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Backup Advice

S

SkyDiver

Senior member
Hi Everybody,
I guess I'm one of those rare home users who wants to back up my entire system. (If there were more of us, the market would have better products). I have a Sony SuperStation 10 GB unit which does not work now that I've upgraded to WinXP.

What is the best backup hardware/software solution at a reasonable price? Ideally, I put one or two media in the unit and it backs up all 20 GBs on my system.

Thanks.
 
You could sit and burn cds all day long if you really wanted to but that would take forever. An option I prefer myself is just using like a huge 5400 hard drive, back up your data, and then remove the drive from the system and store in a safe place.
 
I do they about the same as AMDskip but I leave the drives in (to lazy to take them out) 🙂


Ausm
 
Thanks for the replies, guys. I think the fact that I got only two replies illustrates that not too many people do full system backups anymore.
 
I burn content files to CDR, mostly source code and an occaisional "gaming" CD of hints / patches / savegames. For OS backup I just use Drive Image to create an image of C: (which has the core system but not game installs or data) on another patition.

For hard drive failure it's easier for me to just do a clean install when the drive finally fails than to spend time every week / whatever doing a full drive backup. By then I might be upgrading anyway which often makes an OS backup useless.

If you must do full-OS backup, using a second hard drive in a holder (or two drives for cycling between them) is a pretty cost-effective method now that 20-30 GB drives are under $75. With removable trays you're looking at maybe $200 for a 2-"tape" 20 GB backup method that transfers data at 30+ MB/sec. Use a boot diskette and Drive Image or Ghost as your backup software.
 
I think the reason few do so is partly because there aren't any good cheap backup solutions. Even the lowest cost tape backup ($/GB) is more expensive than just buying hard drives unless you've got hundreds and hundreds of gigs you gotta back up. I just buy 5400RPM drives and back up that way. I see that a lot of other people on this thread do the same thing. I used to use cdrws for backup but that was a huge pain in the ass. Using backup exec, if one of the cd-rw failed for whatever reason, you'd have to start the entire backup job over again!
 
Thanks for the feedback. Looks like a hard drive or two is the way to go.

DaveSimmons: I haven't read up lately on Drive Image-type products. Is this a compressed "bit-for-bit" copy of your HD? Also, when you talk about holders and removeable trays, is this something that plugs into the IDE cable and power cable that you can then simply plug the HD into?

Thanks
 
I use a Seagate Barracuda IV 80GB in an external Firewire enclosure for backups. I just did a full backup of my D drive a few days ago. It took less than an hour to backup 17.5GB.

My father likes to use mirroring RAID but I don't think it is a good idea because a virus can still wipe it out.
 
I use a HD to do my backups, and use the backup program that comes with XP. It's fast and reliable. USING the ASR option gives you a way of recovering the entire system.

The backup drive is mounted in one of the removable tray jobs. The theory is that I do backups, park the drive on the shelf. Should someone steal my computer, they haven't gotten the data that's taken me years to accumulate.

 
I just use another hd, mirror it, and then break the mirror after it's done building. Too lazy to do the drag and drop. 😀
 
Is there any good backup software to back up to an external USB or firewire hard drive? I have a 60GB and 80GB USB2 and FireWire (respectively) that I like to use, but just copying files over to them really is cumbersome, I'd rather use some sort of backup program. Unfortunately, there really aren't any that work that well (including the one which came with my 60GB drive, which won't even recognize the drive!!!)
 
Is there any good backup software to back up to an external USB or firewire hard drive
Click to expand...
Well, Veritas Backup Exec is the pre-emminent backup software product. But it's a little excessive for what you want to do. You could just use the backup software that comes with windows. Or you could use Winrar. Winrar would give you the best compression. There are quite a few shareware backup programs out there too. I'm sorry but I'm not very familiar with any product in particular. There are also some products that do nothing but just copy files.
 
Does anybody know if Norton Ghost or Drive Image will backup to HD's on Firewire or USB connections? I haven't bought either yet, but it seems like that may be the best way to go.
 
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