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**wjcampbe** · 03-Mar-2007, 07:37 PM

Darron,

You can only have one copy of Actinic installed on one machine. If you install it on the external drive you can only then use it from the external drive. The new installation would overwrite the registry information for your current install (if it did not force you to uninstall from C: first).

What you need is an image of the existing drive, created with Acronis True-Image or similar software. That image can be stored on the external disk and then be restored to the fixed disk as required.

**leehack** · 03-Mar-2007, 07:38 PM

Snapshot to a CD and snapshot to an external hard drive at least once a week. If you are working on the site and making changes, snapshot every couple of hours. I don't see any need for anything more than this. Snapshot is the holy grail.

**Duncan Rounding** · 03-Mar-2007, 07:49 PM

I'm paranoid about backups - having to use them a number of times. Keep Actinic installed on your primary drive if there's space. Remember that your external drive is to backup data that already exists on your local drive. So the first step is to make sure you are backing up locally first. When you've got that right you can copy your backups to the external drive as well. You can also burn a DVD/CD and copy a snapshot onto your server.

I use NTBackup in WinXP and schedule an incremental backup every moring at 3am. I also schedule a copy of my site1 folder to another internal drive and my external drive. There may be many opinions on this but here's mine...

1. Create a snapshot every day (or more frequently) and save in the site1 folder.
2. Export your network settings to a text file and save into the site1 folder.
3. Make sure all your images etc reside in your site1 folder or a subfolder of that.
4. Copy your security key to a text file and again save that to the site1 folder.
5. Export your products and save in te site1 folder.
6. Type your Actinic software key into a text file and save yet again into the site1 folder.
7. Copy the entire site1 folder to another location - preferably a different drive - every day.
8. Also copy the site1 folder to your external drive - every day. You can schedule this also.
9. Burn a DVD/CD weekly or monthly with as many progressive backups as will fit.

And very importantly test a restore (preferably onto another PC) sometime to make sure it will work.

Told you I was a bit paranoid.

**leehack** · 03-Mar-2007, 08:33 PM

Duncan

Everyone has their own level of safety, a lot of actinic site owners have none until things fail and insist on learning the hard way. Your system looks very foolproof and if anyone can keep to such a schedule, they will never be in trouble for very long at all.

A couple of the things you additionally include in your site1 folder are very good ideas and i shall add these great additions to mine also - a really, really good idea that is.

The most paranoid would have a second pc with a copy of actinic installed which was never more than half a day behind the main pc, they would both backup to a shared drive and an auto cd burn and backup to external drive. They would have individual broadband lines from separate providers. The cd's would be stored in a bank safety deposit box, once a week and deposited on "put the cash in the bank" day.

To cover for a roadworker rendering both connections useless by mistake, they would have satellite wireless network on standby and a diesel 100Kw generator would also be on standby.

Many years ago i did some work for AT&T, their comms room at that time (prob 15 years ago now) had 2 of the biggest engines i have ever seen in my life. The engines were twice as high as me and would have filled most living rooms. The eight exhausts off each engine were big enough for a human being to crawl down. These things kicked in if there was a power failure - truly incredible things.

**NormanRouxel** · 03-Mar-2007, 09:09 PM

There's a good article in PC Pro this month about someone who's often called upon by friends to rescue dead disks / systems. The conversation goes like this.

Friend: My disk died.

Techie: OK get new one, reinstall windows and recover your data from the backup. Will take a bit of time.

Friend: I don't have a backup.

Techie: OK. That's even faster - just re-install Windows.

Friend: But my data's really important.

Techie: It can't be - you never bothered to treat it like it was.

Friend: $!*&!!!

Techie: <thinks>He won't bother me again for ages.</thinks>

**parklifeclothes** · 03-Mar-2007, 09:22 PM

Thanks for all the advice so far, up until my site crash months ago I had never done any sort of back up but since this time have kept daily ones, now just want to make sure I'm not in that awful position again, not got much more hair to lose!!

Cheers

**chris ashdown** · 03-Mar-2007, 10:48 PM

Jan at mole-end does a free backup software that just backup the actinic databases at what ever period you enter

Although the snapshots and site 1 backups are important the information on them regarding the site is not always changing every day for a lot of people but the information on the databse isupdated many times a day so it makes sence to keep regular backups without operator input to safeguard it

**Donald Gray** · 03-Mar-2007, 11:21 PM

Originally posted by parklifeclothes

Hi, I have just purchased an external hard drive and want to put a whole site back up onto this having suffered a complete site loss many months ago.

What do I need to do?

Darron

A few months ago I lost BOTH internal drives (2 x 200gb) through a faulty motherboard. Fortunately, thanks to a couple of external USB drives most of my data was safe.

Steting up a fully fledged shop like Actinic is a huge investment in time and effort - It is essential to back up - and to make atleast 2 copies of the backup.

I have found the easiest way for me is to do a weekly copy the whole of Site1 directory and store it externally with the date of the copy. I also do a snapshot several times a day and sequentially number the snapshot; eg:
1 - 19 feb 02.acd
2 - 19 feb 07.acd
3 - 20 feb 02.acd
2 - 21 feb 07.acd
... etc etc

These also get copied from 'c' drive to 2 external drives

An overkill but having experienced 2 drives going belly up........

With this regime, I usually have 2 copies if not 3.

I dont bother with the whole of the programme, working on the basis that I can always reinstall it

(That said, I do have it running on my laptop also using it as an off line tester)

Good luck with your site.

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