Yet another "backing up data" dilemma

[SirFelixCat]

Alright, so I finally realized that I'm pretty much an idiot for not backing up anything up to this point. So....I went and bought a new Seagate 320Gig perpendicular HDD for backing up and figured, "ok, now I just need some disk image software and done". This is just my home computer with music, pictures, games etc.

Then I started reading and now I'm utterly confused. The best solution, or so it seems to me is to use a RAID 1 array (using 4 HDD's- 2 for my OS & apps ie. boot drive & 2 for my data). This is a $400 option which seems like a good solution, albeit a bit spendy.

Another solution I've been reading about is to use something like True Image w/ my new HDD in an external enclosure, partition it (one partition for my boot drive and one for my data drive), and periodically image both drives onto it. Also, I'm assuming that after you image onto the "backup" HDD, you disconnect it from your rig to prevent any power surge problems etc. I would only connect it to do a backup or to recover, correct?


Am I reading these correctly? I am 100% new to the whole backup thing and have no idea how it works, but I come to y'all for help once again.

Also, if the above solutions are incorrect or not ideal, please, show me the best/right solutions.

 

[CalvinHobbes]

Chances are, you don't need to create image your OS and your data drives for backup purposes. What I would suggest is getting 1 or 2 external drives that you use for backing up. Then find a backup application that you like.

Next figure out what you NEED to backup. Do a full backup and then do incremental backups on a daily, weekly or monthly basis.

You can image your OS partition for ease of restoring in case of a virus or just to go back to a clean install.

 

[MichaelD]

Hi,

To expand on what CalvinHobbes has said.

You're talking about two different things.

1. Backing up files
2. Imaging the whole hard drive/partition

For backing up files, you can do it manually, (copy paste) or you can use Windows FREE built in utility called NTBACKUP. Go to start/run type ntbackup. The wizard will walk you thru it; it's self explanatory. You can even run the backup job as a Scheduled Task and as long as the computer is running, the job will execute.

Now, to IMAGE the hard drive (or just the system partition) you will need 3rd party software such as Symantec Ghost or Acronis True Image.

Imaging your system partition is a very smart, time-saving idea.

To load Windows from scratch AND download ALL of the security updates and hotfixes will take you a minimum of three hours. You do that, take an image of the system partition.
Then, you can restore your system partition to a pristine state within about 15 minutes, whenever you feel like it.

Make sure your backups/images are on a physically separate hard drive, not just another partition on the same HD.

I keep My Documents and My Music on another HD. I manually backup my .pst file from Outlook every few days or so (I don't get much personal email...work is a diff story) and save it to another HD.

Good rule of thumb; don't store anything on the system partition. WHEN it gets hosed by a virus, worm or good old fashioned user-error, you lose nothing when you reimage it with your shiny new image you've been keeping on that separate hard drive.

 

[anthrax]

I think the simplest solution for you is to simple implement a software RAID 1 Mirror in windows.

1.) Enable RAID 1 support in Windows XP Professional (google this up, it requires modfiying 3 files)
2.) Install new HD into your computer.
2.) Go to computer managment / Disk managment, Covert your disk from basic disk to dynamic disks. (you can do this hot, and this will have no affect on your data.)
3.) Choose the volume you want to "mirror or backup". Them mirror it onto the second disk. The method is very flexible. You can mirror volumes on multiple drives on a larger drive. For example, if you have 2 200GB drives, you can mirror the data onto single 400GB driver...
4.) If you want to use if for backup. just pull the disk out and you will have a effective "snap shot" of your data. Infact, if you mirrored your boot volume. You will be able to boot even if your old disk dies.
5.) If you want raid protection. Just leave the mirrors implace.

Best of all, NO additional software has to be used and you won't be array won't be tired to a specific Motherboard or RAID card.

 

[Madwand1]

The RAID 1 suggestion, while OK, sounds like a lot of semi-risky fiddling when you don't know exactly what's going on. In addition, "RAID is not a backup". Ideally, you physically disconnect the systems so that there is no chance that user error or malware, etc. can corrupt your backup as well as your running image.

That said, I know that many people have learned how to use RAID 1 for this purpose, and it works for them. That's fine of course.

Consumer backup software isn't very expensive, and can give you features that ad hoc manual processes wouldn't. So I'd vote for the external drive approach here, and further suggest being careful with that drive so that it doesn't take too much physical and thermal abuse.

 

[Talcite]

Don't use True Image. I've tested it and I've had problems with it. It's incompatible with alot of systems, it gives a black screen after the bootloader starts. Acronis gives good customer support though, so if you want to try it out then go ahead. I'd say just go with norton ghost. That's probably your safest and most stable solution.

 

[mc866]

I've had great luck with Acronis true image versions 8 and 9 for imaging. I have had times where my system will pick up some virus or spyware and if I can't remove it with the usual methods I just reload the latest image. I try and do an image with a clean install, and then I also do one once a week for any other types of emergencies. I also agree that raid is not the correct way to go to secure data, it costs too much.

 

[bruceb]

I like Norton Ghost ... I have the version from Systemworks Pro 2003 ... works very wel
What I do, is every so often I manually copy my personal Data Files over to my backup drive
And once in a while, say every 3 months or so, or whenever a Major change has been made,
say adding a new Program or removing one or two, then I would do a Ghost Image again.

