Hard Drive Backup Options

I used to back up my Win98 machine with Norton Ghost on CD-Rs. It's taking
too many CDs to do this anymore. What is the best way to do a complete back
up with today's BIG hard drives?

I'll be upgrading to XP soon. I'd like to backup before I attempt this.
I have a DVD burner now.
I'm willing to purchase an external USB drive.
I prefer to make a hard drive image, in case my drive crashes.
I want to be able to retreive individual files from the image, without doing
a complete restore.

--
Bob D.

Bob D. wrote:
> I used to back up my Win98 machine with Norton Ghost on CD-Rs. It's
> taking too many CDs to do this anymore. What is the best way to do
> a complete back up with today's BIG hard drives?
>
> I'll be upgrading to XP soon. I'd like to backup before I attempt
> this. I have a DVD burner now.
> I'm willing to purchase an external USB drive.
> I prefer to make a hard drive image, in case my drive crashes.
> I want to be able to retreive individual files from the image,
> without doing a complete restore.

Go to www.dealsites.net and find an external hard drive that is twice the
size of your current setup - it cannot be that much stuff you want to backup
if you are still doing it to CD. heh.. Get a 320GB or something big enough
and either use NTBACKUP that comes with XP or Retrospect that will probably
come with external USB drives like Western Digital and use it to schedule
backups to the drive - allowing overwritres when you run out of space, etc..
Then you have a decent home backup solution.

Now - if you want to do a complete image - you will need software like
Symantec/Norton Ghost or Altiris TrueImage. There are others - those are
just the two that come to my mind right now. You can use those to make
periodic images of the drive/partitions and they should also come with a
"reader" that will allow you to read the image files you made and pull
individual files from those images if you desire to do so.

I have just over 1.2TB on my home computer and a bit more than that on my
home media server - I backup to networked hard drives/arrays such as the
Buffalo centers that can also serve as print servers and the likes. Your
method may be different. =)

--
Shenan Stanley
MS-MVP
--
How To Ask Questions The Smart Way
http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html

You can use Norton Ghost and back up to DVDs also.

MD



"Bob D." wrote:

> I used to back up my Win98 machine with Norton Ghost on CD-Rs. It's taking
> too many CDs to do this anymore. What is the best way to do a complete back
> up with today's BIG hard drives?
>
> I'll be upgrading to XP soon. I'd like to backup before I attempt this.
> I have a DVD burner now.
> I'm willing to purchase an external USB drive.
> I prefer to make a hard drive image, in case my drive crashes.
> I want to be able to retreive individual files from the image, without doing
> a complete restore.
>
> --
> Bob D.
>
>
>
>

If you are upgrading to XP and can add a DVD R/W to the package this would
solv the problem. A second solution is to install a second hard drive and
keep all your data on the second hard drive and you operating system on the
C drive. If you have to format the C drive the data on the second hard drive
will not be lost. I have used that solution and I have not lost any data in
a couple of years.

Luckeyo

"MadDog" <MadDog@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:F5CEE67A-211A-4C04-8E65-ACB7A2812C22@microsoft.com...
> You can use Norton Ghost and back up to DVDs also.
>
> MD
>
>
>
> "Bob D." wrote:
>
>> I used to back up my Win98 machine with Norton Ghost on CD-Rs. It's
>> taking
>> too many CDs to do this anymore. What is the best way to do a complete
>> back
>> up with today's BIG hard drives?
>>
>> I'll be upgrading to XP soon. I'd like to backup before I attempt this.
>> I have a DVD burner now.
>> I'm willing to purchase an external USB drive.
>> I prefer to make a hard drive image, in case my drive crashes.
>> I want to be able to retreive individual files from the image, without
>> doing
>> a complete restore.
>>
>> --
>> Bob D.
>>
>>
>>
>>

And when the data hd fails?
or the mobo controller has a problem and corrupts the files?
I've had both occur in last two months.

"luckeyo1" <star35@vcn.com> wrote in message
news:Obac4Dm8FHA.3416@TK2MSFTNGP15.phx.gbl...
> If you are upgrading to XP and can add a DVD R/W to the package this would
> solv the problem. A second solution is to install a second hard drive and
> keep all your data on the second hard drive and you operating system on
> the C drive. If you have to format the C drive the data on the second hard
> drive will not be lost. I have used that solution and I have not lost any
> data in a couple of years.
>
> Luckeyo
>
> "MadDog" <MadDog@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
> news:F5CEE67A-211A-4C04-8E65-ACB7A2812C22@microsoft.com...
>> You can use Norton Ghost and back up to DVDs also.
>>
>> MD
>>
>>
>>
>> "Bob D." wrote:
>>
>>> I used to back up my Win98 machine with Norton Ghost on CD-Rs. It's
>>> taking
>>> too many CDs to do this anymore. What is the best way to do a complete
>>> back
>>> up with today's BIG hard drives?
>>>
>>> I'll be upgrading to XP soon. I'd like to backup before I attempt this.
>>> I have a DVD burner now.
>>> I'm willing to purchase an external USB drive.
>>> I prefer to make a hard drive image, in case my drive crashes.
>>> I want to be able to retreive individual files from the image, without
>>> doing
>>> a complete restore.
>>>
>>> --
>>> Bob D.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>
>

Sat, 26 Nov 2005 04:46:36 GMT from Bob D. <bobmgtd@insightbb.com>:
>
> I used to back up my Win98 machine with Norton Ghost on CD-Rs. It's taking
> too many CDs to do this anymore. What is the best way to do a complete back
> up with today's BIG hard drives?
>
> I'll be upgrading to XP soon. I'd like to backup before I attempt this.
> I have a DVD burner now.

