ot. pc back up

On or around Tue, 23 Aug 2005 22:09:32 +0100, "Paul - xxx"
<[email protected]> enlightened us thusly:

>
>LOL, NTFS has never been totally bad ... indeed it's quite good these days
>..

Been speculating as to whether NTFS is better/worse then FAT32. It's
possible to change from FAT32, but not back again, ISTR.
--
Austin Shackles. www.ddol-las.net my opinions are just that
"I am tired and sick of war. Its glory is all moonshine... War is hell"
Gen. Sherman (1820-1891) Attr. words in Address at Michigan Military
Academy, 19 June 1879.

On Wed, 24 Aug 2005 08:57:10 +0100, Austin Shackles
<[email protected]> wrote:

>On or around Tue, 23 Aug 2005 22:09:32 +0100, "Paul - xxx"
><[email protected]> enlightened us thusly:
>
>>
>>LOL, NTFS has never been totally bad ... indeed it's quite good these days
>>..
>
>Been speculating as to whether NTFS is better/worse then FAT32. It's
>possible to change from FAT32, but not back again, ISTR.

I doubt whether anyone has ever wanted to...


--

Tim Hobbs

'58 Series 2 88" aka "Stig"
'77 101FC Ambulance aka "Burrt"
'03 Volvo V70

Austin Shackles came up with the following;:
> On or around Tue, 23 Aug 2005 22:09:32 +0100, "Paul - xxx"
> <[email protected]> enlightened us thusly:
>
>>
>> LOL, NTFS has never been totally bad ... indeed it's quite good these
>> days ..
>
> Been speculating as to whether NTFS is better/worse then FAT32. It's
> possible to change from FAT32, but not back again, ISTR.

It's debatable whether anyone would want to.

As with anything, properly backed up data and maybe a ghost or image is the
real key to less stress ..


--
Paul ...
(8(|) Homer Rules ..... Doh !!!

On Wed, 24 Aug 2005 09:58:05 +0100, "Paul - xxx"
<[email protected]> wrote:

>As with anything, properly backed up data and maybe a ghost or image is the
>real key to less stress ..

Yup. Wouldn't have any Doze machines if it were up to me, needs and
customers must etc. Ghost is the only solution for workstations and
desktops, works alright for servers too I guess, but we don't have any
Doze servers.

The perfect solution is rsync and a small script called synchro which
acts as a wrapper for rsync and backs everything up each night.

RAID falls over if two drives fail at the same time - which is a real
****.

Mother" <"@ {m} @ came up with the following;:
> On Wed, 24 Aug 2005 09:58:05 +0100, "Paul - xxx"
> <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>> As with anything, properly backed up data and maybe a ghost or image is
>> the real key to less stress ..
>
> Yup. Wouldn't have any Doze machines if it were up to me, needs and
> customers must etc. Ghost is the only solution for workstations and
> desktops, works alright for servers too I guess, but we don't have any
> Doze servers.

Agreed.

> The perfect solution is rsync and a small script called synchro which
> acts as a wrapper for rsync and backs everything up each night.

... but this has to be available for the platform in use ...

> RAID falls over if two drives fail at the same time - which is a real
> ****.

Agreed, but it _is_ a most unlikely situation that it can 'almost' be
discounted. I've certainly never heard of it happening without significant
outside influence (An electric hit to the buildings roof ) which is where
the separately stored data back-up comes into it's own ...

--
Paul ...
(8(|) Homer Rules ..... Doh !!!
ebay stuff 5234286719

On Wed, 24 Aug 2005 12:51:03 +0100, "Paul - xxx"
<[email protected]> wrote:

>Agreed, but it _is_ a most unlikely situation that it can 'almost' be
>discounted. I've certainly never heard of it happening without significant
>outside influence (An electric hit to the buildings roof ) which is where
>the separately stored data back-up comes into it's own ...

About 8 months ago. One of Gradwells servers IIRC, Richard Ashton
spent a long sleepless night fixing it. Killed all Control postings
to unna and formal injections regarding the uk.* hierarchy.

Course, for true resilience, RAID, rsync to another RAID then rsync to
a eNAS box 250 miles away, which is itself rsync'd locally...

Hard drives are cheap...

