What is the BEST emergency backup method?

[Hooobi]

Well.... after countless hours screwing around with my system..... things are mainly working.

Now, I'm so paranoid about something going wrong that I'd like to create some kind of emergency rescue disks just in case the whole thing gets hosed again.

What is the best method of backing up (I have CDRW) that will allow the easiest recovery no matter how bad things get.

I'm running win2k and am not sure if I should use win2k or Norton Systemworks 2001 to create such disks, what settings I should use, or whether I should use some other technique.

All opinions appreciated....

 

[idNut]

Well are you talking files or boot up files? I'd suggest make an Emergency backup 3 1/2 diskette for the boot up files. Then make several CD's of your favorite files that you want and you want to make sure not to lose. I have six of those CD's packed full of files and they have saved me a lot of time.

 

[Miramonti]

Hopefully you've got your system files on C: and your program file installations on another or something like that.

Image your System partition with Ghost or Drive Image, which makes a complete partition copy, and compresses it to a single file (or multiple files if you save it to a cd and its larger than the cd space). I've "restored" images numerous times and its saved my butt bigtime.

I create images of my system and my program files partitions. This is almost a fullproof backup for when you can't boot.

As for backing up files daily, use backup software or do it manually, and copy relevant files to another harddrive.

 

[Hooobi]

Well.. that image thing sounds like a good idea... only problem is, I've partitioned my main drive into a 40gig and 120gig partition and I thought I'd put all my program files on the 40 gig one.

Guess I should have made a smaller partition?

 

[Miramonti]

Originally posted by: Hooobi
Well.. that image thing sounds like a good idea... only problem is, I've partitioned my main drive into a 40gig and 120gig partition and I thought I'd put all my program files on the 40 gig one. Guess I should have made a smaller partition?

Its definitely recommended (but not mandatory of course). The system files are the ones that are read most often by the hd, and thus being able to keep them all together at the beginning of the drive makes for more efficiency, and allows for efficient defragging also (so you don't have to defrag i.e. 40gb, putting extra unnecessary wear on the hd if you do it often.)

And of course it helps when imaging, because you can isolate it independently and restore it by overwriting just the system files, without overwriting other data/program files that aren't part of the system but are on the same partition.

To add to the daily backup thought, I do a daily backup of the "System State" (winXP), as well as my Favorites and my email files/folders. Restoring the System State should be the first step (if possible) of restoring some sort of unfixable corruption, and then restoring a partition image would be the next (or last) resort. Backing up the system state is better than Norton Utilities rescue diskettes, but not as fullproof as an image restoration. I use the scheduler for these backups too.

As for backing up over 100gb of other data, I have no idea except for another hard drive. I'm scared to buy something that big for this very reason.

 

[Hooobi]

Can you back up the system state in win2k?