Shadow, Backup, Ghost etc.

[leehack]

As some of you recently had great amusement in my system capitulation, i thought i'd investigate a better solution than i currently have.

Currently i have everything i do on the PC kept in My Documents, once every 2 or 3 days, i copy the contents of My Documents over to my external 250gb hard drive. This means that i don't lose anything important when restoring apart from time. Its a painstaking process reinstalling software and things like the 250 sites i had in my favourites have gone forever and i've lost all recent email, but in reality i've lost nothing critical, so in essence my procedure was ok, but not great.

My desktop has a single 80GB hard drive, i notice that xp pro has a backup facility, which will take about 2.5 hours on my system, i could do this to the external drive, but it has to be done manually and i'd like something done daily automatically.

I'm not averse to having a second hard drive, what i really want is something that i say restore from here if i have a failure. Windows is asking to update things on my pc at the moment and i wont let it until i have something reliable in place as it appears that this was what caused my recent trash. I ended up having to format the drive and start from scratch.

Rather than digging out CD's and log ins and passwords etc. i want a complete copy of what i have on the day it backs up. A snapshot of the whole of my system including OS, software and files is what i am after. Something that when this happens again, i say ok format the disk and install this from here and i then go to bed rather than spend 12 hours rebuilding it back to former state.

My biggest loss is my favourites, these could have been easily backed up had i thought about them, i think i will create a web page on my own site with these now instead as that gives you a backup naturally.

I understand that there will be solutions not really viable for me, as i want to work with what i have now + some software and a possible extra HD. My current system is a dual core 80GB XP Pro. Anyone care to share what they do or offer any advice?

Any recommendations greatly appreciated.

Cheers

[Cheapprices4u]

im sure it was norman who suggested

http://www.acronis.com/

i have downloaded it and i am currently settign it up, seems to be tickign all the boxes so far

hope it helps

[Duncan Rounding]

I have used Ghost (v8 floppy version) for years until recently, I now use Acronis which does an online backup. I did try the later versions of Ghost which supposedly also do online backups but after two bluescreens on restoring that went by the way very quickly.

With Acronis I schedule weekly full backups and daily differential backups onto a seperate internal drive to happen overnight. I then copy the backups onto an external firewire 800 raid drive every couple of days or so.

Acronis emails a log of the backups after completion - so even if I'm away I can be confident of what's going on.

I've restored with Acronis twice without issue and I've also had no problem pulling out a couple of backup files. Damn good value for £20 from Amazon.

[Cheapprices4u]

oops must of been duncan, i knew it was someone on heres recommendation

[Reefdreams]

Totally agree with the above, but remember to use it! I lost virtually everything after a hard disk drive crash although even then acronis saved a lot!

You can take a disk image, if the hard drive fails put a new one in and use a boot disk to restore exactly as it was before the crash even if you install a bigger disk!

However it is always good to do a fresh install, so Acronis allows you to mount the drive image as another disk e.g F:/ from there you can copy anything you want back into a fresh install.

After my last crash I have installed 2 disks in a mirrored raid configuration (a lot of PCs now allow you to do this) Basically the data gets duplicated between the disks, if one fails you can continue to work, buy a new disk replace the failed one and it will rebuild giving you redundancy again.

But you still need a backup elsewhere in case you get a power surge, lightning strike, flood etc

Don't take chances, it is just the inconvenience of a failiure that is the real pain.

Steve.

[RuralWeb]

I have used Ghost (v8 floppy version) for years until recently

Same here but today it failed and so I will be looking at the whole subject again

[pinbrook]

I split my drive into C(os and prog files) and D Data, I then use Second Copy to copy anything that has changed on D every 2 hours to both external HD and 2nd HD in 2nd PC.

Thus I have 3 copies. Second copy also allows me to to keep x number of the files you change. Thus in fact i have millions of copies of everything.

I also copy config files, ie ftp profiles, and All Thunderbird profiles and emails.

Both HDs are 200gb

If I've lost something its been because i\couldn't find it rather than not having a copy.

[NormanRouxel]

I'm a Norton Ghost 2003 user. Indeed only this afternoon I made Ghost images of my wife's PC and my Laptop onto an external 250Gb USB2 drive. This is the sort of job that's best done overnight as it then uses up no productive time.

Nowadays I split all systems into C and D drives. The D drive has a Data folder containing My Documents and all the other important stuff.

I make Ghost images of the C drive whenever something significant changes. I make regular copies of the D:\Data folder onto at least 2 external drives, one a pocket drive.

I often take that pocket drive with me when visiting people as it's a lot smaller than a laptop but contains everything I need for development.

I also keep a few VMware virtual PCs on my D drive. I copy these folders onto my big external drive and can even run the virtual system from it on client sites. It's a bit slow but workable to have the entire virtual PC on an external disk via USB2.

The result of this is that I've never lost any data - I just did a quick scan of my current system and still have readable files and working programs going all the way back to the DOS 3 era of 1988. Anyone recall this

You are standing at the end of a road before a small brick building.
Around you is a forest. A small stream flows out of the building and
down a gully. In the distance there is a tall gleaming white tower.

Yes. the DOS version of Adventure and it still runs in a Command Prompt in XP-Pro! I'm off to scare the snake by freeing the cheerful bird from the wicker cage (but I have to remember that the bird is scared of the rod, so I have to drop that first)....

[Tickle]

I found Acronis to be very good as well.

Although not exactly what you're looking for I thought I'd also recommend Viceversa Pro (no affiliation) which behaves a little differently. Basically it sync's folders with all sorts of options. What I like about it is that it creates a direct copy of a folder rather than the backup files and increments you get with Acronis.

