Teach me about backing up my system

In My Humble Opinion
1

OK, this is something I really should know more about, but I’ll be honest: I’ve never fully backed up any of my computers before. In the past, I’ve just copied whatever files I found most irreplaceable, reformatted my machine and hoped I hadn’t forgotten to save something.

Not exactly the most intelligent method, I’m sure. So now, I’d like to do a proper back up in preparation for a reformat. Despite trying to be careful, my machine isn’t running at its peak; despite frequent Spyware scans and virus scans, I get mysterious applications popping up, frequent system freezes, and just a general sense of ill health of my computer. Plus, I think the system is just a little bloated, and some programs fail to uninstall properly.

Anyway, the point is, I’m going to reformat, but there’s a lot of stuff that I don’t want to lose that I’m unsure I could properly save to DVD without missing some crucial folder. Things like saved Sims 2 games, or downloaded programs that I still need, my Napster collection, etc.

Here’s where my ignorance comes in: I have no idea how backing up my PC actually works. Does it just make an identical copy of my drive as it is now? Can I select which directories I want backed up, and selectively re-load them as needed?

Secondly, I am looking for recommendations for shareware/freeware/open source backup programs. Most of the time, I’ll just go searching around and pick a program that looks good to me, but with something as critical as a functioning backup, I don’t want to take chances on some shabby program.

Advice?

2

The best way to do this by far is with an external hard drive. Decent sized ones (like 120GB) are available at www.newegg.com for less than $100. You can make a full copy of your hard drive and then have have backup software keep current backups for you all the time through incremental backups.

You can piece this together with DVD’s but each DVD is only a small fraction of the size of an external hard drive and you have to keep loading the media yourself.

3

I’ve have to agree with Shagnasty on this one, getting a second hard drive (an internal or an external USB 2.0/firewire, but be certain your computer is capable of usb 2.0 speeds) is the best plan for backing up your data. Although some things are easier backed up on dvd (like some video/music collection, old e-mails, pictures), it can make your life a lot easier to just back up everything in one go. The best idea is just to get a drive equal or larger to your current drive.

Back to your other questions though, most backup software can back up everything or you can select items. In most cases though, you will probably be backing up your data (music, pictures, videos, video game settings/saves, what not) because with a clean windows install, your old software will probably not function correctly without reinstalling it on the “clean” windows install. Having said that, you will want to back up everything from your old drive, to be certain you don’t miss or forget about any files. Generally speaking, back up software either makes a huge file that you can access from the backup software and “restore” whatever you want, OR it clones the entire drive and in that situation, if something were to happen, you could simply set your second drive as the “master” and switch the cables, and you would have your old working windows install back. You would also be able to access this “clone” drive normally from your fresh windows install, assuming that second drive is set to “slave” and is plugged incorrectly.

Sorry that i can’t give you specific back-up software, there is a myriad available, just look for relevant reviews on software that is updated frequently.

4

I am a Retrospect Express user, both on Mac and Windows platforms (although I suppose my Mac centrality shows up in my choice of products; Retrospect is traditionally ubiquitous at Mac-centric shops).

With an (initially) empty spare hard drive attached, you set up a script to Duplicate your selected volume to the empty spare on a regular basis (e.g., every morning at 3 AM).

The advantage of “Duplicate” is that you can boot from the backup, or hook the backup drive to a different computer and access all the data files without needing additional software of any sort. (Doesn’t even need to be running the same operating system).

If your primary hard disk fails, you just buy a new disk, pop it into the internal bay, boot from the backup, format the new disk, then run Retrospect to reverse-backup the backup onto the new media. As close to painless as you can get.

Also, if and when your existing computer croaks (motherboard goes up in a puff of smoke, let’s say), you shell out for a new computer then hook up your backup disk and there’s all your data files at a minimum; depending on your operating system (and in some cases the extent to which the new hardware is closely kin to the old dead hardware), you can also once again just boot from the backup volume and run “Duplicate” and a little while later your new computer is essentially your old computer in a new skin: same apps, same prefs, same documents, same everything.

If, once again, your operating system supports it, you can instead do a fresh install of the latest OS to the new hard drive with the backup drive attached and a friendly wizard should pop up and ask you if you want to transfer all your old documents, applications, settings, and whatnot from the attached volume, and this way you get the best of both worlds (fresh new OS install but all your old apps, documents, account settings, etc, are imported and available to you on first boot). OS X does this, don’t know about other operating systems.

5

Thanks for the input, everyone. I’ll take a look into picking up an external harddrive. I’m planning on moving from a laptop to a desktop shortly, might as well add a hd to my purchase so I can keep the new machine properly backed up.

Which leads me to one last question: can I use one external drive to back up two separate machines?

6

You can use one external drive and partition it and back up one machine to partition A and the other macine to partition B, and each partition’s backup will be independently bootable.

If you do not care about bootability of your backups, you can simply create a folder at the root, e.g., “Desktop Computer” & “Laptop Computer” and back up each computer to the specified folder.