I for one, do not see the benefits of RAID ... it spreads your programs over more than one
drive, but it still really doesn't guarantee you won't lose anything if one or both drives fail

Network techs, always do an Image with Ghost or TruImage ... only way to be 100% safe

 

[MichaelD]

Originally posted by: bruceb

I for one, do not see the benefits of RAID ... it spreads your programs over more than one drive, but it still really doesn't guarantee you won't lose anything if one or both drives fail

You're speaking from an end-user POV, and that's OK.

For enterprise-level servers, corporate servers or any mission-critical data/apps, RAID is a way of life. More specifically, SCSI RAID.

There are many more RAID levels besides 0+1 discussed most frequently on this forum. The most popular by far (in the enterprise world) is RAID 5, which is striping with parity.

A minimum of 3 drives is needed. Simply; any two drives contain enough info to rebuild the 3-drive array. Expand that to 14 or more drives, and you've got one really fast, almost bulletproof storage arry.

Enterprise level SCSI RAID (and yes, SAS these days for those in the know reading this) controllers have the ability to have a hot spare (one or more) online. Hot spare = a drive that just sits there, waiting for another drive to fail. When that happens, that hot spare automatically becomes the replacement drive for the failed one. No reduction in array capacity, no loss of performance. Of course, you need to have spare drives on hand to replace the failed drive. At $500 a pop for large capacity SCSI drives, it's not for the small of wallet!

Indeed; when you're talking about transferring anywhere from 1-100 files, each anywhere from 1-20GB in size, all at the same time, a huge SCSI RAID array becomes most necessary!

That said, I use that stuff at work and could never afford it at home. The best I've done at home was a four-drive 0+1 15K rpm SCSI array. Awesome performance with redundancy. Worth the money for home use? Hell no.

These days, for home user RAID, a two drive SATA drive RAID 0 array is where it's at. Just make sure you have backups!!!

 

[SirFelixCat]

Thanks a ton for all of the info...I do think that getting image software is the way that I'm going to go.


-When I partition my new "backup/image" HDD (320Gig), I'm going to partition it so that my Raptor (76Gig) can fit in one partition and my other data HDD can use the rest...good idea?

-When I image my boot drive onto the backup drive, if my boot drive died, what exactly would I have to do so that my computer would be as if the boot drive was still working (ie, what would I need to do prior to the drive dying to ensure everything would run correctly as if nothing happened)?

-Making a boot CD...would I need to make one as opposed to booting up off of my "backup/image" HDD?


Sorry for all the dumb questions, just trying to get a handle on all of this before my drive gets here Friday so that I can hit the ground running.

Thanks again everyone.

 

[mc866]

The way Acronis works is you make a boot cd when you load the software, what you can do if you have issues is pop in the boot disk and restart.The boot disc loads and a GUI for Acronis comes up which allows you to do different tasks, you would choose restore image. You navigate to the image you want to restore and hit go. It usually takes about 15min for me, I have the 74gb raptor also, and you are done you reboot to windows. Pretty easy. Not sure about Ghost, never used it.

 

[bruceb]

With Ghost, you just either boot from the Ghost Boot Disk and Restore your image
(that's if your computer is totally wacky) .. or if the pc boots up Windows ok, but
has problems, you can launch Ghost from within Windows and select Restore
an Image .. Ghost then reboots into DOS Mode to run the Image ... Works very
well .. just read the instructions Very Carefully and make sure everything is set
properly ..... one of the most important options in Ghost is the -auto option which
"Automatically names spanned image files during creation. Using this switch avoids
the user prompt that asks for confirmation of the next destination location for the
remainder of the image file that is being loaded. This switch is the default behavior for Norton Ghost."

 

[Mark R]

The key thing to remember about RAID 1 (mirroring) is that RAID is not backup.

RAID is meant to keep you working, if a hard drive breaks, giving you time to find a new one. Great for servers which can't be shut down for days or hours at a time.

However, RAID does nothing to protect you against the most common causes of data loss or corruption (user error, malware/viruses, buggy software). If you accidentally format your RAID partition - it doesn't matter that it's RAIDed, it's still toast. If a virus deletes all your mp3s - RAID won't help - they'll be gone from both drives.

The ideal solution for a home user is to get an external drive and periodically make images, or copy folders/files to it. Keep the external drive switched off when you're not using it, and you massively reduce the chances of virus or user-error damage.

 

[SirFelixCat]

Originally posted by: Mark R
The key thing to remember about RAID 1 (mirroring) is that RAID is not backup.

RAID is meant to keep you working, if a hard drive breaks, giving you time to find a new one. Great for servers which can't be shut down for days or hours at a time.

However, RAID does nothing to protect you against the most common causes of data loss or corruption (user error, malware/viruses, buggy software). If you accidentally format your RAID partition - it doesn't matter that it's RAIDed, it's still toast. If a virus deletes all your mp3s - RAID won't help - they'll be gone from both drives.

The ideal solution for a home user is to get an external drive and periodically make images, or copy folders/files to it. Keep the external drive switched off when you're not using it, and you massively reduce the chances of virus or user-error damage.

In a nutshell, this is the info that I was really searching for in my first post. Many thanks.

So, buying an internal HDD (w/ an external enclosure) and only hooking it up to backup/create images is the best way to go then?

Many thanks all and I'm smarter for it. You guys kick butt

 

[Markbnj]

I guess you can fool around with RAID if you want to. For backup purposes I just run XP's backup utility every morning at 4 AM and backup my complete system drive and data drive to a seperate disk. It takes two hours. I also schedule a system restore point just before the backup, so I figure I am pretty much covered.