Backing up a PC

Factual Questions
1

I have an HP a6110n PC which I purchased about a year or so ago. I wanted to start running a regular backup but the backup is taking an extremely long time. I’m using the Windows Vista backup utility to try and run the backup to my DVD drive using DVD-RW disks.

When the backup starts, it asks for a disk and then proceeds to format the disk. The formatting takes around 15 minutes and then it takes over an hour before the backup requests the next disk.

I was 12 hours and 6 disks into the backup yesterday and it looked like it was only about halfway done. According to the stats on my drive, I’ve used approximately 120G of space.

I have a bunch of questions around this:

  1. Is there a way I can just backup my critical files? The files I really want saves total around 20G but I don’t know how to select just those to be written to DVD. Will a normal DVD Writer program be smart enough to ask for multiple disks?

  2. Is there a better backup program than the one shipped with Windows Vista?

  3. I know I can get an external drive and backup to that, but if there is a cheaper option I’d rather find another way.

  4. Is over an hour of write time and 15 minutes of format time reasonable for a DVD drive? That seems pretty long to me, but I’ve never dealt with DVD drives before.

Any help/advice is greatly appreciated!

Should a backup take this long? Should writing to the DVD take over an hour? Is there a better backup program I can use that will allow me to interrupt a full backup?

According to the HP website, the DVD Drive has the following specs:

16X DVD(+/-)R/RW 12X RAM (+/-)R DL LightScribe SATA drive

* Must use Double-Layer media discs in order to take advantage of the DL technology
* Must use LightScribe-enabled media discs and supporting software in order to take advantage of the LightScribe technology

Function Maximum speed
DVD-RAM Up to 12X
DVD-R DL Write Once Up to 8X
DVD+R DL Write Once Up to 8X
DVD+R Write Once Up to 16X
DVD+RW Rewritable Up to 8X
DVD-R Write Once Up to 16X
DVD-RW Rewritable Up to 6X
DVD ROM Read Up to 16X
CD-R Write Once Up to 40X
CD-RW Rewritable Up to 32X
CD-ROM Read Up to 40X

2

If you want a complete backup, go buy yourself an external USB HDD. Better, buy yourself two and rotate.

3

Dont bother with DVDs. Get an external HD and copy there. You can get a 500gig drive very cheaply nowdays.

Yes, vista has a backup agent installed by default. You can learn about it here.

4

I would highly recommend www.drivesnapshot.de.

This product will backup all your files, including system ones even while the computer is running.
You can restore a single file, or the full drive later on.
You can mount the backed up files as a drive and view it in My Computer.
It’s faster than Vista’s backup.
It does an incremental backup which only backs up changes hence they’re small.
It compresses the backup so it’s smaller.
It splits the backup into any size file for DVD or any other storage.
It also can skip certain unneeded files like the hibernation file or page file shrinking the backup even more.
Best of all, there are no installations, registry settings or files (plural). All that’s needed is a single 250kb (yes kb) exe file. It doesn’t put anything anywhere else on your machine.

No, I don’t work for them, it’s just one of the few products I’ve really been impressed with.

5

Have you considered online backups?
http://carbonite.com/ is probably just one such example.

6

DriveimageXML is a free alternative to other snapshop applications. It does full images, but for basic backups the built in program is more than enough. Heck, it uses VSS so it can backup open applications and files.