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64 Comments
- mescad, on 10/04/2008, -0/+22I waste all those gigabytes because disk space is cheaper than my (down)time.
- Nintendesert, on 10/04/2008, -0/+21The time imaging saves just can't be overstated enough. We're talking hours and hours of reinstallations reduced to less than half an hour, some systems much shorter than that.
- cquinnd, on 10/02/2008, -2/+21Image your system.
I use Acronis Trueimage, but there are other options like the freeware Driveimage XML that will let you make a full system backup that will allow you to avoid the "reinstall Windows and recover my data" syndrome; since it brings both the OS and the data back as part of the recovery process. - username7410, on 10/04/2008, -1/+20"The computer is one of the greatest inventions we've seen - and the internet is probably the greatest icing on the cake. "
LOL - I'm sorry, I don't think I continue reading the article after opening with this abortion of a statement. - Mr8lack, on 10/04/2008, -0/+9and when you run out of zip disks:
#6. 3.5" diskettes
#7. 5.25" floppy disks - Krumm, on 10/04/2008, -0/+7#8 Punchcards
- westyvw, on 10/04/2008, -3/+10Linux box: Um this is a no-brainer.
Set up a cron job (just drag and drop a two line script into the cron folder) so nightly:
1. dpkg --get-selections > /home/user/YOU/installed-software ## creates a txt file named installed-software into users home
2. rsync your home folder to a local or network drive.
Restoration:
after new os install:
1. dpkg --set-selections < installed-software ## will install all the software you had before
2. copy over home directory from the archive.
Thats it. All your preferences, all your settings, all your data and all your software. - RobotBuddha, on 10/04/2008, -1/+6You're kind of covered. Until google decides, for some reason or another, to shut down your account. Then years of email and files can go down the drain and you're not even able to find a human to beg to reinstate your account. Backups are always a good idea, even when backing up from something that'd be traditionally assumed to ' be' the backup.
- mypetridish, on 10/04/2008, -0/+5how did this make into the front page? the content is so lacking. the technical aspect is absent.
- enclaved, on 10/04/2008, -4/+85. time machine
sorry for coming off fanboyish, but its not a matter of 'changing the software type' it's a matter of setting and forgetting. - inactive, on 10/04/2008, -1/+5for most people synctoy from MS is more then enough and it supports transfer through a lan network. I got my data mirrored on a second PC and with portable Hard Drive.
- BoneStamp, on 10/03/2008, -1/+5I like Allway Sync (allwaysync.com). It's free and it lets me back up specific files and folders to an external drive and then sync them with my other computers from there. This works great if you have multiple computers that need to have the same files, especially if one is a laptop and you want to work on things away from home/office. It's a bonus if you have a NAS drive that you can reach when you're away from home, or make remote/offsite backups.
- Myztry, on 10/04/2008, -0/+4Ghosting the whole drive is the best way to go. Or any imaging utility that's works from OUTSIDE windows. Avoid Microsoft/Seagate backup like a plague unless you wish to stick a required floppy drive in the PC, and pray the floppy doesn't fail as they always do.
On the Ghost front, immediately restore the backup back over the original. You will get a sector>file>folder sorted filesystem that is performs like no 'defragmented' drive can even touch on. - MtheoryX, on 10/04/2008, -0/+4While I agree with your statement about Firewire versus USB, I have had absolutely no problems with WD MyBook external drives at home.
Additionally, I've not had any issues with them at work either.
Perhaps your statement of quality is true, and I alone have managed to get all the good drives out of the batch, thus relegating my experience to a fluke.
Or perhaps yours was the fluke. Who knows? - sourceholder, on 10/04/2008, -0/+4Old school.
- Residents, on 10/04/2008, -1/+5Maybe 7 years ago, 8 to 16GB pen drive these days.
- paidhima, on 10/04/2008, -1/+4I disagree. Maybe back when external drives were expensive and/or slow backing up only critical data was preferable, but this is no longer the case. With large external drives available cheaply - many of which will use two hard drives mirrored right out of the box for an extra layer of redundancy, it makes more sense to just back up everything.
Not to mention that the ability to retrieve data from a borked drive is not, in any way, an excuse not to maintain proper backups. If the data is important enough to retrieve, it's important enough to back up in the first place so you don't need to retrieve it. - jedisushi, on 10/04/2008, -1/+4Time Machine FTW. But - do not take anything for granted. I always manually, redundantly back up my most important data.
