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Community Newsletter: Q&A: How to back up and restore my PC to the exact same condition it was...
- 8/30/07 3:39 PM
reply to backup HD size
by CockerB - 8/26/07 3:51 AM In reply to: Backup HD Size by rsimonsonWith True Image you can certainly specify the new size of the partition to be restored. One can also use a clone procedure to move to a new drive.
One thing that hasn't come across clearly is that there is a big advantage to restoring only the C: partition, leaving all your data in other partitions untouched. Typically it takes about 20 minutes. Compare that with a fresh install of XP, to say nothing of the application software.
In some cases where they have talked about a complete backup I think they mean that all programmes are simply copied. Most of that will be unnecessary and if it's not an image it won't be restored in bootable condition so you still have to do a fress install of XP.
Colin
Cloning Software
by harralrw - 8/25/07 5:27 PM In reply to: All Roads Lead to Rome... by Wolfie2k5I have used Acronis TrueImage Versions 9 and 10, Both do an outstanding job of doing what you want and you can schedule periodic backups at a fequency you choose. You can then recover your full HD if it crashes or something can not be repaired using the repair reinstall procedure.
Disk Drive Backup
by ksb1 - 8/26/07 8:17 AM In reply to: All Roads Lead to Rome... by Wolfie2k5I have also opted to do backups, simi-automaticly by buying a second equal size hard disk drive. The hard drives, one Seagate and the other Western Digital each came with software to make a complete backup or clone of the other drive. The software which is similar to Norton Ghost, but is Windows based (thus easier to work with), makes a full identical backup, and is free.
I chose this option, rather than a RAID setup so that I would not backup an infected drive and thus have two cloned but infected drives.
The only issue is after making the copy, realizing which is the original C drive and which is the backup or D drive. I solved this small confusion by setting up a folder on each drive, that I labeled as Drive C. After backup, I simply rename the Drive C folder as Drive D and thus am able to tell the original from the backup.
Also, when making the backup, be sure to set up the backup, complete as a boot up drive, complete with the operating system files. This allows me to simply swithch the boot drive in my bios, during startup, and thus I can use the backup drive at any time without having to physically switch the hard drive cable. Should the C dirve physically fail, which did happen shortly after I had purchased it, I simply switched the cable, and was imediately back in business. I then returned the failed drive under warrantee, and had my backup drive reinstalled. (During this outage, I was unprotected, but it is highly unlikely to have both drives fail at once. If I was overerly cautious, I could have waited to install the backup Hard drive, before using my computer again.
The only negative is that you have to remember to occasionally do a complete backup, which can take 1/2 hour up to 1 1/2 hours to complete, depending on how much you have stored on the drive. In my case, I have an 80 Gigabite HD that is half full and takas about an hour to complete. I usually do the backup overnight and have the new backup by morning. Occasionly, I will do the backup during the day which watching a baseball game, which is plenty of time to complete any backup.
RAID Striped drives
by richchrono - 11/13/07 2:00 AM In reply to: All Roads Lead to Rome... by Wolfie2k5As you mentioned, Bill, drives are dirt cheap.
Consequently, I've got 4, mirrored and striped. Four 400 GB drives appear as one logical 800 GB drive. The fact that they're striped SATA 300 drives helps make up for performance lost from mirroring.
This configuration is ripping fast and gives me real time backup.
Best of both worlds...
One Concern I have
by waytron - 11/13/07 2:30 AM In reply to: RAID Striped drives by richchronoI have several computers with Mirrored drives as well as a striped only setup on one of my video editing computers. My concern with mirrored setups is what happens when a drive fails. Hard drives are changing so fast, I don't think I will be able find a drive replacement to rebuild the raid. Has anyone run into this problem? I have not had a failure yet on any of my mirrored systems, so I have never had to rebuild the raid. But a few of them are approaching 4 years old now and Like all backup plans, you really never know how good it really is until you actually have a failure and need to recover your data. And of course, it is too late then. I am thinking that I should purchase spare drives for any mirrored system at the time of the initial purchase?
simple and easy
by ldsaint - 8/18/07 5:48 AM In reply to: How to back up and restore my PC to the exact same condition it was... by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
Use norton ghost or equivilent (theres a feature built into nero aswell)to make regular back-ups to DVD or another hard drive. Failing that, see if your motherboard supports raid this is a system designed to do exactly what you are talking about, if it doesn't you can eith upgrade or get a pci raid card then buy another hard drive and set it up in raid 1 (mirroring). Your problem has been answered :O)
DRIVE BACKUP FROM PARAGON!
by GERONIMO - 8/18/07 5:52 AM In reply to: How to back up and restore my PC to the exact same condition it was... by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
Backup is always a serious question ; here your problem is to get what is called an IMAGE of your Hard Drive; several programs are perfectly adapted to your requirements ; most of them if not all use a similar technology , so ... the real choice is betweenn several (not so secondary after all
Let me begin by strongly recommending the last version of DRIVE BACKUP Professionnal from Paragon software ; with this program that I use permanently , your configuration can be saved as many times as you have space to save the image ; therefore , in case you need, just insert the Boot CD that comes WITH the program , click restore when needed and tell where are your stored images ; select one of them and you are done ; no reinstallation , no patches , no hassle , nothing .
