The end is Nigh for your Data

If I use a CDR for a anything important, I burn two copies on different makes of disk. In the hope that they both will not fail at the same time.

Reiterating abit. Back up to CD (check the CD). Save image to another drive. Save on another computer. Real easy to save daily work if important to anywhere else but the drive you are working on.

If it is important enough to have in a file - back it up - always.

I am the master Backup.:D

Actually, I am so freaken anal, I backup my important data every night. I back up my stuff on 4 different levels.

-Daily - Personal Data backup on CD but break down by subjects and another copy on a separate hard drive. If you are wondering why I backup data to CD and not DVD is because not all computer has DVD Rom.
-Monthly = All Personal Data backup on DVD
-Bi-Monthly = Update OS with upgrade
-Yearly = I keep an extra copy of DVD at my mom's house unless my house gets burn down.

I am kind of anal with my data because I have documents, pictures, and researches that are over 12 years.

I have two hard drives. One is for the OS and the other is for Data. The one for the OS, I split it into two partitions so that I also have a temp area(Partition) too.

The data hard drive is a pull out and that never ever touches the internet. Once, I plug that in, the internet gets disconnected. I guess the only other way my data can get mess up is if a virus has already landed on my computer before I disconnect from the internet. Nevertheless, I can always fall back on the Monthly Backup or Hard drive. I even wrote a program in Excel to compare file/folder properties of differences - to give me an analysis of what changed. I do that once a week to make sure nothing get corrupted.

I highly do recommend Norton Ghost, PhotoLady. Ghost is probably one of the best program ever made. You don't know how many time it has saved my rear. As a programmer, I work with registry manipulation quite often. If you mess up the registry, you can be in trouble but Ghost will have it back up in less than 6 minutes.

Make sure when you Ghost, your file system is NTSF. It makes a huge difference in speed compared to Fat32.

Also, I do reimage my computer every night using Ghost thanks to the kind Doc for introducing the ATXOFF.com to me.

If you split the partition correctly, you will only need to reimage your OS. Why do I do this? Just incase of malicious virus sitting in the background.

http://discussions.virtualdr.com/sho...hreadid=175497

Thought I'd drop a gentle reminder again.

Like a Phoenix from the ashes, this thread has arisen again :D :D


I urge everybody who has not yet done so to read this thread, this subject will always be of vital importance.

Well, I wanted to add to this as I wanted to clarify my comments about ghost before. But after going back to work recently, (my new job as a PC tech takes me away from here, so, I've not been around here much); however, we do use ghost at work almost daily and I have to say it's a great program for backing you important data.

Okay here's the deal. This thread is now a sticky.

Stickiness, fame at last :)

Syncback is a great little backup tool, it was recommended to me by Falcon2000, have look.

http://www.2brightsparks.com/products.html

Hi. I've got two questions for you all. I'm fairly new so take it easy on me with the tech talk please. Thanks. :o

I've been reading through this thread and haven't seen any mention of the usefullness of external hard drives. (unless I missed it) I was looking at drives like this one HERE. It utilizes Iomega Automatic Backup & Symantec Norton Ghost. This seems like an appealing alternative to manually making a backup disc to me, plus you get the added space and some other extras. With the reading I've done they make them sound so easy to use, especially with the automatic backup scheduling. A computer challenged lazy mans backup system if you will. Wouldn't this be a very reliable, and even prefered, way to backup your entire system?

The backups I've made in the past have been to a DVD+R disc from a backup file I create using Sonic Record Now. I assume that it makes a backup of everything since the choice I'm given is "Backup All?". Is this good enough?

External HD's are great wrt ease of use, portability, and security.
However, on an 'apples and apples' basis they cost more per GB, and are not quite as fast as IDE ATA and SATA drives.

The automatic backup feature seems like a good idea, especially for the forgetfuls(like the author of this post).

I'll probably go with a software program like Norton Ghost even though my Sonic Record Now program has a backup feature. From what I've read here, it seems to be one of the most reliable choices.

Ski - Thanks for the info on the external hard drives. I was just curious what other people's thoughts were about using them as a backup tool. Mainly because some cost about the same as the Norton Ghost program itself, and you get some extra gigs as a bonus. How well they compare to software backup programs is what I don't know. Decisions Decisions! *sigh*

Ah, backing up. You know what's better than backing up? Not backing up, but using RAID-5 instead. ;)

It'd take a minimum of two simultaneous HDD failures to bring the array down.

Edit: Just saw the dates, oops. Sorry to resurrect an old thread.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by photolady

..... restore the backup to the computer, does this mean I can do so without having to reinstall all my programs? .....

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:confused:

photolady; IF you set up the OS and all installed programs in the same partition/drive the entire partition/drive shall be bit-by-bit copied! Boot records, hidden files, pimples and all!!! Ghost automatuically wipes out the old info on the partition/drive and replaces it with the "perfect" Ghost you saved (on HD and CD, eh?). Return to your previous state of perfection ought to take a total of less than 10 minutes!!!

I backup every time before I add any program and every time after I delete something. I also, by default programming of my head, do a Sunday backup to a CD. I believe in CYOA, and it has enabled me to completely recover from a disaster in <10 minutes.

I CYOA by having the Ghost application on a floppy drisk.
Hd failure? Worm? Parasite? Hand grenade? No problem with GHOST!

Ghost, never compute without it! :D

2 Years old...Acronis True Image is better IMO....


Liam