So, back to the original post, is this the best way: Separate hard drive
(USB?) and use Ghost to back up both drives?
Richard




"Austin Shackles" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
> On or around Tue, 23 Aug 2005 08:25:23 GMT, "Richard"
> <[email protected]> enlightened us thusly:
>
>>I would like to do a complete back up of my pc (two hard drives). I am
>>using
>>Win XP home but it will only let me back up to floppy. Anyone know the
>>best
>>way to back up to cd or dvd.
>>
>
> install DVD drive, copy files from disk to DVD.
>
> set it running at bedtime, cos it'll take a while to write if you're
> talking
> in GB...
>
> I find it hard to believe that XP home, penc though it is, only allows of
> backing up to a floppy, though.
> --
> Austin Shackles. www.ddol-las.net my opinions are just that
> In Touch: Get in touch with yourself by touching yourself.
> If somebody is watching, stop touching yourself.
> from the Little Book of Complete B***ocks by Alistair Beaton.

Richard came up with the following;:
> So, back to the original post, is this the best way: Separate hard drive
> (USB?) and use Ghost to back up both drives?

Depends upon your idea of 'best'.

Certainly it's a good solution, but I would still think that having two 80G
drives both using less than 20% of their capacity is a bit of a waste and
you'd be better served by combining all the data onto one drive, maybe
partitioning it 30/50G split. 30G as c: drive for programs and
applications, and 50G for data. Then use the other 80G drive as the backup
medium for ghost images of both the partitions..

Doing it this way would mean you could totally automate the process in a way
that will be easier to implement and use than an external drive as there are
no connections to make and break each time a backup is required.

--
Paul ...
(8(|) Homer Rules ..... Doh !!!
ebay stuff 5234286719

Richard....

Your house gets broken into and your pc gets stolen. If you are backing up
from one hard drive to the other, tough, you have just lost the lot.

The important thing for you to do is backup your irreplaceable data. The
stuff you cannot go to the shops and buy. Typically, your photo's, word
processing, spreadsheets, database etc. and don't forget your e-mail folder
and address book.

You will almost certainly find that all the text based stuff will fit onto a
cd, you may need to resort to a dvd, but text based data does not really
take up much space.
If you have a big collection of photos they can be saved to dvd (or two?).
It is photos and videos that take up huge amounts of space. I have
individual images bigger than 100MB but for most people they are a great
deal smaller.

Having backed up your irreplaceable data onto removeable media (cd / dvd)
AND made more than one copy AND tried reading the copy to make sure that you
really do have a copy! you can store that copy off-site (garden shed?) or at
least where it will not be destroyed or stolen at the same time as your pc.

When it comes to backing up your operating system and your installed
programs, it is, as some have already suggested, not a bad idea, and quite
convenient, to ghost an image onto another drive. That will give you
reasonable protection against the failure of your hard drive, or what is
actually more likely, the corruption of that drive either by a virus or,
even more likely, by a bit of finger trouble.

My preferred structure is to partition your two drives to give yourself 4 x
40GB
The primary partition on the first drive would be C: (call it "progs") and
this would only contain the operating system and installed programs.
The primary partition on the second drive would be D: (call it "data") and
this would contain your irreplaceable data. You can configer MS Word,
e-mail, address book etc. to use this drive by default.

You will then now know that if you back up everything on D: your data is
safe. At the moment I expect that it is probably all over the place and if
C: gets hit with a problem you may be "stuffed".

When it comes to assigning drive letters, if your operating system allows
it, use "higher" letters for the other drives. Your CD rom drive could be
R: for example. It can make life a bit easier later if you add more hard
drives. Games and some other software that access a cd while in use needs a
consistent drive letter.

Anyway, back to where we were, you still have a second partition unused on
each physical drive. Let's call them M: and N: So your first hard drive
contains C: and M: and your second hard drive contains D: and N:
Copy (create a ghost image) D: to M: and C: to N:
If one of your hard drives fails, you can now restore from its backup on the
other drive.

Drives are very cheap (80GB about 30 pounds). Losing your photos and
documents could be catastrophic.

Don't bother with Raid arrays. Even mirroring is a waste of time. DO back
up your irreplaceable stuff onto cd dvd or even onto a hard drive that you
then remove from the pc and keep it somewhere else.

There are lots of strategies. Once your data is safe, it is not a bad idea
to wipe you hard drive and re-instal Windows from scratch every year or so,
or whenever it gets a bit clunky. It gets rid of all the crap that builds
up, bits of progs that have been installed and "removed" (they never are
completely).

