Ideal Backup Solution

[KurtD]

I have spent my last frustrating weekend restoring windows! What is the ideal back-up hardware? I see 3 options for my PC, none of which I currently have:
- Tape
- CD-RW
- Zip/Orb/LS-120

I want to be able to quickly restore 2 critical applications (Quickbooks + Quicken) plus Windows and lots of other typical stuff for a mixed-use PC (entertainment, games, utilities, MS Office, etc....). I currently back-up my Quickbooks, Quicken and document data to a different hard drive and also keep a copy on my laptop (my data is ok). The issue isn't how, but how LONG it takes to restore my system after a crash! This is the third time Windows or one of the brilliant applications I loaded or un-installed hosed my system (in one case it was my fault). I have Norton Systemworks 2.0 and it has some functionality in this area as well, but it got hosed with everything else this time!. Again, ideally I would like to be able to simply restore windows quickly. I don't mind re-installing the applications - that doesn't take as long. But God, I hate loading, rebooting, loading, rebooting, driver after driver after.... You get the picture.

I am leaning towards the CD-RW because of the multitude of other uses I can imagine for it, but worry it won't be flexible enough if I have to restore the system without access to Windows. Opinions, Comments?

Thanks,
Kurt

 

[Vegito]

if you use tape, you can't restore with install windows and tape drive software also.

If you use ghost to make a image and burn it into a CD once a while and use tape to back up increments, it'll be easier..

ie. Full image on CD and data files on tape so you can restore a working imaging and restore the data files off the tape once your windows is back up.

how much space are you looking to backup

 

[mitso]

i use the software that came with the hard drives to "copy entire partition"
from the "c" drive to the "d" drive. works great, and the "d" drive is bootable. it can even copy a partition on one drive to another partition on the same drive. i can also defrag without having the drive active - much much faster that way. ghost works for a backup copy but noway near as fast.

 

[samgau]

Go for Norton Ghost...the image you create can be restored really fast... around 4 mins here for a PIII 800 dell, win98 plus Office/netscape/some misc apps, from a burnt cd.. about 850 MB of data compressed to about 500 or so MB.. ghost has a compression options so it fits on a cd.. only drawback, you need a second HD to store the ghost image as you create it before you burn it... i'm not 100% sure about the last fact, cause ghost can work with multiple partitions... i just have not tried to ghost one partition to another.. i may just try i a little later...

hope that helps

sam

 

[KurtD]

Sorry, I left off relevant System Specs. I have a 13GB and 5GB hard drive. The 13 GB with windows and Apps and the 5GB with backups and Falcon 4.0. Both drives end-up about 1/2 full. I think purchasing another (large - 40GB) hard drive and making two bootable partitions - one to keep my downloads, games and other junk (unstable stuff) and the other to run Quicken and Quickbooks, may be my plan. I can then use the 13 GB drive to "ghost" the different partitions and move them to CD (if I'm understanding how that works) and keep incremental back-ups of the data on the other HD or CD or laptop.

I will be building a new system soon and can use the 5GB drive in that, buy a bigger one for my purposes and STILL get the CDRW! I wonder if that logic works with my wife - or maybe she won't care since my use of "colorful" language will be diminished!

Asus A7V & Tbird 750
128mb PC-133
SBLive Platinum
Voodoo3 3500
Speedstream PCI DSL modem

 

[Rigoletto]

I have myself been wrestling with the problem of backups today.
I think that buying an extra hard drive will probably be excessive.
You don't mention how much you will be willing to pay. But if you are ready to buy an extra HD it must be a lot, so why consider CDRW?
CDRW is horrible as the kind of complete backup you would like. I only use it for key files- my pics, docs, favourites, emails etc. CDRW is dreadfully slow with multiple files and directories, it's horrible unless you can backup whilst not at the computer. But then you couldn't back up more than 540Mb at a time, which is not what you're after.

If you want to know what I use, then it's WinME's system restore and the microsoft backup 2000. You can set the latter to backup specific files at intervals on its own. It also compresses the data very well into a single file. System Restore is especially handy for rolling back past rogue installations and configuration problems- it really works, I admit I was surprised, it's a hell of a lot better than reinstalling windows (that old hack).
If speed is really of the essence but you want to save money on another drive then with Norton system commander (which I got on a coverdisk) you can have multiple operating systems- even two windows 95 for instance- and the ones that aren't active are hidden from windows and its tampering.
Most of all with backups, make sure you know which files count. Like your internet favourites is one lot you might overlook but when you lose it you hop mad.

 

[Jingle]

Answer: a big hard drive! It's the cheapest, fastest, most reliable way to go.

I studied the problem for some time before I found my solution to backing up my 2 computers. I equipped both with removable drive trays for about $15 each and have a $100 Western Digital 45GB hard drive in a tray that I keep locked in my safe when it's not in use (actually, the 45GB is my second backup drive after I outgrew my 10GB).

The backup hard drive has 2 partitions. The first is only big enough to hold Windows. The remainder is for backups. To backup, I set the BIOS to boot from the backup drive, then create a folder named for the partition and date I'm backing up. Then I select everything in the partition to be backed up (all files shown, naturally) and copy to the folder on the backup drive.

Restoring is simply formatting the drive partition to be restored and reversing the process; copy the contents of the folder from the backup drive to the partition to be restored and it runs without a hitch. No frogging around, fancy software, etc. And I've done it many times in Windows 3.1, 95, 98 and 98SE.

However ... doesn't work with Windows 2000 ... at least not without some added operations. With W2K, you have to set up the pagefile then get inside the registry and change the partition definitions before it will boot ... not exactly fun stuff. Bottom line: this system only works well with W2K using Ghost or some other third party software I have yet to verify.

Jingles