For critical folders I have it set to mirror tomy main machine onto a second HDD, my laptop, and a spare backup PC over the network. So in an emergency my backup PC is effectively in hot standby - no restores needed!

I've found it particularly useful in creating a time buffer of key folders I use a lot. When I had accidentally overwritten an important file the other day I was able to retrieve the it from the backup PC that I had set to 4 hours behind my main - phew.

[leehack]

Thanks for your time and great advice guys and gals.

The four things that peed me off the most were:

1. Losing at least 250 favourites, well structured into specific folders
2. FTP details on dreamweaver sites, what an absolute ballache setting each one up from scratch, this was compounded by losing all of my emails which held the ftp details for most of them
3. Losing all emails, a client had emailed me during the day with a load of stuff for a new site, i felt a right pratt ringing and asking for it to be resent as i'd had a system meltdown
4. All of those little downloaded applications like screen calipers and your adaware stuff etc.

Many of you have mentioned Acronis, so i have just downloaded their 15 day trial to see what its like. Looks good on first glance as does Jo's Second Copy.

I like the idea of a partitioned drive, C for Windows and D for Data, although it strikes me that it is all sitting on one drive still, which i don't like the sound of. I also hate leaving my external drive permanently on and connected. In my brain something harmful can work its way along the USB cable and trash that also. I always switch this off as soon as i've backed up to it, maybe i'm just paranoid, the idea of leaving this permanently connected makes me worry.

Having fused your valuable pieces of advice, i think a second hard drive is what i would like to do. Using Acronis or Second Copy, i would like to schedule a mirror of my C Drive onto the new drive over night and maybe also onto my external drive. I guess i would be happy to schedule a ghost image each night onto both my external drive and the 2nd HD. I think a mirror is what i want as i really do not want to go through reinstalling 30 odd pieces of software ever again - that nearly had me in tears. I had my laptop downloading all of the little handy applications and add-ons onto a flash drive, while the desktop chugged away through the installations. And then you have the software updates to go through, which just really kick you when you are down.

I would love to think that if i had 2 physical drives, C & D and i worked on C that D would copy it exactly as i worked. Something tells me that would slow my system down though, anyone confirm or quash that theory?

In summary, i think this is my way forward:

Get second hard drive (D) and get C automatically mirroring onto this as i work, no need for scheduled ghosting then. Set a mirror routine to run overnight onto my external drive also. This does leave me with a single point of failure if my house burns down, which tells me i need something online or off site also. I can't quite picture a mirrored image being uploaded online, surely it would take forever? A 2nd external drive stored off site is feasible, however that sounds open to never being kept to properly. Does that sound okay or any flaws in my thinking?

Does a second hard drive need to be anything special, any make i should stick to and are they easy to install or should i take it to my local shop to be done?

Thanks again, really appreciate your help provided on this.

[completerookie]

I've always been worried about true mirroring, if corruption gets in on drive-c, then duplicate corruption occurs on drive-d AT THE SAME TIME - that aside

I' sed second copy for a while, and I think you can set to keep multiple copies of the data, this in itself can be useful - you could then go back one version !

your second drive should be as big as you can manage, if you have 250mb on the main drive, then why not get a 750mb as the external, then split that into three drives (each 250mb)
you can then employ the traditional grandfather, father, son method of backing up to each of the virtual backup drives in turn

one scenario you have to consider is:
if you copy everything to your external drive today, do a load of work tomorrow and then tomorrow night copy to your external drive, what happens IF you just happen to crash DURING the backup - now you've got corruption on the main disk, youve corrupted the backup your doing, and to top it all, you've just over-written HALF of the last good backup that you now need to get you out of that sticky mess thats all over the fan.
its belt and braces !

[george]

[*]Losing at least 250 favourites, well structured into specific folders

Lee, IE has an export favourites thingy that puts them onto an html page.


Strangely I'd imagine that a busy external HD has more chance of failing than any static one. Any fact in that? So maybe backing up to dee-vee-dee discs could be more reliable (than perhaps rewriting to the same external HD a number of times a day, every single day?)

[pinbrook]

1. Losing at least 250 favourites, well structured into specific folders
2. FTP details on dreamweaver sites, what an absolute ballache setting each one up from scratch, this was compounded by losing all of my emails which held the ftp details for most of them
3. Losing all emails, a client had emailed me during the day with a load of stuff for a new site, i felt a right pratt ringing and asking for it to be resent as i'd had a system meltdown
4. All of those little downloaded applications like screen calipers and your adaware stuff etc.

1 can be programmed into your backup routine
2 can be programmed into your backup routine
3 leave emails on mail server for 100 days, and if you have a 2nd office pc download to it too
4 your stuffed.

IE has an export favourites thingy that puts them onto an html page.

must admit my favourites are in the format of an HTML file which is then my preferred homepage, this gets backup with all the rest.

[jont]

Yes. the DOS version of Adventure and it still runs in a Command Prompt in XP-Pro! I'm off to scare the snake by freeing the cheerful bird from the wicker cage (but I have to remember that the bird is scared of the rod, so I have to drop that first)....

Norman Rouxell .. copy and pasting http://community.actinic.com/showpos...5&postcount=20 .. you should be ashamed

Lee - for your bookmarks try somewhere like deli.icio.us so you can pick them up from wherever you are and not just your local machine.

I use Ghost and not had a problem (touch wood) ... saved my bacon on several occasions and more than paid for itself along with the external hard drive that are now as cheap as chips.

[Luddite]

Norman Rouxell .. copy and pasting http://community.actinic.com/showpos...5&postcount=20 .. you should be ashamed

Don't be ashamed - it was the only piece of this thread I understood!