1. Use your backup program to create an on-disc backup file <4 GB,
then burn it to a DVD and delete it.

2. For more flexibility, I recommend an external hard drive with USB
2.0 connector as recipient of backups, but your Win98 system may not
support that.

--
Stan Brown, Oak Road Systems, Tompkins County, New York, USA
http://OakRoadSystems.com/
"If there's one thing I know, it's men. I ought to: it's
been my life work." -- Marie Dressler, in /Dinner at Eight/

Fri, 25 Nov 2005 23:44:54 -0600 from Shenan Stanley
<newshelper@gmail.com>:
> Go to www.dealsites.net and find an external hard drive that is twice the
> size of your current setup - it cannot be that much stuff you want to backup
> if you are still doing it to CD. heh.. Get a 320GB or something big enough
> and either use NTBACKUP that comes with XP or Retrospect that will probably
> come with external USB drives like Western Digital and use it to schedule
> backups to the drive - allowing overwritres when you run out of space, etc..
> Then you have a decent home backup solution.

A decent solution, I agree. My own choice is to leave the external
drive turned off and not connected to the computer except while I'm
actually making backups. That way its window of vulnerability to
electrical spikes is much smaller. On the other hand, it does take
discipline to do a manual backup every day.

> Now - if you want to do a complete image - you will need software like
> Symantec/Norton Ghost or Altiris TrueImage.

I think you meant Acronis TrueImage. :-)

--
Stan Brown, Oak Road Systems, Tompkins County, New York, USA
http://OakRoadSystems.com/
"If there's one thing I know, it's men. I ought to: it's
been my life work." -- Marie Dressler, in /Dinner at Eight/

Bob D. wrote:
> I used to back up my Win98 machine with Norton Ghost on CD-Rs. It's taking
> too many CDs to do this anymore. What is the best way to do a complete back
> up with today's BIG hard drives?
>
> I'll be upgrading to XP soon. I'd like to backup before I attempt this.
> I have a DVD burner now.
> I'm willing to purchase an external USB drive.
> I prefer to make a hard drive image, in case my drive crashes.
> I want to be able to retreive individual files from the image, without doing
> a complete restore.
>
---------------

Starting from basics, why do you want to backup anyhow? You might lose your
data from several reasons: 1) hard disk failure, 2) power supply failure (think
lightning strike within a mile or two), 3) house burns down, 4) burglary 5)
personal stupidity (I really didn't *mean* to over write that data).

Some people choose to use a second hard drive for backup because it is
convenient. However that only provides *some* protection from #1 above and
still leaves you totally exposed to #2, 3, 4 and even 5 depending on what it is
you did.

Personally, I've chosen to use a DVD R/W drive. It holds up to about 5GB which
is a lot of data -- more than I need. I don't typically backup my OS or
software programs since I have disks to reinstall those if necessary, I just
backup the data files which I've set up to save into their own subdirectories.
I have the system set up to run an auto incremental backup every night (using
SmartSynch), then once a week I change the DVD for another one. This gives me
several generations of backups that I rotate -- allowing me some recovery from
doing dumb things as well as from items 1-4 above. Some of them I occasionally
store in someone else's house for protection from 3 & 4.

When I bought my DVD R/W a year ago it was only $50, and I suspect you can find
one even cheaper today.

Good luck...

Bill

Shenan Stanley wrote:
> Go to www.dealsites.net and find an external hard drive that is
> twice the size of your current setup - it cannot be that much
> stuff you want to backup if you are still doing it to CD. heh..
> Get a 320GB or something big enough and either use NTBACKUP that
> comes with XP or Retrospect that will probably come with external
> USB drives like Western Digital and use it to schedule backups to
> the drive - allowing overwritres when you run out of space, etc..
> Then you have a decent home backup solution.

Stan Brown wrote:
> A decent solution, I agree. My own choice is to leave the external
> drive turned off and not connected to the computer except while I'm
> actually making backups. That way its window of vulnerability to
> electrical spikes is much smaller. On the other hand, it does take
> discipline to do a manual backup every day.

Shenan Stanley wrote:
> Now - if you want to do a complete image - you will need software
> like Symantec/Norton Ghost or Altiris TrueImage.

Stan Brown wrote:
> I think you meant Acronis TrueImage. :-)

Hah! Yes - yes I did.. Thanks for correcting there!

--
Shenan Stanley
MS-MVP
--
How To Ask Questions The Smart Way
http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html

Bill: A question to you. When I tried to think out how to backup my hd, I
read articles and decided to make mirror images. However, someone said
something to me very profound. In essence, he backed up like you, because his
experience with computers was that as time goes on, more and more "unknow'
stuff enters the hard drive and the computers slows down. He felt by copying
data files, he eliminated that problem.

THE QUESTION: You said: "I have the system set up to run an auto incremental
backup every night (using SmartSynch)" What is Smart Synch; where does one
find it, and is there a 'system' you use to follow the disks from day to day
over time?