What do you use for backup today?

Roger writes:

One issue with DAT drives is they tend to be output only media. If you
have an out of spec drive you may never notice until you try to restore
a file using a different drive.

I've heard of this but I haven't experienced it. Then again, I use
the same drive for saving and restoring. I've always used HP
SureStore DAT drives.

I've restored on different drives in business environments and that
hasn't presented a problem, although I didn't do it regularly.

It helps to organize your data so that backups are easier. My biggest
challenge is digital photos. I have a "stable" directory that doesn't
change and a "current" directory that has a lot of activity. From time
to time I copy stuff from the current directory to the stable one just
before I make a full backup. The full backups go to the bank vault and
every month or two I move an incremental backup to the vault as well.

I lost about 1200 scans last year when a drive failed before I had
archived them to CD.

While I may make a copy of the W/XP CD and other pricy software, I never
bother backing up software, the registry, etc. If the hard drive goes,
it is an opportunity to start with a fresh install and get rid of the
old crappy software I don't use anymore.

Sometimes it's hard to remember all the things you tweaked, though. I
spent hours yesterday trying to figure out how to send data spooled to
Acrobat Distiller directly to a file, without being prompted for a
file name. I finally discovered (probably for the tenth time) how to
do it. Then I'll probably forget and have to figure it out again next
time.

spodosaurus writes:

Even windows sofware RAID is quite cheap. Unlike hardware RAID, you need
to use the manufacturer's windows drivers.

The motherboards of the last two PCs I've been support hardware RAID
for SATA drives, but I'm wary of trying it out, as things like that
move into the "danger area" of hardware/software interactions that can
cause lots of problems and take forever to sort out.

Arnold writes:

In my opinion, the best backup system for the average home user and even
small business owner in most cases is having his or her desktop computer
equipped with two removable hard drives and using a disk imaging program
such as Symantec's Norton Ghost or Acronis True Image to "clone" the
contents of their working hard drive to another removable hard drive.

This solution is tempting to me, too, although I don't have the budget
for it at the moment. It might be the way I go in future, as tape
drives with sufficient capacity to hold all the disk space I now have
would cost thousands of dollars for the drives alone, plus $100 or so
each for each data cartridge.

And you're doing all this in one fell swoop, the result of which is the
creation of an exact duplicate of your working hard drive. And for *added*
safety you can remove this newly-cloned hard drive from the premises, not to
mention making unlimited additional clones you desire for near-absolute
security.

Yes, being able to move the media elsewhere is important, as it guards
against major disasters.

While it is true that backup software programs can backup the files you have
created in your various programs, they are unable to backup your operating
system and (for the most part) the programs installed on your computer. As
others have pointed out more that once, many, if not most, computer users
have invested substantial time and effort in customizing Windows and
configuring their applications to work the way they want to and putting all
of that back the way it was can be a difficult, frustrating, and
time-consuming effort.

But there is an opposite side to the coin: What happens if you have to
restore the system to somewhat different hardware? All that OS
information in the registry covering the hardware configuration now is
obsolete. You'll be restoring a system that may not even boot. How
do you selective restore from a clone in such a way that you get all
your data and software configuration information back, but you can
still restore to a somewhat different hardware configuration?

After all, if your computer is destroyed, you may not be able to build
one that is rigorously identical to it from a hardware standpoint.
And if the new computer isn't identical, restoring the software
configuration for the hardware may cause a heap of trouble. You have
to be able to modify the hardware configuration information without
changing anything else. How do you do that with something that just
clones the entire drive?

... isn't it nice to know that you
have at hand a perfectly good virus-free clone of your hard drive?

Yes, if I have an identical hardware platform to which I can restore
the clone.

How do you restore the clone to the virus-infected drive without
infecting both with the virus? After all, you'll be running the
cloning program on the machine that has the virus.

Your only choice would be to buy yet a third disk, and clone the clean
disk to that. You _might_ be able to clone back to the infected disk
eventually, too, if you can be sure that no virus will sneak in.

But really, viruses aren't a big problem in my view. Drive failures
and other hardware failures are. A simple drive failure can be fixed
by a cloning program such as you describe. But if you have to replace
other hardware, or build a new machine ... then what?

Not that traditional tape backups are any better in this respect,
though. It's a problem for any kind of backup.

Everything is done outside of your computer because
each hard drive resides in a tray (caddy) that you simply slide into the
computer's mobile rack.

Sounds nice, but what about performance ... and purchase cost? It's
the former lower and the latter higher for removal drives? Disk
drives are the slowest link in the chain as it is already.

There's *no* need to partition and format the new drive; *no* need to
reinstall your operating system on the new drive; *no* need to reinstall
your programs and data files. None of this is necessary. By simply cloning
the previously-cloned hard drive to the new drive you once again have two
functioning hard drives at your disposal. And a simple turn of the mobile
rack's keylock allows the user to boot to either hard drive following the
cloning operation.

Unless your hardware configuration has changed. If your cloned system
expects video card A and you've had to replace your burnt-out card A
with a new video card B, it may be difficult to even boot, although I
suppose in that particular case you could fix things fairly quickly.

As previously indicated, these mobile rack devices are two-piece affairs -
the rack itself and the inner tray or caddy (in which the hard drive
resides) that slides into the rack. They come in all-aluminum models or a
combination of aluminum-plastic ranging in price from about $15 to $50.
Naturally, your desktop computer case will need two 5¼" bays that are
available to house the mobile racks. Mobile racks come in various versions,
depending upon whether the hard drive to be housed is an IDE/ATA, SATA, or
SCSI device. A Google search for "removable hard drive mobile racks" will
result in a wealth of information on these products and their vendors. I'm
aware of many users who have been using inexpensive plastic mobile racks
without any problems whatsoever. Unfortunately, there is no industry
standard involving the design and construction of the racks nor the inner
trays that contain the hard drive.Consequently, there is (usually) no
interchangeability of these trays among the various manufacturers of mobile
racks. Indeed, there is frequently no interchangeability of the inner trays
among different models from the same manufacturer. This lack of
interchangeability may not be an issue if the user will be purchasing a
particular model of mobile rack for a single computer, however, if the user
will have access to other computers, he or she may want to settle on a
specific brand and model of mobile rack that will provide for tray
interchangeability amongst different computers.

