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Old March 20th 06, 02:38 PM posted to comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage
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Default Question about backups with Ghost


"Jeff" wrote in message ...
Question for the experts.....

I have never used Ghost before so here is my setup.

Win xp sp2 with two internal sata drives each in a removeable drawer.

System drive is C

Storage drive is D

What I'd love to be able to do is the following:

Back up Drive C to Drive D so that if something gets screwed up i can

simply
remove Drive C and then the "D" drive would become an exact replacement
which would pick up where "C" left off.

Is this possible?

Can I do Incremental backups nightly which would only backup files and
folders which have changed without copying the entire contents?

If thiis is indeed possible....how can a backup drive which is a clone of
the original boot at the same time as the system drive, how does windows
know the difference?

TIA

jeff

You could go about this a different way - I use Ghost weekly to make an
image of the C: drive and save it (compressed) to the D: drive. As I only
use the C: drive for XP and some core apps the resulting image is only 4.5gb
and fits easily onto DVD for extra security.
Incidentally I use Ghost 2003 DOS executable which is only 900 Kb, but does
not allow incremental backups - but a whole drive can be imaged in a few
minutes.
You could also make an image of the D: drive and store it on C:
Advantage of images is that you get to actually use the drives for other
things rather then just being copies of another drive!
Ghost images work fine - if you ever have a drive fail you just pop in a new
one and create drive form image, and in a few minutes you get a clone of
your old drive back.
I only use disk-to-disk cloning when upgrading say to a bigger or faster
drive - more of a one-off clone so both drives are not sitting in the PC at
the same time - though I have done this without any issues.
Another method for cloning drives is to use a removeable drive caddy -
£15ish - and just stick in the backup drive when you want to do a backup -
advantage then is that drive can be kept in another room / building so even
if a real disaster strikes you have a copy.
GTS