the old drive.Then I jumpered the other one as slave and installed them both. Now, each night, I have MS Backup do a complete backup of the C: to D: (using a little ap called autobackup 98, since Win98 Backup won't run unattended). I include all drive/path information in the backup, along with the registry.Now, if the primary drive pukes, I can pull them, rejumper the slave to master (It already has the system and windows installed), restore the backup to original locations and it is back up and running.While this is not a perfect system - no off-site copy, and a lightening strike could take out both the drives, it is MUCH more easy for me to sleep knowing if something goes wrong, I don't have to go through the whole restoration from a bad drive nightmare...d|:^)Dick

[Grasshopper]

First of all, I keep nothing, NOTHING, on my OS partition. My documents, pictures, downloaded program installers, music, email folders, etc. are all on their own seperate partitions from the OS just in case of a sudden crash and burn.

Stryder (and anyone else...),how do you handle your Program Files?I've heard some actually redirect them to another partition. I think for me that would be too much work.Allen

[Guest ThunderRiver]

First of all, I keep nothing, NOTHING, on my OS partition. My documents, pictures, downloaded program installers, music, email folders, etc. are all on their own seperate partitions from the OS just in case of a sudden crash and burn.

Stryder (and anyone else...),how do you handle your Program Files?I've heard some actually redirect them to another partition. I think for me that would be too much work.Allen

Stryder, well, your solution seems to be perfect, but it is flawed if you are using NTFS!Alot of times, if your account has password protected, and lets say if you download your files to your personalized folder (aka Documents and Settings\username\My Documents folder), and then youd drag and move the files to another partition that's also NTFS.It seems to be as normal as if you are using FAT32, but it isn't. The traparents encryption in Windows is a lethal killer if the OS ever gets killed. Now if you reformat the OS partition, all your data on the other NTFS partitions will be rendered unreadable. I already lost 500 Mb of valueable data that way. I made a CD copy of my 500 Mb encrypted data anyway, hoping in the future technology, the encryption will be broken, and I will hopefully get my data back one day.. .. yeah hopefullyThunderRiver

[Guest LilBambi]

Ah, the joys of Windows

[Guest ThunderRiver]

Well, that's my experience with Windows 2000, and now a day, I see more people fallen as the victims of NTFS

[Stryder]

First of all, I keep nothing, NOTHING, on my OS partition. My documents, pictures, downloaded program installers, music, email folders, etc. are all on their own seperate partitions from the OS just in case of a sudden crash and burn.

Stryder (and anyone else...),how do you handle your Program Files?I've heard some actually redirect them to another partition. I think for me that would be too much work.Allen

Stryder, well, your solution seems to be perfect, but it is flawed if you are using NTFS!Alot of times, if your account has password protected, and lets say if you download your files to your personalized folder (aka Documents and Settings\username\My Documents folder), and then youd drag and move the files to another partition that's also NTFS.It seems to be as normal as if you are using FAT32, but it isn't. The traparents encryption in Windows is a lethal killer if the OS ever gets killed. Now if you reformat the OS partition, all your data on the other NTFS partitions will be rendered unreadable. I already lost 500 Mb of valueable data that way. I made a CD copy of my 500 Mb encrypted data anyway, hoping in the future technology, the encryption will be broken, and I will hopefully get my data back one day.. .. yeah hopefullyThunderRiver

I don't encrypt my files, so it works for me. I have an offline PC for any data I do not want accessed by unwelcome eyes.This works for private folders if you have checked the "Make This Folder Private" option:If you have made a folder private on another partition and your OS crashes, all you have to do after reinstalling the OS is boot into safe mode and log in as ADMIN, go to the security tab for that folder and give Ownership of the private folder to your new USER. Then you can access it again.

[ejr]

I used to prefer Drive Image, but it has some problems working with NTFS. Powerquest doesn't tell you this in advance but admits to its reality. If you backup to another drive on your system you cannot delete the file(s) afterwards. You can do nothing with them other than for a restore. You can, of course, write to cd-r's. I also find examining drive image backups a hassle. They are less accessible than backups made with Ghost.For these reasons I now use Ghost 2003. This new version has an improved interface and, like DI, you don't need to boot from a floppy disk to create images or restore them. There is now an internal dos that is accessed when you launch the program. Ghost 2003 also permits use of external burners connected through usb or firewire without any hassle whatsoever.The new version of Ghost also will write to a dvd burner. I recently bought the Sony DRU-500-ULX, an external dvd burner that supports both dvd+r and dvd-r as well as cd-r discs and which uses either a usb port or a firewall one. Given the still high price for dvd burners this was a better choice, in my opinion, since it can be hot swapped between systems. Though I install most programs into another drive than the one used for xp the amount of data to be backed up means swapping several cd-r's in order to obtain a full backup. With dvd's I can get all the operating system's files onto a single disc and the write another one for the drive that contains most of my applications. -er

[djxcj]

I use a backup system that I've constructed over the years. It's only purpose is to save unrecoverable data. If I lose my main disk, I would have to rebuild the system, but I wouldn't lose any of my "unique" files. My backup system consists of a 4NT batch file, a directory/file list text file, the command line version of WinZip, and a Scheduled Task. My backup schedule is a full backup on Monday morning (early!) and an incremental backup all other days. The resultant zip files are saved onto a separate disk on the same machine. I also make a copy to a networked Win98 drive.Occasionally, I will burn a CD with a week's worth of backups for a semi-off-site storage, but don't do that on regular basis.Not the most pretty solution, but I have ultimate control over when, where and how.The "drive image" is an attractive option, but don't want to waste the necessary resources (software, hardware, etc.) to implement this.