Les

In message <[email protected]>, Paul - xxx
<[email protected]> writes
>Mother" <"@ {m} @ came up with the following;:
<snip>
>> RAID falls over if two drives fail at the same time - which is a real
>> ****.
>
>Agreed, but it _is_ a most unlikely situation that it can 'almost' be
>discounted. I've certainly never heard of it happening without
>significant outside influence (An electric hit to the buildings roof )
>which is where the separately stored data back-up comes into it's own
>...
>
Happened to me when a PSU went tits up with an over-voltage and caused
enough damage to render the array unusable. Fortunately I had a recent
backup of my data and was able to recover. I only backup data on my home
systems, although reinstalling the OS + apps is a pain I tend to do a
full rebuild every 6-9 months on windoze (sic) systems - they always
seem to perform much better after a rebuild, mainly due to the dross
that accumulates when apps don't uninstall dependencies properly.

Will
--
lancre dot net - The personal domain of Will and Cath Wilkinson.
Send e-mail to news dot will at lancre dot net

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Public key can be obtained from ldap://certserver.pgp.com

On or around Wed, 24 Aug 2005 12:25:49 GMT, "Richard"
<[email protected]> enlightened us thusly:

>So, back to the original post, is this the best way: Separate hard drive
>(USB?) and use Ghost to back up both drives?

There's a certain amount to be said for a USB HDD which can be detached from
the machine.

however, a cautionary tale:

make sure the batstard will work, though. A friend of mine got one to back
stuff up onto, but it comprehensively failed to work under windows 98SE,
despite apparently being compatible according to the box. [supposition,
unproven, it was preformatted with NTFS][1]

so, on the advice of others, said friend (who's not a computer geek) decided
to upgrade to windows 2000. The upgrade failed, I know not why, and I was
then asked to try and sort it. I ended up putting XP on it, for want of an
OS to install which I knew worked (possible that the 2000 install CD was
faulty or something, or some odd hardware incompatibility).

XP install went fine, saw the USB drive no problem. However, the process
removed all files from the desktop (since the desktop gets remade into an XP
one) which included a whole heap of pictures which were intended to go on
the new USB drive, and yes, you've guessed it, not saved elsewhere. Major,
universe-sized bummer. However, although geeky types like me know that
saving stuff (only) on the desktop is not a good plan longterm, nothing in
windows ever tells the ordinary user that: seems entirely reasonable that
something you want to get at is in a folder on the desktop, at first sight.
For all I know, it clears the "my documents" stylee things that windows
always clutters the machine with, an' all. Personally, I don't use any of
'em - I have my own preference for a data directory tree, and it's on a
different partition than windows.

[1] so it could maybe have been solved by a reformat, probably on someone
else's machine that recognised it as a drive.
--
Austin Shackles. www.ddol-las.net my opinions are just that
"All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others"
George Orwell (1903 - 1950) Animal Farm

On or around Wed, 24 Aug 2005 14:05:30 GMT, "Dadio" <[email protected]>
enlightened us thusly:

>When it comes to backing up your operating system and your installed
>programs, it is, as some have already suggested, not a bad idea, and quite
>convenient, to ghost an image onto another drive. That will give you
>reasonable protection against the failure of your hard drive, or what is
>actually more likely, the corruption of that drive either by a virus or,
>even more likely, by a bit of finger trouble.

The main thing this bit saves you is time, though. the OS and installed
software can be re-installed from its original sources, generally. One
thing I do have is a directory with all the install files I've ever
downloaded (or most of) and several copies of that on CDs around the place.
Especially relevant for stuff which vanishes, like the CD-cloning software
which has all suddenly disappeared in a rash of copyright-infringement
paranoia.

Not that I used it for making illicit copies... I have one that lets me
mount virtual CDs which is dead handy for all that software that insists on
seeing the CD in the drive before it'll run, and saves having a raft of CD
drives.

modern software has a tendency to notice that the CD is not original,
unfortunately.
--
Austin Shackles. www.ddol-las.net my opinions are just that
"All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others"
George Orwell (1903 - 1950) Animal Farm

On or around Wed, 24 Aug 2005 12:51:03 +0100, "Paul - xxx"
<[email protected]> enlightened us thusly:

>Agreed, but it _is_ a most unlikely situation that it can 'almost' be
>discounted. I've certainly never heard of it happening without significant
>outside influence (An electric hit to the buildings roof ) which is where
>the separately stored data back-up comes into it's own ...