A lighter version of the program is EXCACT IMAGE from the same brand ; some years ago I would have turned you to DRIVE IMAGE from Powerquest; but POWERQUEST sold the all programs to SYMANTEC and therefore I DO NOT ADVISE turning to that possibility : Paragon has a tech support above any compliments ; but with SYMANTEC forget about tech suport ;with them nothing , absolutely NOTHING is free! You will have to pay boxes and moreover before you get an answer , you have the time to die properly ;
You may also turn to ACRONIS ; they also have such an Image program ; some friends of mine turned to Acronis and are satisfied; the program is seriously cheaper than paragon's ; but believe me , if you are at the point where you even IGNORE that such programs exist , Paragon'program is your thing .
Be carefull about some announcements by V-com about Images ; they just bought Paragon's engine and license so ... And from them you will not find the help you might get from Paragon;
now , a little more details : Paragon's program will take the image on the go WHILE WINDOWS is working ; you need not reboot ; everything is transparent ; you need to have a storage place for the image and that's all Where will you store the image ? The best on my opinion is an EXTERNAL HDISC ; USB 2 is very fast , as is Firewire connection ; anything of the kind works .
depending on the size of the image , the process may take about an hour for a large drive (more than 20 GO ) ; just to give you an idea , with the recommended compression rate of Paragon , an image of a 20 G0 HD weighs about 15 GO ; do not be tempted to compress more the archive (this is the name of the image) ; a restoration of a severely compressed image may result in loss of data ; now , I said , in case you need : it may happen that your actual configuration does not work ; no reboot , no desktop , windows restoration points do not work aso . As I said ,delivered with the software , there is a little program designed for BURNING immediately a BOOT CD ; with that at hand , and Paragon makes it all , you do not have to know about iso images and such, in case of a major problem , as I said INSERT THE BOOT CD you built using Paragon's sofware ; this , in case your BIOS is set to boot first on CD -ROM , and then on the hard Disc ,will lead you to a Good user interface (GUI) and you just have to choose the options that are presented to you for restoring . This takes half an hour at most for a Large disc (40 GO say ) ; then you just reboot when you are told and that's it after changing your BIOS settings , meaning that now you start up from the Hdrive , not on the CD -ROM . What is simpler ? OLIVIER GEBUHRER
Backup
by pebe1 - 8/18/07 5:55 AM In reply to: How to back up and restore my PC to the exact same condition it was... by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
After having had many crashes due to an intermittent hard drive, with loss of data and the hassle of reinstalling everything, I now have a simple and foolproof backup procedure.
Most programs allow you to back up to CDs or DVDs but then you have to change disks frequently. A better method is to fit a second hard drive.
I use Norton Ghost and I can backup my entire ‘C’ drive on to the second drive - it copies every sector without reading the files. My drive contains about 20G pf programs and data, and Ghost takes about 20minutes to back it up in compressed form to about 16G of space on the second drive. So I can start the operation and walk away and do something else.
I do that full backup whenever I add programs or about every 2weeks in order to backup the downloads of Windows, Zone Alarm and AVG antivirus.
I also backup important data like letters in Word, photos and emails and address book using a free program called ‘AllWay Sync’. I think the program was originally designed to enable files from work to be taken home, worked on, and the modified files put back on the computer at work. It is very flexible and allows backups on a regular schedule, at startup, at shutdown, or automatically after any data has been changed.
The program is a dream to use and is free to personal users. But it monitors the number of bytes copied and if use is very high, it classes you as a business user and you get charged a small once-only fee. That happened to me because I used it to back up all my photos. I realised after that if I had initially copied them all to the second drive, the program would only have been concerned with the copying the files that changed and I could have saved the fee. But then, that’s life!
I would recommend this combination of backup programs for hassle-free operation.
restoring your computer
by willyderidder - 8/18/07 6:12 AM In reply to: How to back up and restore my PC to the exact same condition it was... by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
Doing what Bill is asking is not all that difficult, it justs takes an awful lot of time. The solution is to make an image of your hard drive, I use Acronis true image personal, but there are other programs available.
