Best way to backup entire partition ???

[Mrburns2007]

I'm looking for program that will save an entire partition on cd-r's and create just a directory on the hard drive that I can search. When I find the document in the directory I want to restore it from a single cd-r, like insert disk #5 and it will restore the file.

Any program close to that ???


BTW: I tried this with Drive Image 2002 but it continuly ask for every single cd-r that the image is spanned over repeatedly and it just takes to long to recovery one file.

 

[gaidin123]

Your main options are Partimage (http://www.partimage.org) and Symantec's Ghost with Ghost Explorer.

Neither lets you insert a certain CD and pull a single file off of it that I know of though Partimage *may* do it if you know which CD a certain file is on.

Basically with Ghost Explorer you can open up any compressed Ghost image, even if it's spanned on multiple CDs (I think, it may need to create the single image from all the parts first though), and navigate through your imaged partition(s) and pull single files out of the Ghost image. It does work as I've done that once before to get a config file I lost and only had on a Ghost.

With Partimage is currently does not fully support NTFS though the program is completely open source so it's easy enough to experiment with.

Gaidin

 

[Mrburns2007]

anybody else a Ghost user, I would like to hear more from somebody that uses Ghost a lot and Ghost explorer. Does it need to put the entire image back together to extract one file ???


The partition is 15 gigs so it's going to take at least 10-12 cd-rs, I would hate to have to rifle through 12 cd-rs to extract one file.

 

[MrMilney]

I'm a Ghost user who has backed up a 12GB partition to 11 CDs. Ghost is a great app for what it does but Ghost Explorer is a PITA! The only way I have found to make Ghost Explorer really usable is to copy the contents of the CDs to my hard drive and view them from there. I tried using Ghost Explorer to view the backed up files off the CDs and gave up after 15 or 20 minutes of swapping.

 

[Mrburns2007]

Originally posted by: MrMilney
I'm a Ghost user who has backed up a 12GB partition to 11 CDs. Ghost is a great app for what it does but Ghost Explorer is a PITA! The only way I have found to make Ghost Explorer really usable is to copy the contents of the CDs to my hard drive and view them from there. I tried using Ghost Explorer to view the backed up files off the CDs and gave up after 15 or 20 minutes of swapping.

Thanks...won't bother with Ghost then.....I guest I need a more sophisticated image utility.

 

[MrMilney]

Take a look at this and see if it does what you need.

 

[MrMilney]

Or how about this freeware one: link

A program designed to catalog the files on CD-Rs. A search can be initiated on the database just like the Windows Find feature. Find the disc that a particular file is on with this utility. Can also catalog floppies, Zip disks, other removable media, and even hard drives. Available as freeware. Send me feedback or recommendations on adding a feature.

 

[Mrburns2007]

MrMilney:

I was using nero and making indivdual data disc and then using supercat 4.2 to catalog what is on each disc. I would then use supercat 4.2 to search for the file and had number my cd-r's starting at 1 through 38 so far. This is tedious and I know I need to backup the entire partition so I was looking for an app that can do it all.

 

[gaidin123]

If it's going to take that many separate CDRs, why not just buy a cheapo 20GB hard drive and stick the image onto that? If you're worried about reliability and longetivity buy an IDE RAID card and mirror a couple 20GB drives.

It sounds like you need to recover single files on a pretty regular basis and recovering/backing up to multiple CDs is just not a good solution. Either go for a few backup hard drives or get a high capacity tape drive...

Gaidin

 

[Doh!]

NTI Backup Now can save the image of a partition & allows you to retrieve a single file. It ain't free though....

 

[Mrburns2007]

Originally posted by: Doh!
NTI Backup Now can save the image of a partition & allows you to retrieve a single file. It ain't free though....

I tried that a few times before and agian three days ago but the damn thing always locks up besides being slow as hell.