Backing Up

grumpycrab

thanks - I converted the disk to a Basic disk in the end - cannot remember what with.

murphydavid

Something I thought I would mention as it cost me dear in time recently. Did you know that if you attach an external hard drive that is almost full to a windows XP computer and do not explicitly tell windows not to monitor it for system restore then because it is almost full windows will delete all your system restore data for all your drives including your c:/drive even though the c:\ drive itself may have lots of free space.

joe134

Hi Guys, What,s the difference between drag/drop files to usb stick, and backup ,I,m using backup/restore on windows, which I use to back C>D daily?
Never tried restore from cd/stick/dvd, so , not sure if I,ve done them right;.
Can I restore the drag/drop ones back to pc or is that just a copy? not restorable
Would I be better using windows to back up to stick, so it,s restorable?
edit;;just backed up to E,discs x 5. no dvd,s.
when I put usb stick in it shows as F? which I dd to, but when I use windows backup, no F available, just Eor D?? any advice welcome.

NiftyDigits

joe134 wrote: »

Hi Guys, What,s the difference between drag/drop files to usb stick, and backup ,I,m using backup/restore on windows, which I use to back C>D daily?
Never tried restore from cd/stick/dvd, so , not sure if I,ve done them right;.
Can I restore the drag/drop ones back to pc or is that just a copy? not restorable
Would I be better using windows to back up to stick, so it,s restorable?
edit;;just backed up to E,discs x 5. no dvd,s.
when I put usb stick in it shows as F? which I dd to, but when I use windows backup, no F available, just Eor D?? any advice welcome.

Buy yourself a proper external hard drive, instead of messing around with multiple discs and USB flash drives. You'll just give yourself a headache otherwise.

murphydavid

joe134 wrote: »

Hi Guys, What,s the difference between drag/drop files to usb stick, and backup ,I,m using backup/restore on windows, which I use to back C>D daily?

Drag/drop requires you to select files manually (very time consuming) and if you have selected a file you did previously you will get asked if you want to overwrite the historical copy skip or rename. You may not know if it was updated so skip looses the update, update looses the historical copy and rename takes forever. So why go to all that bother - a free program like cobian backup (many others) will do it all for you. Also drag drop does not compress files.
I presume you read post one of this thread and the types of backup you need.
Drag drop will not preserve your operating system or the programs you have installed or any windows updates and security fixes. So if you have your PC set up exactly as you like it and spent time doing that I would strongly advise you do a disc image of your c: drive.
To be sure it is an exact copy I believe it is best to do this while not booted into your main operating system thus insuring no bits cant be copied because they are in use. I use macrium reflect free to do this. Use it to make a boot disc - then boot up onto the DVD before doing the disc image.
The free version of reflect is very cumbersome but I have not found a better free program that does the same thing and this thread does not go into disc imaging to any great degree. There are a couple of points I would be grateful to get definitive answers for these being.
1. Is it absolutely necessary to be booted on an alternative operating system to get a complete backup of your main operating system. I ask this because I have heard of shadow copy but every time I use a backup program that uses shadow copy I still get a list of files that wont copy using shadow copy.
2. Is there a better FREE program that will boot my computer into an alternate operating system. I did try linux/Ubuntu but even the most up to date version gave me errors re NTFS master file table which scared me off.

Tryingagainandagain

I've read the first post and some subsequent posts, but as they are several years old I am looking for some up to date information.

I am doing a project whereby I will be accumulating information for about a year, writing up and submitting sections at a time. I will be adding to/editing my work as I go.

I am however required to submit the finished work in about a year's time.

I do not want to lose my work so want to back it up (I don't tend to do this in general as I don't have anything that important on my computer).

Is backing up to CD still the way to go or has anyone come up with another, reasonably priced method?

grumpycrab

Tryingagainandagain wrote: »

Is backing up to CD still the way to go

Not an expert but CD/DVD are good for archives (e.g. monthly snapshot if its important stuff).

For regular backups you need to copy stuff from the disk which the stuff is on to another (internal of external) disk or USBstick or network/cloud resource. I won't talk about cloud resources but you need an offsite backup in case your house burns down. (cloud, CD/DVD disk, or another USB stick)

For real-time backup if you have Windows8 use File History.
Or try Quikprotect (great if you know exactly you want to backup and has a realtime option and will keep upto 5 verions etc etc)
https://lenovo-na-en.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/21683

charlieheard

Tryingagainandagain wrote: »

I've read the first post and some subsequent posts, but as they are several years old I am looking for some up to date information.

I am doing a project whereby I will be accumulating information for about a year, writing up and submitting sections at a time. I will be adding to/editing my work as I go.

I am however required to submit the finished work in about a year's time.

I do not want to lose my work so want to back it up (I don't tend to do this in general as I don't have anything that important on my computer).

Is backing up to CD still the way to go or has anyone come up with another, reasonably priced method?

I think manual backups to drives or CD/DVDs are fine, but depend on you remembering to do it. I would suggest using one of the real-time backup programs such as dropbox, skydrive or google drive. They give you varying amounts of free space - 2-5Gb, which should be enough for most projects. The data is always backed up whenever the PC is running, and as a bonus you can access it from any internet-connected device

Tryingagainandagain

Thank you, Grumpycrab and Charlieheard, for your replies.

I will take a belt and braces approach and copy to CD as well as a real-time back-up.

j.smith1981

Finally sorted out my backups of my 2 live VPS's (Virtual Private Servers) there's a handy tool in Virtualmin core that backs up. I do mine incrementally (means only changed data since the previous backup) on all domains on the server (because I am the one maintaining their space and data) every day at midnight.

I do a full backup no matter what's been changed on a sunday at midnight.

As I said previously on all domains because I'm the only one with root access to the server, I also upload clients files on there too (the ones not available to the public) for their own access (like to give my clients access to everything I have about them, wireframes and all that kind of stuff).

The reason for that's because the only time I actually bother backing up my own development work (like compiling software for testing to then later put possibly onto my production server) is when I want to make a change (using my own vps management sandbox server. In fact I really should get into the habbit of using snapshots it's a heck of allot less time consuming. Rather than simply copying the drive of the virtual machine across my sandbox servers file system.