Backing up your Hard Drive...

[illroot]

What are some of the best ways to back-up your Hard drive, specifically, all your apps and settings? I just went thru another reformat of my HD and a reinstall of all my apps, and boy is it a pain in the ***. is there a way that i can back up everything so that if something were to go wrong with my HD, i could just format and bring everything back without the hassle of reinstalling? i'm running Win2K Pro. at my last place of work, they backed everything up on an external drive and, i'm guessing, copied all the saved info back onto a formatted drive if they needed to reinstall. i never understood how it worked though. anyone care to enlighten me? thanks.

[Midknyte]

There are several ways to do it.

you could get a second hard drive and use maxblast or WD's Datalifeguard to copy and exact image to the second drive.

you can also use a utility like Ghost or Drive Image to make a cd backup. If you use the right script, you can make a bootable cd that would restore your system. I've done it for Dell GX150 systems and the full restore with win2k takes about 10min. You can also save images to a hard drive instead of cd.

a third way would be to get a tape drive and schedule backups. this is more for servers, so i don't think it will be worth your time or money.:D

[kiwibeat]

Try running Roxia GoBack its saved my system at least 20x in the last month as i am always experimenting with new program s etc ,
cd creator 5 does a complete cd backup as of your HDD I didnt try it as it needs about 18 disks .

[Bigjakkstaffa]

Midknyte,

When you ghost a HDD, is that all you need - one CD?? Anc can you ghost the contents of the HDD back onto it onec formatted??

Someone once told me you had to have another compo on the network etc with exactly the same contents to ghost it.

--Jakk:t

[Midknyte]

you usually need a second partition or a second hdd to run ghost. it depends on how much data you have loaded. I have seen it done to a network drive, but it's pretty slow. usually, you would back up your data separately and only ghost the OS and system partition. You can span to several cds, if you want.

if you use ghost, you can format the hdd and restore an EXACT copy of your drive. it's pretty cool.

I use Drive Image Pro more, but ghost is pretty much the same.

if you are going to use ghost on several computers, then they should be practically identical. if you have 5 of the exact same Dell computer for example, you can make 1 base ghost image and use it on all the systems. However, you have to do extra work if you use Win2k or xp to make sure you don't get duplicate SIDs. Sysprep is the best tool for that, but i think that's more than what this thread is about.....

[G]

GoBack Deluxe V3+ is great. I use this all the time and would not have my system running without it. It really is a necessity.

For backups I use Drive Image V2002 and a second HDD for storing images. I tend to take an image to CD-RW too but this takes a looooong time to complete but worth it for piece of mind.

Other backup solutions are Salty Brines FolderClone (I beta test this and it works really well), Aquarius IS Consultacy’s AISBackup (I beta test this too). After the initial purchase of these two programs all minor and or major updates are free there after - that cannot be bad.

Initially go with GoBack and Drive Image (or its equivalent) and a second HDD.

I wrote a number of long detailed posts (across two pages) on the above (and other subject matter) at the following site if you are interested:

http://sysopt.earthweb.com/forum/showthread.php?threadid=89598

G

[BJUK]

If you have a second HD norton ghost is good. 15mins 9gb backed up. then just pull the plug and it carnt get croupted or infected. once a week no prob.

[G]

How does Ghost take an image BJUK (I presume on to a HDD) of 9GB in 15 minutes? It takes me, using Drive Image 2002 2.hours to take an image of 9GB compressed to about 4-4.5GB?

Admittedly DI 2002 rocks so I’m not bothered one jot which is fastest as long as my images are sound.

On the fly imaging of the same size on to CD-RW can take 4-6 hours but at least it works (this includes erasing at 1-2x, 7-8 74min CD-RW’s). This is an estimate as I have only done this once as it takes soooo long. I’m just about ready to make another image on take CD-RW.

G

[BJUK]

Yea G
you seam to be copying to rerightable CD. this would be very slow compaired to a HD.

I have 1.1Althon 2X30gb Maxtor HD's with 9gb of data.
When ghost is used in mirror form like this it runs from a bootale flopy with its own form of dos. and makes a mirror image on the other one.
For the 9gb of data i have it takes about 15mins. and no need to compress it.
It some times seams a waste of a hard drive, but about 2 months ago i had a hd fail an it was cool to be up and running again in just 2mins by going to the second drive.
:t

[G]

Hi BJUK,

Thanks for getting back to me. There certainly is a significant difference in the time it takes an image to be taken and stored on HDD and CD-RW using Drive Image (DI). I cannot comment on Ghost as I don’t use it.

What’s worse for me now is that my images are getting larger over time. Moreover, I’m just about to go dual-boot with my Win98 on HDD1 (primary) and Win2000 Pro on HDD 2 (logical). With Win2000 Pro and the new equivalent stuff from my Win98 setup going on to the Win2000 Pro partition and programs that can only be installed under Win2000 I’m expecting 15GB images compressed to about 8GB – I may need another HDD.

One of the reasons why it takes a long time to take the image is because it is compressed to about 50% of its original size (this is fair enough). In addition, what might be another reason is my system is a P2 266Mhz (4-5 year old machine). The HDDs are IBM 36LZX 36 SCSI HDDs, with Plextor’s SCSI 40Max and 12/10/32 SCSI CD-RW. Other than that it’s a rather old machine. It works well but I think it’s time I updated to a higher specification machine. It’s going to be ‘The Dogs B*ll*cks’ but it’s going to take some time to research too.

I don’t know anything about Ghost. When I was looking at imaging programs there were Ghost, DI, and PictureTaker. Symantec (I think) took over some of the technology of PictureTaker or paid the owners of PictureTaker per licence of Ghost. If I had had the money I would have liked to have chosen from the corporate (professional) editions of PictureTaker, DI, and Ghost. PictureTaker was too much anyway and as DI was being packaged with PartitionMagic (PM) (effectively pay for PM get DI for free) that did it for me. Another reason I steered away from PictureTaker and was moving towards Dive Image and Ghost is the number of users using either. This, I thought, would come in handy if I were stuck or could advice others in time. I know that Ghost has this floppy disc facility that can be used as a rescue disc (sort of) where it is possible to assess the image and restore it. Drive Image (as far as I know) doesn’t have this facility but it may be part of the Professional edition, which is too much. Otherwise Drive Image has everything one needs on its rescue disc.

I don’t know if any one really uses Drive Image and Ghost as complimentary imaging tools. However, I would like to know whether it is worth considering buying Ghost (or as part of System Works Pro) and the time needed to understand it proper.

I’m wondering whether it is just better to stay with Drive Image and forget about Ghost. The same can be said for Ghost users too. If I read differently I may consider using Ghost too. I certainly can recommend Drive Image 2002. It really is great and one of my favourite pieces of software.

I get the impression that DI may be overtaking Ghost in the standards imaging stakes.

BJUK images are a Godsend.

All the best,
G

[BJUK]

Thanks for the reply, i brought ghost on recomendion of a friend at work. I brought it on line from Norton along with Norton Anti Virus 2002. for about £60 for the lot. Downloded the lot there and then. I have found both to be very good progs.
With the size of data you intend to store in the days to come it seams to me you need a pair of maching HD'S like my self.
Shure as hell makes life alot easer & Quicker. It also saves every setting excatly as you left it in every detail. No fafing with cd's I just mirror it and then pull the plug to stop any crouption, reboot job done in 15mins flat.

All the best
BJ.

:t :t :t :t