Best way to handle backups
Discussion
Hi all,
A few months ago my laptop was stolen... I lost all kinds of data, as the latest backup I had was perhaps 9 months old.
I had no excuse as it had a CD writer. I just didn't do it because it was a pain.
I now have a new laptop, and have been slowly rebuilding the data I had. I don't want to have to go through this again, but I need to find a hassle-free way of making sure I get my hard drive backed up.
The only way I know of is to burn a CD, copying all the folders that have data I want to keep. But since I don't know how to do any kind of incremental backup, other than doing it manually, I have to back up the entire hard drive each time. This means bunches of CDs, and a fairly time-consuming, very manual process.
What would be better would be to have a method of incremental backup, like the old data cartridges I used to use to long ago... Once a month or so, have it automatically prompt me for a cd and record everything that has changed since the last time I backed up. In the event of a disaster, I would feed in the "base" cd and all the subsequent ones and would recover all my data.
I'm using XP... What would be my best bet?
TIA
A few months ago my laptop was stolen... I lost all kinds of data, as the latest backup I had was perhaps 9 months old.
I had no excuse as it had a CD writer. I just didn't do it because it was a pain.
I now have a new laptop, and have been slowly rebuilding the data I had. I don't want to have to go through this again, but I need to find a hassle-free way of making sure I get my hard drive backed up.
The only way I know of is to burn a CD, copying all the folders that have data I want to keep. But since I don't know how to do any kind of incremental backup, other than doing it manually, I have to back up the entire hard drive each time. This means bunches of CDs, and a fairly time-consuming, very manual process.
What would be better would be to have a method of incremental backup, like the old data cartridges I used to use to long ago... Once a month or so, have it automatically prompt me for a cd and record everything that has changed since the last time I backed up. In the event of a disaster, I would feed in the "base" cd and all the subsequent ones and would recover all my data.
I'm using XP... What would be my best bet?
TIA
Well, surely you only want to back up your data?
In that case its just the My Documents folder you're interested in.
If you have oodles of personal data, why not invest in a DVD writer? I bought one for the project I'm working on so I could create bootable DVDs and they can hold over 5GB of data. Thats 7 CDs worth....
With regard to apps, I keep a list on paper updated with apps installed on my machines, so if I ever have to flatten and rebuild I know what I've got. Also a good idea to record product serial numbers etc.
I reckon I could rebuild my laptop in less than 2 hours....
In that case its just the My Documents folder you're interested in.
If you have oodles of personal data, why not invest in a DVD writer? I bought one for the project I'm working on so I could create bootable DVDs and they can hold over 5GB of data. Thats 7 CDs worth....
With regard to apps, I keep a list on paper updated with apps installed on my machines, so if I ever have to flatten and rebuild I know what I've got. Also a good idea to record product serial numbers etc.
I reckon I could rebuild my laptop in less than 2 hours....
Right - can post longer now 
My advice would be to get an external harddrive that can fit about twice the size of data on your current drives.
Use the built in MS backup utility (actually written by Veritas who I used to work for) to backup on to disk on the external drive.
Create 2 backup-to-disk folders and backup on to them alternately.
Pros - Fast, you get 2 copies in case a backup goes wrong. FREE softare. HDD cheaper then tapes. Free support from moi.
Cons - You don't have a history of backups, only the latest.
My advice would be to get an external harddrive that can fit about twice the size of data on your current drives.
Use the built in MS backup utility (actually written by Veritas who I used to work for) to backup on to disk on the external drive.
Create 2 backup-to-disk folders and backup on to them alternately.
Pros - Fast, you get 2 copies in case a backup goes wrong. FREE softare. HDD cheaper then tapes. Free support from moi.
Cons - You don't have a history of backups, only the latest.
just bought a LG DVD-RAM drive from eBuyer...... only about £70 for the retail box... does all the normal DVD +. and - R and RW, but does DVD-RAM too..... it's like having a 4.7 or 9.4 *Gig* floppy drive (depending on media, which is *not* that expensive). You use it just like a floppy drive, and never* run out of space.
* - well almost
* - well almost
GregE240 said:
Well, surely you only want to back up your data?
In that case its just the My Documents folder you're interested in.
If you have oodles of personal data, why not invest in a DVD writer? I bought one for the project I'm working on so I could create bootable DVDs and they can hold over 5GB of data. Thats 7 CDs worth....
With regard to apps, I keep a list on paper updated with apps installed on my machines, so if I ever have to flatten and rebuild I know what I've got. Also a good idea to record product serial numbers etc.
I reckon I could rebuild my laptop in less than 2 hours....
In my case, I don't keep anything in "My Documents"... Perhaps I am a little odd, but it probably comes from working with earlier versions of Windows (or DOS!!) that didn't have "My documents". I always thought that the name was silly, so I have everything hanging off my C drive in various directories.
I'd like to avoid manual paper lists... it seems unelegant... There has to be an automatic way to do it...
puggit said:I'm with puggit on that one.
Right - can post longer now
My advice would be to get an external harddrive that can fit about twice the size of data on your current drives. ...
I'm not using Windows, but the strategy should be pretty much the same.
The external harddrive has the advantage that it is cheap, fast and nothing else (hardware wise) is needed to recreate the data on another computer. Backup works simple on nearly every machine with USB, since I'm using the tar command from a script.
I specified the folders that should be backed up, and tar compares the date of the existing backup files, and the files to be backed up. If one date is older, only the new files will be appended to the archive / overwrite existing.
The script is automatically executed, when I log out and the external hdd is connected, so data is kept well up to date.
The recreation of the software is easy, but restricted to Linux distributions AFAIK. Since distribution DVDs contain most/all applications that I have installed, a text file containing my selection can be written from the installation tool, and later be read in again (from backup media/floppy/usb-stick, ...).
Nero now does incremental backups to CD. Haven't tried it so don't know if its any good. I too have used the USB hard drive method using scripts and MS backup and that works a treat. If you compress the backup drive you can squeeze extra backups on too.
www.nero.com/us/Nero_BackItUp.html
www.nero.com/us/Nero_BackItUp.html
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