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#1
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Fastest way to back up an entire drive at customer site?
I'm looking for the absolutely fastest possible way to back up an entire
system. Background: my work frequently involves going into people's homes to help them bring their computers back to life after the machines are over-run with spyware and viruses and the like. To solve their problem I backup their data and do a clean install of XP, then bring their computer up to date with all the latest patches and various protections. The first bottleneck in this process is backing up their data. Not just the act of doing the backup but having them tell me where everyhing lives on their system (if they know). I've come to the conclusion that the best method is to back up the entire system. That way there's no danger of the customer calling back later because they can't find such and such information - oh, you didn't tell me about the file. I currently have no practical way to do this on site and therefore have to take their system with me. I'd like to speed this process up and do it on site. I'm thinking of building a portable system with the latest CPU and speed features. Then adding very fast hard drive or RAID on one channel. The customer's hard drive would be removed from their PC and hooked up to a separate IDE channel on the system. I'd then run a backup utility or command (robocopy, dd, etc) to QUICKLY slam the entire contents of their drive onto mine. I'd like to approach the speeds of what a company called logicube claims for their drive cloning hardware - which is about 1 Gb per minute. Haven't worked through the math to determine what's realistic. Again, speed is the key. Is there other hardware or software products on the market that will help me with this solution? I can't justify the $2,000 for the logicube device, but I figure I could build a PC with similar functionality for $600 as described above. So, am I on the right track here? |
#2
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"Mail Ias" wrote in message
news:Pf%Hd.13626$P04.8696@attbi_s03... I'm looking for the absolutely fastest possible way to back up an entire system. Background: my work frequently involves going into people's homes to help them bring their computers back to life after the machines are over-run with spyware and viruses and the like. To solve their problem I backup their data and do a clean install of XP, then bring their computer up to date with all the latest patches and various protections. The first bottleneck in this process is backing up their data. Not just the act of doing the backup but having them tell me where everyhing lives on their system (if they know). I've come to the conclusion that the best method is to back up the entire system. That way there's no danger of the customer calling back later because they can't find such and such information - oh, you didn't tell me about the file. I currently have no practical way to do this on site and therefore have to take their system with me. I'd like to speed this process up and do it on site. I'm thinking of building a portable system with the latest CPU and speed features. Then adding very fast hard drive or RAID on one channel. The customer's hard drive would be removed from their PC and hooked up to a separate IDE channel on the system. I'd then run a backup utility or command (robocopy, dd, etc) to QUICKLY slam the entire contents of their drive onto mine. I'd like to approach the speeds of what a company called logicube claims for their drive cloning hardware - which is about 1 Gb per minute. Haven't worked through the math to determine what's realistic. Again, speed is the key. Is there other hardware or software products on the market that will help me with this solution? I can't justify the $2,000 for the logicube device, but I figure I could build a PC with similar functionality for $600 as described above. So, am I on the right track here? If customer drive is slow, you wan't be able to reach that speed anyway. Typical disk imaging over FastEth network can achieve ~700MB per minute. I would put a network card in their system rather than remove their disk for cloning. A laptop with an external USB drive would do a decent job for you. Later you could burn their image to DVDs or ... keep buying new USB drives ;-) |
#3
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Mail Ias wrote:
I'm looking for the absolutely fastest possible way to back up an entire system. Background: my work frequently involves going into people's homes to help them bring their computers back to life after the machines are over-run with spyware and viruses and the like. To solve their problem I backup their data and do a clean install of XP, then bring their computer up to date with all the latest patches and various protections. The first bottleneck in this process is backing up their data. Not just the act of doing the backup but having them tell me where everyhing lives on their system (if they know). I've come to the conclusion that the best method is to back up the entire system. That way there's no danger of the customer calling back later because they can't find such and such information - oh, you didn't tell me about the file. I currently have no practical way to do this on site and therefore have to take their system with me. I'd like to speed this process up and do it on site. I'm thinking of building a portable system with the latest CPU and speed features. Then adding very fast hard drive or RAID on one channel. The customer's hard drive would be removed from their PC and hooked up to a separate IDE channel on the system. I'd then run a backup utility or command (robocopy, dd, etc) to QUICKLY slam the entire contents of their drive onto mine. I'd like to approach the speeds of what a company called logicube claims for their drive cloning hardware - which is about 1 Gb per minute. Haven't worked through the math to determine what's realistic. Again, speed is the key. Is there other hardware or software products on the market that will help me with this solution? I can't justify the $2,000 for the logicube device, but I figure I could build a PC with similar functionality for $600 as described above. So, am I on the right track here? Why not get an external USB / Firewire box with a large hard drive in it? My preference would be firewire, as I come across plenty of data corrupting in USB devices and none whatsoever in FIrewire devices (granted this is partly down to USB being far more popluar than firewire.) SImply plug in (most computers will have a USB port). Also carry around an older IDE card (something popular, like Promise) that most systems will work with, and plug your spare hard drive into that and do a disk - disk image or get a decent file copy program that doesn't fall over when it encounters a problem file / system file that won't copy. With either of the above, you won't have any configuration / network setup issues and it should work in nearly all cases. Odie -- RetroData Data Recovery Experts www.retrodata.co.uk |
#4
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In article , ho wrote:
"Mail Ias" wrote in message news:Pf%Hd.13626$P04.8696@attbi_s03... I'm looking for the absolutely fastest possible way to back up an entire system. Background: my work frequently involves going into people's homes to help them bring their computers back to life after the machines are over-run with spyware and viruses and the like. To solve their problem I backup their data and do a clean install of XP, then bring their computer up to date with all the latest patches and various protections. The first bottleneck in this process is backing up their data. Not just the act of doing the backup but having them tell me where everyhing lives on their system (if they know). I've come to the conclusion that the best method is to back up the entire system. That way there's no danger of the customer calling back later because they can't find such and such information - oh, you didn't tell me about the file. I currently have no practical way to do this on site and therefore have to take their system with me. I'd like to speed this process up and do it on site. I'm thinking of building a portable system with the latest CPU and speed features. Then adding very fast hard drive or RAID on one channel. The customer's hard drive would be removed from their PC and hooked up to a separate IDE channel on the system. I'd then run a backup utility or command (robocopy, dd, etc) to QUICKLY slam the entire contents of their drive onto mine. I'd like to approach the speeds of what a company called logicube claims for their drive cloning hardware - which is about 1 Gb per minute. Haven't worked through the math to determine what's realistic. Again, speed is the key. Is there other hardware or software products on the market that will help me with this solution? I can't justify the $2,000 for the logicube device, but I figure I could build a PC with similar functionality for $600 as described above. So, am I on the right track here? If customer drive is slow, you wan't be able to reach that speed anyway. Typical disk imaging over FastEth network can achieve ~700MB per minute. I would put a network card in their system rather than remove their disk for cloning. A laptop with an external USB drive would do a decent job for you. Later you could burn their image to DVDs or ... keep buying new USB drives ;-) I've been thinking about this, too. I carry a laptop and a bootable CD of Acronis TI8. The laptop has an empty 20GB partition. I can plug a crossover cable into the user's machine and my laptop, boot TI, and image the machine, 10GB in about half an hour. Acronis compresses the origonal machine at greater that 2:1, but if the useer has gigabytes of MP3s they don't compress. 100MB ethernet is the bottleneck. There is a USB2 computer-to-compuer adapter cable (and softwrae) that might give you a little more speed. My laptop doesn;t have USB2. I don't need it. -- a d y k e s @ p a n i x . c o m Don't blame me. I voted for Gore. |
#5
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Get a 200+MB drive and put it in a Firewire case. You can write 150GB/hour.