PS: How the hell did this hit the front page? - jhonizzle, on 10/04/2008, -1/+4...a western digital MyBook drive....really!? and we're taking back up advice from him why?what is this, he's twelve got a computer and wants to do a write up...
Bury for being useless information that google could find. - SanTe, on 10/04/2008, -0/+3This is why when I built my system I used a full tower case with a hard drive cage that will hold more than one drive. Bought two identical 320GB Seagates (at only $85 each) and I use Ghost 2003 to clone my primary drive once a month. I haven't done a reinstall in five years. That extra money spent on the 2nd drive and Ghost was well worth it, and the transfers happen at full speed since they're both internal drives.
- paidhima, on 10/05/2008, -0/+3This article isn't about enterprise-level data redundancy. That is a whole other ballgame.
How your enterprise is set up will determine how backups are done. Many businesses I've done work for use a centralized file server with individual private shares upon which people store their data. These shares are backed up to tape daily. It is made clear that any data not stored on the server will not be backed up. Proper backup solutions require proper training for users. For users that are frequently off site (sales and satellite offices), auxiliary solutions are required, though maintaining data on a file server is still possible, depending on the data being used.
My point about using data retrieval as a backup solution stands - even more so for business. Retrieving data from a failed hard drive is not, in any way, a solution. Again: if there is data you need to retrieve when a hard drive fails, that data should have been backed up in the first place. If data retrieval is part of your non-DR plan, then you're not properly designing a proactive solution.
That's not to say that data retrieval is worthless. Proper DR measures would have a solution in place to deal with live data lost when a system fails. It's not an alternative to backups though - I can't imagine a company would rather deal with data recovery rather than spend a little money on a real backup solution.
Further, my point is doubly important for home users that don't have access to or the training to do data recovery. Sure, there are fairly easy to use tools that allow you to recover data, but why deal with that - or worse, spend a ridiculous amount of money on a tech - when simply making sure that all of your necessary data is backed up is so much easier? - brianara3, on 10/04/2008, -0/+3I wonder how many punchcards it would take to backup a 60 GB drive....
- MScrip, on 10/04/2008, -0/+3I use Allway Sync too!
I did pay $20 for the pro version... because I used it every night and it yelled at me. It said I was using it too much to be an average user using the free version.
It's very fast! I have it sync 150GB of data onto my external drive. It only take 3 minutes to sync... depending on how much new stuff it has to copy over. - username7410, on 10/04/2008, -1/+4Read it. Horrible.
- rekrapt, on 10/04/2008, -0/+3DriveImage XML and BartPE Builder... I image Windows XP after a clean install and a download of all the latest updates. Then I installed all my critical applications and did another image. I use a SATA drive bay so I can have multple boot drives and TweakUI to relocate My Documents and other user-related data to a separate hard drive. Now when I (rarely) have a system crash that would normally require a reinstall of Windows and all apps, I'm back up and running with 40 mins using a BartPE boot DVD with DriveImage XML rolled in. It takes a little while to get things setup properly, and some time to perform the imaging, but its nothing compared to the time it takes for a typical reinstall of everything from scratch.
- brianara3, on 10/04/2008, -0/+2... hello eSATA kicks firewire in the nuts
- inactive, on 10/04/2008, -0/+2My only tip is just to do it, any way you can. No need to loose everything needlessly you spent years collecting. A one touch backup drive is so cheap these days too.
- caseyfw, on 10/04/2008, -3/+5Why is the 'PC' in the image in the article an Apple PowerBook 12"? If the author had been using one of those he could have just updated to Leopard and used Time Machine - problem solved.
- int19h, on 10/05/2008, -1/+3"PC" is not the same as Windows. Buried for wrong title.
- inactive, on 10/04/2008, -0/+2You didn't miss anything.
- gordigor, on 10/04/2008, -1/+3Windows home server. More than just backup.
- enclaved, on 10/04/2008, -2/+4maybe it's a tatic and you don't know the difference.
- username7410, on 10/04/2008, -1/+3That's not a strategy, it's a tool.
- 8ballblack, on 10/04/2008, -1/+3The guy forgot to mention to back up porn, in case your girlfriend or wife or mom comes in.
- HerbSolo, on 10/04/2008, -0/+2Well - i expected (a lot) more from this article.
If you setup your system, and organize your partitions or folder structure, it's a good idea to sort your files into categories: from "can't afford losing" to "can get it again anytime". Synctoy or allwaysinc will do the rest for most people.