I'm not clear on this: are you saying that the drives themselves are
ordinary internal disk drives and it's just a special rack that allows
them to be connected more easily, or what? Don't you have to buy
special removable drives and racks that match?

I can virtually guarantee that once you begin working with two removable
hard drives, you'll have but one regret and only one regret. And that is you
didn't have this arrangement on your previous computer or computers. While
the additional cost involved in configuring your desktop computer with two
mobile racks together with the additional hard drive and disk imaging
software is not negligible, I can assure you it's money well spent.

I tend to agree. Unfortunately I have no money to spend at the
moment. When I do, though, I'll surely look into it, as the
alternative of buying a DLT or DDS4 tape drive would probably be at
least as expensive if not more.

Right now I try to keep irreplaceable stuff in a few key folders and I
just copy those somewhere periodically. Not very convenient and very
error prone, but that's all the budget allows right now. Periodically
I save to tape, although now I require multiple DDS cassettes for each
backup because of the growing size of the disks.

Frankly,
when you consider the enormous advantages of having two removable hard
drives on your desktop computer, the additional cost of so equipping your
computer in this fashion practically pales into insignificance.

If you have the money in the first place, but I don't. Maybe someday.
Thanks for your ideas, anyway--it does sound like going removable may
be the wave of the future.

troll

"sbb78247" sbb78247 don'tknowdon'tcare.invalid wrote:

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From: "sbb78247" sbb78247 don'tknowdon'tcare.invalid
Newsgroups: alt.comp.hardware.homebuilt,alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt
Subject: What do you use for backup today?
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Mxsmanic wrote:
John Doe writes:

I don't use software. I just copy the stuff.

What about things like the registry?


John tends to be a dumb****.

use a imaging program such as drive image, ghost, acronis true backup and a
removable drive. you get an exact restorable image of your drive plus you
can do incremental backups to keep the original image up to date.
--

sbb78247

Speak the truth and leave shortly there after.

Mxsmanic wrote:
John Doe writes:

I don't use software. I just copy the stuff.

What about things like the registry?

I don't think Microsoft has ever genuinely promoted a modular
installation or easy backup of program data, that might promote user
independence. For attempting to preserve my installation, I backup
the whole Windows partition. I have used PartitionMagic, but
currently I am using Partition Manager 2005.

John Doe writes:

I don't think Microsoft has ever genuinely promoted a modular
installation or easy backup of program data, that might promote user
independence.

You make it sound deliberate. In fact, it's just a design flaw, not
something Microsoft has deliberately done.

There are generally two models for configuration data: one is the UNIX
model, with configuration files scattered all over the system, and the
other is the Windows model, with everything in one monolithic,
gigantic, proprietary database. Both have advantages and
disadvantages. The UNIX model is probably friendlier from the
standpoint of back-up and restore operations, though.

John Doe wrote:
troll


WWWAAAAAAAAHHH! John is calling me names. Oh wait, that crying sound is
his little heart breaking because someone told the truth about him.

--

sbb78247

Speak the truth and leave shortly there after.

Mxsmanic mxsmanic gmail.com wrote:
John Doe writes:

I don't think Microsoft has ever genuinely promoted a modular
installation or easy backup of program data, that might promote
user independence.

You make it sound deliberate. In fact, it's just a design flaw,
not something Microsoft has deliberately done.

In fact (fact according to our federal courts), tying users to
Windows is something Microsoft puts great effort into, to the
point of breaking our laws. And for very good reason. Windows, a
monopoly with an 85% profit margin, is Microsoft's cash cow.

There are generally two models for configuration data: one is
the UNIX model, with configuration files scattered all over the
system, and the other is the Windows model, with everything in
one monolithic, gigantic, proprietary database.

Program configuration data has always been scattered, and still
is. Not only in the registry, but in files and folders.
Microsoft's Visual C++ is a good example.









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From: Mxsmanic mxsmanic gmail.com
Newsgroups: alt.comp.hardware.homebuilt,alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt
Subject: What do you use for backup today?
Date: Fri, 15 Jul 2005 22:43:52 +0200
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John Doe writes:

Program configuration data has always been scattered, and still
is. Not only in the registry, but in files and folders.
Microsoft's Visual C++ is a good example.

Individual applications have the option of storing configuration data
in any way they choose. Some Windows programs use the registry,
others still use .INI files, still others have their own proprietary
methods of holding the data. I rather like programs that hold all the
necessary information in their own directories, since that allows one
to restore them to a system by simply restoring the directory, without
worrying about the registry. Of course, it's inelegant in other ways.
It's easy to back up and restore, though.

Mxsmanic wrote:
John Doe writes:

Program configuration data has always been scattered, and still
is. Not only in the registry, but in files and folders.
Microsoft's Visual C++ is a good example.

Individual applications have the option of storing configuration
data in any way they choose.

Microsoft has the power to force the issue, but Microsoft would
rather bind the user to a single installation on one machine.
Fortunately we can still produce files in Windows that can be
removed.

Back to the subject of application data/settings. Some people keep
their programs on a second partition. I have done that before, but
nowadays the operating system installation is massive by itself,
so I do the basic installation/settings plus the most needed
applications, and copy the whole thing.

Good luck.