Use dd bs=64k to copy the disk using WinPE or Linux CD, it is faster than most methods. "Mail Ias" wrote in message news:Pf%Hd.13626$P04.8696@attbi_s03... I'm looking for the absolutely fastest possible way to back up an entire system. |
#6
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I would not move their data at all. Their drive is the backup. New hard
drives are so cheap, it is not worth your time to back it up and then wipe the disk, unless your time isn't worth anything. Leave the data on the old disk as a slave, install a new master drive, install your XP and you're ready to go. The only reason to deviate from this is if there is no room in their box, but I am guessing most people who would call you wouldn't have more than one drive. Am I missing anything? Irwin Eric Gisin wrote: Get a 200+MB drive and put it in a Firewire case. You can write 150GB/hour. Use dd bs=64k to copy the disk using WinPE or Linux CD, it is faster than most methods. "Mail Ias" wrote in message news:Pf%Hd.13626$P04.8696@attbi_s03... I'm looking for the absolutely fastest possible way to back up an entire system. |
#7
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"ho" wrote in message
"Mail Ias" wrote in message news:Pf%Hd.13626$P04.8696@attbi_s03... I'm looking for the absolutely fastest possible way to back up an entire system. [snip] I'm thinking of building a portable system with the latest CPU and speed features. Then adding very fast hard drive or RAID on one channel. The customer's hard drive would be removed from their PC and hooked up to a separate IDE channel on the system. I'd then run a backup utility or command (robocopy, dd, etc) to QUICKLY slam the entire contents of their drive onto mine. I'd like to approach the speeds of what a company called logicube claims for their drive cloning hardware - which is about 1 Gb per minute. Haven't worked through the math to determine what's realistic. Again, speed is the key. 1Gb/min is 1.7 MB/sec Is there other hardware or software products on the market that will help me with this solution? I can't justify the $2,000 for the logicube device, but I figure I could build a PC with similar functionality for $600 as described above. So, am I on the right track here? If customer drive is slow, you wan't be able to reach that speed anyway. No? Typical disk imaging over FastEth network can achieve ~700MB per minute. Which is ~7Gb per minute, (11.7 MB/sec). Still think that that is slow compared to 1 Gb per minute (1.7 MB/sec)? I would put a network card in their system rather than remove their disk for cloning. A laptop with an external USB drive would do a decent job for you. Later you could burn their image to DVDs or ... keep buying new USB drives ;-) |
#8
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"Al Dykes" wrote in message ... In article , ho wrote: "Mail Ias" wrote in message news:Pf%Hd.13626$P04.8696@attbi_s03... I'm looking for the absolutely fastest possible way to back up an entire system. Background: my work frequently involves going into people's homes to help them bring their computers back to life after the machines are over-run with spyware and viruses and the like. To solve their problem I backup their data and do a clean install of XP, then bring their computer up to date with all the latest patches and various protections. The first bottleneck in this process is backing up their data. Not just the act of doing the backup but having them tell me where everyhing lives on their system (if they know). I've come to the conclusion that the best method is to back up the entire system. That way there's no danger of the customer calling back later because they can't find such and such information - oh, you didn't tell me about the file. I currently have no practical way to do this on site and therefore have to take their system with me. I'd like to speed this process up and do it on site. I'm thinking of building a portable system with the latest CPU and speed features. Then adding very fast hard drive or RAID on one channel. The customer's hard drive would be removed from their PC and hooked up to a separate IDE channel on the system. I'd then run a backup utility or command (robocopy, dd, etc) to QUICKLY slam the entire contents of their drive onto mine. I'd like to approach the speeds of what a company called logicube claims for their drive cloning hardware - which is about 1 Gb per minute. Haven't worked through the math to determine what's realistic. Again, speed is the key. Is there other hardware or software products on the market that will help me with this solution? I can't justify the $2,000 for the logicube device, but I figure I could build a PC with similar functionality for $600 as described above. So, am I on the right track here? If customer drive is slow, you wan't be able to reach that speed anyway. Typical disk imaging over FastEth network can achieve ~700MB per minute. I would put a network card in their system rather than remove their disk for cloning. A laptop with an external USB drive would do a decent job for you. Later you could burn their image to DVDs or ... keep buying new USB drives ;-) I've been thinking about this, too. I carry a laptop and a bootable CD of Acronis TI8. The laptop has an empty 20GB partition. I can plug a crossover cable into the user's machine and my laptop, boot TI, and image the machine, 10GB in about half an hour. Acronis compresses the origonal machine at greater that 2:1, but if the useer has gigabytes of MP3s they don't compress. 100MB ethernet is the bottleneck. And TI doesnt go anywhere near filling the ethernet channel with lower horsepower PCs like say a 1G or less, and max compression. It would certainly be a hassle to get the drive out of the user's PC, but that would certainly be much faster, particularly if you didnt use any compression to get the best speed. Guess you could usually just have an IDE cable between the user's machine and the one thats doing the copy, with the drive left in the user's machine for minimum hassle, temp lashup. It'd certainly be better to say just plug an ethernet cable between the machines tho and maybe that wouldnt necessarily involve much more time than having to open the user's machine etc. There is a USB2 computer-to-compuer adapter cable (and softwrae) that might give you a little more speed. I doubt it. In spades when the user's machine doesnt have USB2. My laptop doesn;t have USB2. I don't need it. |