BTW: The FEBE-extension may be great, but if you just include your firefox-profile-folder into your backup-folders, resetting firefox to the way it was before is the matter of copying a folder, and then telling firefox which standard profile to use. - TheSeeker11, on 10/04/2008, -0/+2Karen's Replicator FTW. For those wanting image backups, check out Hiren's Boot CD.
- Myztry, on 10/04/2008, -0/+2Zip discs were nice until there capacity become insufficient.
CD's are too unreliable for serious backup. If you must use them, then make a couple of "copy of" duplicates folders for the all too common scenario of an archived file that won't read back. - brianara3, on 10/04/2008, -0/+2Well.. I have never had any problems with my 750GB MyBook. But, it is the "studio edition" (I liked the silver and it was on sale).
Personally, I have worked out a solution with my company to use their 1.6TB LTO tapes for backup. (hint: be nice to your sys admin or boss)
1. I put my OS on 2 320GB drives mirrored by the onboard sata raid controller.
2. I put all my "files" (ie. music, pics, etc.) on another 1.2TB (3x750) raid drive in my computer.
3. I copy some select files to my external 750GB mybook and take in to work once a month and archive on the LTO tapes.
This costs me about $40-$50/tape on a 2 month rotation, so total I have 2 previous backups avail and spent about $100. They even let me toss it in the box they send to iron mountain each week. - ggarenn, on 10/04/2008, -0/+2the only thing you need to do (as long as your actual hard drive is still operational) is boot via linux live cd. i just had my computer crash on me after trying to merge two partitions with Partition Magic. i kept coming up with "cannot read disk" errors no matter what. so i booted linux, backed everything up to an external HDD, reinstalled, voila.
- inactive, on 10/04/2008, -1/+3Amen, brother.
Here's my 4 steps
1) Get a Mac (sorry but I will stand by this step)
2) Get 2 external hard disks
3) Use time-machine on one
4) Use carbon copy cloner on the other (just to make reinstalling a hell of a lot easier - kd1s, on 10/04/2008, -0/+2I just had a Lenovo T61 brick on me. Luckily I was able to extract the hard drive and put it on an R61i. Took the better part of a day and a half to do this though.
I think the T61 may have gotten a bit wet. I had it in my backpack during a torrential rain storm. But I can't imagine that it got that wet, it was dry inside the backpack.
But it's bricked. And I have all my data. - herschelaz, on 10/04/2008, -1/+3lol, i had the same hardware he recommends and it crashed on me and i lost everything.
- Residents, on 10/04/2008, -1/+2Sure but we're not talking about a server here. Go ahead and make this case to a business and tell them to buy 200 external hard drives and pay for the labor to set up proper backups on every machine. I'm not talking about your home mess around PC, I'm discussing that from a professional stance.
- WomensUnderwear, on 10/04/2008, -0/+1lose
- irha, on 10/04/2008, -0/+1Change windows registry to point your "Documents and Settings" directory to an alternate partition and backup just this partition. Use a program such as Driver Magician to backup your drives and restore them quickly if you have to reinstall windows. If only programs avoid dumping their files into windows partition, even though you choose a directory in a different partition as installation root, it would be easy to backup and restore their registry settings right after the os reinstallation.
- harisund, on 10/05/2008, -0/+1It's not that simple.
I have edited a lot of files in /etc. Those are lost. - cquinnd, on 10/05/2008, -0/+1I use an imaging program that allows the user to exclude files and directories that are not "needed" for the recovery to save space.
On my Gaming system I load the games on a seperate drive specifically to avoid such clutter on the system drive and make backup and recovery for both easier. - MtheoryX, on 10/04/2008, -1/+2I feel sorry for anyone using a USB connection for external drives...especially external drives used for backups. FW FTW.
- HerbSolo, on 10/05/2008, -0/+1No thanks.
I'm not saying i wouldn't want a fileserver in my home. But if you're insinuating a raid-setup is a proper alternative to backing up your data, that's not the case. - A raid system with mirroring protects you if one of your drives is failing, but what if 2 or more drives fail simultaneously? (lightning-induced voltage can kill all your drives at once, and that's the problem with NASs - they're plugged in all the time)
Also setting up a file server and the needed network infrastructure is neither cheap nor simple. And for just backing up the data for my laptop i prefer a simple external drive that isn't plugged in, if it isn't used. It's really cheap too! - GorecOverYears, on 09/25/2009, -0/+1Thanks for the article!
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