I’ve got two hard drives. Everytime I upgrade my PC with a new larger drive, the old drive gets moved to the secondary slot.
I can use batch files written around “xcopy” to semi-automatically copy my documents, etc over to it.
I also burn the occaisional CD.
welby
Please give more detail as to how you “ghost” your Harddrive into CDs. I would like to learn how to do that.
I go to the back of the system, and move the desk–
Oh, you mean the info inside
I do a sort of asymmetric RAID.
I hook my computer up to an engraving machine, and have it engrave the binary files onto stainless steel plates. It takes a long time, and the plates are heavy, but that is one backup that should last for awhile.
Thanks in part to this thread I did a more thorough backup tonight.
I finally learned how to back up OS X’s Mail. It’s sinfully easy—just back up one folder and you’re all set! Same with MS’s Entourage. I can’t believe I hadn’t backed up any email in over 6 months! Sheesh!
I have been better about backing up data files, though, (mostly my web pages and photo scans) and I did that again tonight. I just got a new scanner (like about 2 weeks ago) and in that time I have generated about 4.5 GB (yes, GB) of files! I have the new and fabulous Epson Perfection 3200 scanner, and it will scan at 3200 dpi. All my neg and slides scans are measuring in at about 40 MB in size each.
I have already scanned quite a few pictures, and then edited them and saved the edits as new files, so you do the math. (I also am a prolific photographer, so I hope to scan in a lot of my own stuff, plus I want to archive my late father’s slides, so I see that all of this will really eat up hard drive and CDRs!) Fortunately I have tons of hard drive space (160 total) and an 80 GB external drive, but still! I will really have to keep up on my backups and maybe even consider getting another hard drive (external, probably) to deal with all the photos I want to scan!
Is it possible to have two mounted hard disk and use Norton’s Ghost or some hard-disk copying software to backup one hard disk to the other?
Or even to DVD?
Monthly: Boot to alternative OS on second hard drive. Ghost primary drive, copy non-OS files on second hard drive.
Weekly: Copy document folder to second hard drive, copy document folder to HDD on other computer over network.
I only worry about quicken. My home PC has that, email (which I don’t care about) and saved PC games (don’t care about). I back up the Quicken files to another PC in the house.
Exactly, and that is what I was describing earlier in this thread. I use PowerQuest’s Disk Image software, but I believe Ghost is functionally equivalent.
Not possible while Windows is running AFAIK, but booting to DOS from a floppy allows copying of one or more HD partitions to another drive of equal or greater size. You are making an exact image copy, not file by file copy, so it not only goes much faster, but preserves track & sector numbers so critical to hidden and special files.
The best of all methods is to get three identical drives, mount each in a “mobile rack” and put two docking (1/2 of each mobile rack mount) stations in the computer. Then, with power off, you can plug in any two of the three units from the front of the computer.
Do an image copy of one drive to the other. Switch off the computer and remove one drive; configure jumpers if necessary, and continue computing with one drive in the system.
If anything goes wrong, you can unplug the active drive and plug in one of the backup units (with the power off) and go back in time.
The reason I suggest using 3 drives (or more) is so you rotate backups. When you are ready to do another backup, pick the oldest of the 2 unused drives, make the copy, then that one becomes the new, active one. This provides insurance against accidentally copying the wrong drive (!), and provides a unit for off-premises storage.
The image backup to DVD is a great idea, but, unlike the multiple HD scheme, wouldn’t allow you to boot from the DVD and run your system from there. At least not until R/W DVDs are developed that function just like magnetic HDs.
You will NOT be dissapointed with a DLT system. I myself have an 80gig DLT standalone. I backed up 35gig in like 2 1/2 hours. Not too shabby. This stuff is expensive, but I get a deal at work because they replace the media so often, they practically give away tapes that have been used less than three times! SCORE!
I put my stories and poetry on floppies. None of my email is that earthshaking. And I don’t care all that much about my high scores in Solitaire and Minesweeper. I don’t use my computer for any financial stuff, so really, there’s nothing to back up. I’m a pretty low-end user.
“Is it possible to have two mounted hard disk and use Norton’s Ghost or some hard-disk copying software to backup one hard disk to the other?”
Sounds like a baby-Raid configuration.
Yeah, but HDs come with software to do a perfect HD to HD copy, but like sheep clones, they don’t always copy everything in my experience. Also, copying an active OS isn’t usually allowed because files are in use.
Three sets of rotating magneto-optic disks for incremental backups every five days (with one set stored in my garage) + weekly incremental backups to hard drives (thence to segmenting and burning to CDRs) + monthly cloning to hard drives. This is just for my home system where all I have is e-mail, quicken-esque data and porn.