Once you have an image on an external hard drive you can even boot-up with an acronis recovery cd and restore your new hard disk with an exact copy of what was on your previuous drive.
Drawbacks? Time It took me approx 6 hours to make a bu of +/- 40 GB of data and it takes me approx the same amount of time to restore it.
Once the program is running you can relax and have a beer but I can imagine it is not something you do every day.
6 hours???
by scioara - 8/24/07 5:01 PM In reply to: restoring your computer by willyderidderI too use Acronis as my main imaging program, but I take WAY WAY less than six hours. Even on a Pentium 150 laptop which I have to boot from floppies I can push a complete image of the 20 GB HD in less than two hours. My "universal" XP install - with full Office 2007, and all kinds of graphic programs takes less than 40 minutes to restore even on on a 1GHz PIII.
I guess what I am trying to say is, there might be something wrong with your setup.
True Backup
by purposed - 8/18/07 6:41 AM In reply to: How to back up and restore my PC to the exact same condition it was... by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
If your Windows computer has a single hard drive, you can (at least up to but not necessarily including Vista) get and install a second (not smaller) hard drive as the slave, and use Norton Ghost to ghost your first hard drive to the second. Then if/when your first one fails, you can remove it, connect the second one as the master, and you have your PC back as it was.
I have done this. For Linux there is supposedly something similar but I have not personally tried it. For a Mac, I dunno.
This is not as convenient as it may sound - ghosting a hard drive of todays size can be an overnight thing. Also, when you decide to ghost again, you must first reformat the backup drive to clear EVERYTHING off it.
Restoring Your Computer
by Acaykath - 8/18/07 6:56 AM In reply to: How to back up and restore my PC to the exact same condition it was... by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
Restoring your computer can be a simple process if you are prepared for it, and many ways to do it.
First you'll want to back up your data. This can be done in whatever format you want, cds, dvds, online storage, external hard drive, etc...
Second, to enable a speedy restore, you will want a backup of your operating system and programs. Unfortuneately, the best way to get this is to go through the tedious process of installing and updating all of your programs manually on a freshly reformattted drive, then making a disk image with one of the many tools that offer this feature.
Once you have these two items, it is a simple matter of booting from the image and copying it to the original hard drive and then restoring your data, a process that should only take an hour or two, rather than an entire day.
To Restore Your Computer to Pre-Crash Status
by clownlady - 8/18/07 7:09 AM In reply to: How to back up and restore my PC to the exact same condition it was... by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
Unfortunately I have been there - done that. My hard drive crashed, I lost pretty much everything and had to do the reinstall bit. I had been saving letters, consultations, etc on CD's, so had those, and my back-ups were pretty much the same - just copying to CD's.
The product "Norton Ghost" was recommended to me. While I am not a fan of Norton products in general, I did install Ghost and use it to make disk images on DVD's as part of my routine.
The replacement hard drive installed was flakey, and it crashed about a month after being installed. I was able to use my disk image to restore the system. Worked great! I am still using Norton Ghost, and am making the move to purchase an external hard drive to back up to - it's much faster and a little easier than the DVD's.
Hope this helps,
clownlady.
How to backup your computer
by infiniteya - 8/18/07 8:27 AM In reply to: How to back up and restore my PC to the exact same condition it was... by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
Backing up your data is not difficult, especially on a Windows XP or later PC. The first thing to do is get an external hard drive that is larger than what you are backing up. If you have more than one computer, buy a large external hard drive so you can move the external drive around and backup all of your computers. When shopping for an external drive, you can find ones with and without backup software. Check cnet reviews for included backup options.
However, you don't need extra software if you have a Windows NT, XP or Vista system. Windows backup can use about any storage device, but you will need an Automated System Recovery (ASR) floppy to save some recovery information. If you don't have a floppy drive you can get a USB floppy drive which will work for the recovery. Windows backup can also be configured to run on a schedule. To recover all of your data you will need the ASR floppy and the backup file on the external hard drive.
Here is an article on how to use backup and recovery http://www.helpwithwindows.com/WindowsXP/howto-18.html. Remember to print the article and keep with your ASR floppy so you can reference it if you have to recover from a total crash. Good luck, and while it is easy to backup and recover, I hope you never have to use it.
Restore
by danbaker30 - 8/18/07 9:06 AM In reply to: How to back up and restore my PC to the exact same condition it was... by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
If we are talking Microsoft, and no additional software. You would have to install your operating system (no other updates) and then a complete restore.
There are many other software utilities that allow you to do a "Bare Metal" restore, Ghost probably being the most popular. My one piece of advice, what ever method you chose, understand it in side and out before you stake your backups on it.
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