COMPETITION: BEST BACKUP SOLUTION

[noisedude]

Ok then here's the deal...hardly any of us back up as much as we should but in these heady days of viruses and high-speed hard disks we should be prepared for the worst!

SO....what is your backup system? The best gets to get implemented on my very own machine to keep me safe from all the nasty people out there.

The criteria are:
- do you have a recent backup of documents, locally stored email, saved games etc?
- what happens if you lose your OS altogether? Do you start from scratch or have you a failsafe mechanism?
- what media do you use (DVD, CD, second or third HDD etc etc)?
- finally - is it cheap? If you've seen my other thread you'll know I've gotta go buy a new copy of XP Pro so this has gotta be a good combination of cheapness and convenience.

Post away...like I say, I need the help!

[Roy]

I use a second, identical HDD. It's important to leave it disconnected except when cloning the primary drive ... some viruses can migrate and wipe out the backup too.

[dustyrun]

Quick explanation:

I run xp pro on my "c" drive only. another operating system on "d"
"e" drive is for applications. "F" =data. "g"= games. 120 gigs

"H"= iso's and music/movies. 120 gig

"I'= cache and images. 40 gig

All on Promise Fastraks 100 Ide card.

I run Norton Ghost 2004 pro every month and save to 1: "I" drive AND 2: DVD. That way if I can not reach my "I" drive, I can use the burnt dvd.

With ghost 2004 pro you can span cd's or dvd's if needed.

Rick

[John Prophet]

Hmmm. Id say a RAID 1 setup for starters. That takes care of drive failure worries.

Then make a norton ghost copy of the whole system....(and make one occasionally such as when you do some windows update patches etc...or do on a schedule once a month maybe.)

Than an external hard drive with a batch file written to automatically back up the pertinent files.

Or, best of all probably...if you have two comps...have each one back up the pertinant stuff to each other..again with a self executing batch file.

If you are into tape drives you have too much money and you need to send me some of it!



JP

[noisedude]

Alright that's a good start but here's the problems so far:

dustyrun, if you can't reach your I drive what use is the DVD because you're gonna have to install an OS on a fresh disk just to get access to your stuff on DVD aren't you? Or have I got that all wrong?

John Prophet don't worry I have no money for tape drives...but is the RAID not an expensive waste cos if you have a complete system backup you surely want that offline the rest of the time in case you get a virus etc.?

I got ghost 2002 with my new mobo, is that any good? last time i tried a copy of ghost it was command line only is that still the case? and if so how do i make a DOS boot disk in XP?

[shahani]

External 120GB USB 2 drive with two partitions. Retrospect 6.5 backs up everthing daily automatically. Full back up first time. Incremental thereafter.

I imaged my C drive with all applications after applying all tweaks and put it on the external so I can restore everything in like 30 minutes.

[John Prophet]

Well..getting or not getting a virus is another story.

But RAID is cool because hard drives like to buggar up when you least expect them to...and it protects you in case you arent SUPER diligent to do backups everyday.

As for ghost..no its not command line now. You simply install it on the comp....then there is a simple wizard to run to make the boot floppy. Very easy to use. Ghost rocks!

JP

[noisedude]

cool. i'll give my bundled copy of ghost a go and if i fancy i newer one i'll see what i can afford. don't think i'll use RAID cos i tend to pick up viruses because my dopey housemates can't seem to understand simple things like don't open attachments when you don't recognise the sender

will get a second hard disk though, could just disable it in the BIOS but it might be quite nice to get an external one now i finally got usb 2.0.....

[wju425]

I used Drive Image to create a recovery disk. I did it after I reformatted the drive, installed the OS and all the drivers and essential files like AVG, ZoneAlarm, Acrobat, dialup, etc. It all fit on one cd.

Takes less than five minutes to reinstall everything.

\o/ Billy

[dustyrun]

noisedude,
when using ghost , you make a "ghost boot disk". with this you restart or start your computer with it. it will ask you what you want to do. select image to partition. Then for the image use the one on the hard drive or the dvd. This is the basic way it works.

Just read your previous reply. You would have to use cd's for the image. 2002 supports spanning cd's in case your data will NOT fit on just one. Then it will work the same as above.

Rick

NOTE: my mistake.. I have ghost 2003.