This came up at work a few days ago, and there seem to be two types of people: those who have byzantine and rigorous backup procedures and those who just don’t get it. At the end of our lab shifts, there’s a guy who backs up his software to the local hard drive, the server, the server again (in a different location), and someone else’s local hard drive on the network (CDR’s & hand-carried magnetic media are not allowed in our area). Half of the crew look at him like he’s nuts and the rest of us look at him and say, “there’s a good story behind that.”
FairyChatMom: Floppies bad. Optical (CDR or M-O) good. IMO here’s the list of backup media, in decreasing order of reliability:
DreadCthulhu’s method. I’m embarrassed that I don’t already have that in place.
Magneto-optic (amorphous silicon instead of chemical dyes)
CD-R (fairly stable chemical dyes)
DVD-R
CD-RW (less stable dyes)
DVD-RW
DLT (also convenient, but less stable organics than the disks listed above, plus magnetic field susceptibility and bleed-through)
Hard drives (also convenient with quick recovery; but susceptible to magnetic fields and physical shock)
Carefully arranged arrays of belly button lint
Floppies
Why do I put floppies at the bottom of the list? Variable production quality, mechanical complexity (even as compared to hard drives – integrated over the size of your backup, you’re comparing the aggregate reliability of 50-200 floppies versus one hard drive), sucsceptibility to temperature, magnetic fields and dust, and (the big one) you won’t be able to find a drive to pop your floppies within in a couple of years even as your current floppy drive is filling up with shmutz. Contrast that with belly button lint, for which you’ll always find a reliable supplier.
Long ago I worked at JPL and we were having severe problems with hundreds of data tapes from the sixties that were both brittle and rotting. Note an interesting factoid that many people don’t seem to know: all (?) plastic is derived from organic materials (i.e., petrochemicals), so somewhere out there, there’s a fungus or bacteria or something that would like to dine on said material.
Sorry to throw this out without a cite, but there’s some company that takes data sets, convolves them into two-dimensional error-corrected patterns and prints the patterns on acid-free paper using either very stable chemical dyes or india ink. Of course, then you have the silverfish problem. If that were made more practical and the paper were stored correctly, it might compete with the CD/DVDRs. Ironic that originals of The Canterbury Tales are readable whereas some Apollo, Gemini & Pioneer data is gone forever.
Got a 5 machine fast ethernet LAN at home, so I just copy stuff back and forth between computers.
I figure 5 computers provides adequate backup, unless the house burns down or something.
I can compress all my important files into a self-exctracting file about 5 megabytes or so. Then I transfer it to my Yahoo! Briefcase. I keep 3 or 4 backups there.
I can compress all my important files into a self-extracting file about 5 megabytes or so. Then I transfer it to my Yahoo! Briefcase. I keep 3 or 4 backups there.
This way, not only are my files backed up offsite and safe, and I can access them anywhere with an internet connection.
M<F4@=&AA;B!A('1E<W0@9FEL92!C<F5A=&5D(‘1O(’!R;W9I9&4@9F]D9&5R
M(&9O<B!T:&4@=F%R:6]U<R!E;F-O9&EN9R!S8VAE;65S+B!)9B!Y;W4@87)E
M('5S:6YG(&ET('1O('1E<W0L(&-O;F=R871U;&%T:6]N<R!O;B!Y;W5R(&%G
M:6QI='D@:6X@8W5T=&EN9RP@<&%S=&EN9RP@<V%V:6YG+"!A;F0@9&5C;
That may well be, but I have an ancient, borderline decrepit 200 MHz computer with a whopping 64M of RAM. I’m pretty much limited to floppies until I can afford a new toy.
I’ve got a jungsoft nexdisk thumb drive that I back up everything to as I use a file and carry around with me so I can use my files on any computer with USB. The one I currently use is 128MB and I’m about to buy a new one 256 or bigger with the new security software (so no one can access my files except me.) I also back up to CDs on a weekly basis (2 cds) and I keep one in the trunk of my car and one in the garage shed area which is separate from the house. My PC and my laptop are backed up to each other via the thumb drive.
This may seem like overkill but I have had 4 hard drives fail on me and I learned early that I don’t like reconstructing massive amounts of work.
Just a warning to all of you who use Floppy disks for backups - DON’T. Floppy disks have incredibly high fail rates. If your sole copy of any important files are on floppy disks, it is very likely that when you need them, it will CRC error. Consider investing in a different format.