what about those Hitachi/IBM deathstar drives?


there are sometimes batches of HDDs which all go down about the same amount
of use, and sods law says that you'd get 2 in yer RAID which died
simultaneously.

apparently Seagate are now good, having been through an unreliable pacth a
bit back and upped the quality accordingly.
--
Austin Shackles. www.ddol-las.net my opinions are just that
"All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others"
George Orwell (1903 - 1950) Animal Farm

On Wed, 24 Aug 2005 16:38:32 +0100, Austin Shackles
<[email protected]> wrote:

>Not that I used it for making illicit copies... I have one that lets me
>mount virtual CDs which is dead handy for all that software that insists on
>seeing the CD in the drive before it'll run, and saves having a raft of CD
>drives.

A Doze virtual CD - how quaint!
What is its name?

On Wed, 24 Aug 2005 16:40:35 +0100, Austin Shackles
<[email protected]> wrote:

>On or around Wed, 24 Aug 2005 12:51:03 +0100, "Paul - xxx"
><[email protected]> enlightened us thusly:
>
>>Agreed, but it _is_ a most unlikely situation that it can 'almost' be
>>discounted. I've certainly never heard of it happening without significant
>>outside influence (An electric hit to the buildings roof ) which is where
>>the separately stored data back-up comes into it's own ...
>
>what about those Hitachi/IBM deathstar drives?
>
>
>there are sometimes batches of HDDs which all go down about the same amount
>of use, and sods law says that you'd get 2 in yer RAID which died
>simultaneously.
>
>apparently Seagate are now good, having been through an unreliable pacth a
>bit back and upped the quality accordingly.

A good RAID setup should have at least one cold spare waiting to
spring into action as soon as one fails, so even if 2 fail they'd have
to fail within about an hour of each other not to allow the array to
have become redundant again.

But you can't do it all with belt, t'is true. That's where the braces
of a disaster recovery tape (and cupboard full of spare drives) come
in.




--

Tim Hobbs

'58 Series 2 88" aka "Stig"
'77 101FC Ambulance aka "Burrt"
'03 Volvo V70

On or around Wed, 24 Aug 2005 18:37:38 +0100, Mother <"@ {m} @"@101fc.net>
enlightened us thusly:

>On Wed, 24 Aug 2005 16:38:32 +0100, Austin Shackles
><[email protected]> wrote:
>
>>Not that I used it for making illicit copies... I have one that lets me
>>mount virtual CDs which is dead handy for all that software that insists on
>>seeing the CD in the drive before it'll run, and saves having a raft of CD
>>drives.
>
>A Doze virtual CD - how quaint!
>What is its name?

The one I favour is called Fantom CD, will copy-and-burn images of CDs and I
believe DVDs, and will mount the image files on any number of virtual
drives, which will auto-remount at boot-time if asked. Limits apply like
presumably the number of drive letters and the fact that typical CD images
are about 700MB each, so you tend to eat HDD rather fast.
--
Austin Shackles. www.ddol-las.net my opinions are just that
Once, when the secrets of science were the jealously guarded property of
a small priesthood, the common man had no hope of mastering their arcane
complexities. Years of study in musty classrooms were prerequisite to
obtaining even a dim, incoherent knowledge of science.
Today, all that has changed: a dim, incoherent knowledge of science is
available to anyone. - Tom Weller, Science Made Stupid, 1986

The reason i use two drives like that is that c is the 'normal' drive and d
has loads of pics and video on. In the past when i used to use just one
drive it went wrong and i lost everything. so i figured operating system on
one drive and pics on another. safer??

Richard


"Paul - xxx" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
> Richard came up with the following;:
>> So, back to the original post, is this the best way: Separate hard drive
>> (USB?) and use Ghost to back up both drives?
>
> Depends upon your idea of 'best'.
>
> Certainly it's a good solution, but I would still think that having two
> 80G drives both using less than 20% of their capacity is a bit of a waste
> and you'd be better served by combining all the data onto one drive, maybe
> partitioning it 30/50G split. 30G as c: drive for programs and
> applications, and 50G for data. Then use the other 80G drive as the
> backup medium for ghost images of both the partitions..
>
> Doing it this way would mean you could totally automate the process in a
> way that will be easier to implement and use than an external drive as
> there are no connections to make and break each time a backup is required.
>
> --
> Paul ...
> (8(|) Homer Rules ..... Doh !!!
> ebay stuff 5234286719