#9
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"Odie Ferrous" wrote in message ... Mail Ias wrote: I'm looking for the absolutely fastest possible way to back up an entire system. Background: my work frequently involves going into people's homes to help them bring their computers back to life after the machines are over-run with spyware and viruses and the like. To solve their problem I backup their data and do a clean install of XP, then bring their computer up to date with all the latest patches and various protections. The first bottleneck in this process is backing up their data. Not just the act of doing the backup but having them tell me where everyhing lives on their system (if they know). I've come to the conclusion that the best method is to back up the entire system. That way there's no danger of the customer calling back later because they can't find such and such information - oh, you didn't tell me about the file. I currently have no practical way to do this on site and therefore have to take their system with me. I'd like to speed this process up and do it on site. I'm thinking of building a portable system with the latest CPU and speed features. Then adding very fast hard drive or RAID on one channel. The customer's hard drive would be removed from their PC and hooked up to a separate IDE channel on the system. I'd then run a backup utility or command (robocopy, dd, etc) to QUICKLY slam the entire contents of their drive onto mine. I'd like to approach the speeds of what a company called logicube claims for their drive cloning hardware - which is about 1 Gb per minute. Haven't worked through the math to determine what's realistic. Again, speed is the key. Is there other hardware or software products on the market that will help me with this solution? I can't justify the $2,000 for the logicube device, but I figure I could build a PC with similar functionality for $600 as described above. So, am I on the right track here? Why not get an external USB / Firewire box with a large hard drive in it? My preference would be firewire, as I come across plenty of data corrupting in USB devices and none whatsoever in FIrewire devices (granted this is partly down to USB being far more popluar than firewire.) SImply plug in (most computers will have a USB port). But not necessarily USB2. Also carry around an older IDE card (something popular, like Promise) that most systems will work with, and plug your spare hard drive into that and do a disk - disk image or get a decent file copy program that doesn't fall over when it encounters a problem file / system file that won't copy. With either of the above, you won't have any configuration / network setup issues and it should work in nearly all cases. Dunno, XP is pretty straightforward networking wise once you get the hang of its quirks. Likely anything that involves opening the user's PC will take more time given that quite a few of them will have a lan port already installed. |
#10
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Mail Ias wrote:
I'm looking for the absolutely fastest possible way to back up an entire system. Background: my work frequently involves going into people's homes to help them bring their computers back to life after the machines are over-run with spyware and viruses and the like. To solve their problem I backup their data and do a clean install of XP, then bring their computer up to date with all the latest patches and various protections. The first bottleneck in this process is backing up their data. Not just the act of doing the backup but having them tell me where everyhing lives on their system (if they know). I've come to the conclusion that the best method is to back up the entire system. That way there's no danger of the customer calling back later because they can't find such and such information - oh, you didn't tell me about the file. I currently have no practical way to do this on site and therefore have to take their system with me. I'd like to speed this process up and do it on site. I'm thinking of building a portable system with the latest CPU and speed features. Then adding very fast hard drive or RAID on one channel. The customer's hard drive would be removed from their PC and hooked up to a separate IDE channel on the system. I'd then run a backup utility or command (robocopy, dd, etc) to QUICKLY slam the entire contents of their drive onto mine. I'd like to approach the speeds of what a company called logicube claims for their drive cloning hardware - which is about 1 Gb per minute. Haven't worked through the math to determine what's realistic. Again, speed is the key. Is there other hardware or software products on the market that will help me with this solution? I can't justify the $2,000 for the logicube device, but I figure I could build a PC with similar functionality for $600 as described above. So, am I on the right track here? The method that I use is as follows. I have a laptop. It has in the PCCard slot a Buslink SATA adapter. I plug into that adapter two 250 gig SATA drives in external enclosures. The OS is configured to mount those drives as a RAID-1 and share that RAID over the network. I have a diskette that I stick in the machine to be backed up--it boots the machine, and connects to the laptop. I then run the copy of Drive Image that I have stored on the laptop and use that to image the drives. How fast it goes depends on how fast the drives and CPU in the customer's machine are--if it's slow it takes a while, if it's fast it's pretty quick. Don't get a gig a minute, but typically do about 20 gig an hour. Or you could use that same SATA host adapter and an SATA-to-IDE bridge to mount their drive on your machine and back it up. I've gotten a gig a minute out of LiveImage Backup on direct-connected drives. -- --John Reply to jclarke at ae tee tee global dot net (was jclarke at eye bee em dot net) |
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