Backing up your software media

[MtnMan]

Or is there a way you can mount ISOs?

Windows 10 will mount an ISO as a CD/DVD drive.

 

[Muse]

Which doesn't mean that you need to duplicate installation media if you want to install some ancient piece of software that came on disc. Hasn't THAT notion been disproved to you yet?

No it hasn't. What am I missing? My idea is that my ancient software that came on disc needs to be backed up in digital form to guard against the loss of the disc due to whatever (e.g. fire, theft, earthquake, disc becoming unusable due to breakage or coating failure, etc.).

 

[Carson Dyle]

No it hasn't. What am I missing? My idea is that my ancient software that came on disc needs to be backed up in digital form to guard against the loss of the disc due to whatever (e.g. fire, theft, earthquake, disc becoming unusable due to breakage or coating failure, etc.).

The point is that there's seldom, if ever, any need to duplicate old software to the same media that it came on. I have a 14 year old installer for Office 2003 where I just copied the setup files (probably from the CD) to my file server.

 

[Muse]

The point is that there's seldom, if ever, any need to duplicate old software to the same media that it came on. I have a 14 year old installer for Office 2003 where I just copied the setup files (probably from the CD) to my file server.

Yeah, I've done many installs doing just that. I think I'm going to make ISOs anyway, at least for some stuff. I have a Win7 64bit disk, for instance. Also a Win7 32 bit disk.

 

[mikeymikec]

Yeah, I've done many installs doing just that. I think I'm going to make ISOs anyway, at least for some stuff. I have a Win7 64bit disk, for instance. Also a Win7 32 bit disk.

I have ISOs of most modern Windows versions. I compressed the whole archive of ISOs a while ago, weighing in at 41.7GB

- edit - Something that just occurred to me about a post made earlier in this thread in which someone labelled the OP as a hoarder... wasn't there a poll recently that came in with the result that most voters have between 400-800GB of data?

 

[rh71]

I save installs in a folder right now but they are never run again even after years so I don't see the point especially because newer versions make them obsolete. There may be only a couple that need this.

It was a different story in the past where I'd have to reload the OS after 6-12 months. Now it's stable beyond years. Even the image I haven't had to reuse.

 

[mikeymikec]

I save installs in a folder right now but they are never run again even after years so I don't see the point especially because newer versions make them obsolete. There may be only a couple that need this.

I agree, up to a point. I don't keep Firefox installers any more, partly because new versions come out like UK weather changes, and partly because their FTP site has all the old versions to download, however I'm quite glad that I have an installer for WinRAR 4.2 (which doesn't have the ads).

LibreOffice versions were also problematic until they started adopting the "5.3.x branch is stable and 5.4 is the latest branch", because it used to be the case that a new version would have a show-stopping regression in.

 

[Muse]

I save installs in a folder right now but they are never run again even after years so I don't see the point especially because newer versions make them obsolete. There may be only a couple that need this.

It was a different story in the past where I'd have to reload the OS after 6-12 months. Now it's stable beyond years. Even the image I haven't had to reuse.

I've had instances where an "upgrade" to a program was inferior, for me anyway, and I went back to a version I'd downloaded previously. I have a downloads folder on my NAS where I keep all that stuff and from which I can install on all my Windows machines. There's tons of stuff there I'll never use but HD space is so cheap now, it hardly matters.

I'm running Windows 10 64bit on this laptop but figure go back to Windows 7 64bit sometime soon. I'll back up the current install first, but my hope is that going back to Win7 will stop an extremely annoying anomaly (I consider it that) in that a swipe across trackpad doesn't move the cursor but instead causes all my open apps to tile. I have to hit ESC or click the app I was using to get back to business. I've tried a number of things to stop it, I figure it's a Win10 feature, I just can't turn it off. People running Lenovo T61's at http://forum.thinkpads.com mostly say stay away from Windows 10, and they say it with obvious disdain and animosity for Microsoft. I seem OK with it (32bit) on one of my T60 laptops but on the T61, I'm going to have to either restore a Win7 image or install fresh. Well, I'll try it. I never had the problem when I was running Win7 64bit on this machine. It happens sometimes, not all the time, but very frequently. I just don't understand it.

 

[Ketchup]

With win 10, I find that there is even less need to back up the entire system. Important files on my systems are backed up to my file server periodically. The contents of my file server are backed up less periodically (those drives are stored elsewhere). If I need my Windows 10 install back, I just download the latest version from the MS website and go from there. Many of the games on the OS are from steam anyway, so all I have to do is install steam and tell it what drive to use for the games. Steam games (which I suppose means games in general) have gotten so huge I don't even back those up anymore. I can wait a few minutes for them to re-download.

I do still have a few games that came on a disk. They are all ISOs now. If I need to re-install the game, I just mount the ISO with a free program called Virtual Clone Drive.

 

[Kaido]

With win 10, I find that there is even less need to back up the entire system. Important files on my systems are backed up to my file server periodically. The contents of my file server are backed up less periodically (those drives are stored elsewhere). If I need my Windows 10 install back, I just download the latest version from the MS website and go from there. Many of the games on the OS are from steam anyway, so all I have to do is install steam and tell it what drive to use for the games. Steam games (which I suppose means games in general) have gotten so huge I don't even back those up anymore. I can wait a few minutes for them to re-download.

I do still have a few games that came on a disk. They are all ISOs now. If I need to re-install the game, I just mount the ISO with a free program called Virtual Clone Drive.

For simplicity, I just set up a lot of people with either Google Drive or Dropbox & tell them to keep all of their files in there (using 2FA). While there are a lot of things I don't like about Windows 10 (the auto-update system, in particular, although I understand & can appreciate why they do that, from a security perspective), the built-in factory-reset feature is excellent & it does a surprisingly great job at finding a full driver set for most reasonably modern computers, and if something like the boot drive dies, then a simple fresh install from a USB stick of Windows 10 works equally well (and auto-activates once online).

I'm the same way with games. I believe my entire PC gaming library now resides in Steam (finally broke down & paid for the the original Half-Life & other stuff I still had on CD a few Steam sales ago), and I've done all of the Nintendo Switch games through digital download. So convenient.