The importance of backups

Colin,

Is Powerquest similar to Norton Ghost? With the software you use how long does it take to copy the hard drive?

We had forum discussions about eight months ago about the pro’s and con’s of additional hard drive, external? Internal? DVD backup? And here I am still trying to decide 🙁

Items I don’t remember from those discussions are;

If a severe power surge occurred like a lightning strike wouldn’t you loose Both hard drives? (If the external was disconnected obviously it should not be affected unless it was a direct hit on it).

DVD backup would require setting up a new hard drive but still much better than loosing stored data.

Anyone had a bad experience with having two computers networked and depending on the second computer for backup storage?

Pete

Hi Pete…..

Powerquest and Norton Ghost…don’t know that one. Powerquest creates a single file of your drive which you can store anywhere that’s big enough to take it. Even on a network drive. You make a boot floppy or cd and then recreate your new (or old) hard drive from the file.

I use Maxblast and I think it takes about 30 mins to do about 20G or so. I don’t really watch it.

Once the second drive is set up as a complete copy of the first I just copy over new data as and when I create it.

Severe power surge…..I’ve been working in the computer industry for over 35 years and only once have I ever seen any damage done by lighting stikes and that was on a printer with several hundred meters of interface cable that got hit. Maybe I’ve been lucky!!!

DVD backup….if you use power quest and the file fits you can use this.

In my Corporate days we would send backup material (tape, cd or whatever) off site to a secure, fireproof storage facility. Corporate policy seldom used to check if we could recover it.

Colin

Pete,
I use many of the above systems for backup, and still get in a problem occasionally, but its a milder problem than if I hadn’t backed up at all.
I have an older pc that’s a automated backup storage device. I use Iomega Quiksync to mirror my graphics files on a server location, daily.
I also have a DDS3 Tape drive (12 GB uncompressed ) that I make periodic ( maybe twice a year ) to . I have two removeable hard drive bays in my tower case, and I use Norton Ghost to mirror my boot drive, and data drives to removeable hard drives periodically. And , I periodically backup my graphic files to DVD RW .
The worst case scenario I’ve had is having to reload the OS completely, but I still had all my personal data archived, Email mailbox, bookmarks, etc were safe and had to be copied back once the OS and primary apps were back.

There’s no one best answer, I suspect . I think that you need to be prepared to install your OS and favorite apps, as well as safeguarding Data files and image, Email address book, and browser bookmarks, at a minimum to feel comfortable.
[edit]
< http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~bbertram/caddyDrive s.jpg> is tower with removeable drive caddies. Make an image copy to one , check to make sure the imaged drive is useable, then turn it off until needed.

🙂

Brent

Brent….

The advantage of having a second ‘mirror’ copy of your first is that you don’t need to re-install the OS or any Applications. It’s all ready to go.

Colin

Colin,
I’ve had that not work , though . When I switched mobo’s from a Pent III to an AMD XP 2800+ , neither my regular boot drive, nor the imaged one, would run flawlessly . After a couple hours, each would bluescreen with the same error. I had to rebuild for the new cpu/mobo , but after the OS load, all my vitals ( cookies, email, bookmarks, program .ini files ) were available on the mirrored drive and getting back to normal was pretty fast. I don’t think we’ll ever find a foolproof system, but creating an imaged drive is a great solution for some extra peace of mind.

🙂

Brent

Brent….

You can only do this if you have the same hardware, i.e motherboard, display adapter etc. as all the drivers need to be the same. So two drives in the same box works ok. If one dies all you do is re-configure the BIOS to boot from the other. You can then swap out the dead one.

Colin

Concur, although I’ve had some success with similar systems, but I’m never surprised if the image doesn’t work. Windows 2000 and XP are fairly forgiving and will reconfigure SOMETIMES . Just can’t be counted on !
[edit]
looking through my old post-it notes . My problem was "out of heap space ". I googled on that and the various solutions proposed didn’t work for me, and reloading the OS was a quicker and cleaner option ( considering my paranoid backup schemes ! <G> ) .

🙂

Brent

Just so you fellows don’t think I am a dunce; I do back up to CD but it now takes 19 CD’s to capture all my files:( Too many and too long so the consideration is what now, . . .HD,. . . DVD,. . . both?

Colin, I know you don’t live in central/south Florida or eastern Colorado in the Springs area 🙂 Both those areas get considerably more lightning strikes than anywhere else in the country. And I don’t mean just a little more, it is something like 1,000 times greater so the risk is also much higher. I never bought extended warranty but did here in Florida because it covers lightning and/or power surge. I also use a UPS.

How often does it happen? I just lost the TV we were watching when the hurricane caused the power surging repeatedly for about 30 minutes. (We needed to keep it on for as long as possible to know where the threats were and relate the latest news to several people we know down in Port Charlotte that do not have television or radio. Wierd I know to have neither in this century but they don’t). Neighbors have lost TV’s, computers, satellite receivers as well as large trees. One house two blocks away had a strike come through a wall.

Pete

Pete…

There are plenty of external hard drives out there that connect via USB or firewire. These may be of use to you as you can disconnect them easily. Currently I’m playing with an Iomega Peerless 20G firewire cartridge drive. It works fine but what worries me is that it’s a unique cartridge. I’m thinking of getting a DVD re-writer instead as I should be able to plug the DVDs into any dvd reader.

I’m not very happy with tapes. I’ve had too many become not readable when required.

I guessed you’d be somewhere in a risky place. I’m based in the Uk which is somewhat benign compared to what you guys get. Maybe it would be cheaper and safer for you guys to move here….:-)

Colin

My mom’s an Aussie . That might be an option !

🙂

Maybe it would be cheaper and safer for you guys to move here….:-)

Good One! 🙂 And maybe more truth than humor if you happen to be the target of one of those lightning bolts ~:-(

The external HD that you can disconnect would be safe (as safe as you can get). The DVD would be more work but also have the benefit of using the recorder for other things. I set up a network and transferred very important work files to a second computer but then the printers would not work on either computer so I had to "system restore" to get it to work on the primary XP computer. That is another project.

So here I am scratching my head and still no decision.

Pete

I think you need both the DVD for graphic images and file backups, and a second hard drive that you can mirror, for OS security . Spend the $$ , Pete, we know you’re got bundles under the mattress <G> .

🙂

Brent,

I should hit refresh more often. Did not see your post until after I posted.

Yeah the external HD. But maybe the DVD. Or get my network working. (networking is something where I really don’t have much knowledge).

Pete

< we know you’re got bundles under the mattress <G> .

I sold the mattress to buy the TV that got fried. 🙂

In retrospect, perhaps a poor investment in that TV <G>.

Home networking, particularly if your devices are in the same room, or wireless, so no major cabling is necessary , is quite easy these days.
If you need help planning it or implementing it, we can do that off forum , if you want.

Brent
Certified Network Engineer ( thought I’d toss that in )

Just this past Friday I ordered a 120GB Maxtor One Touch external hard drive. I do all my work on a laptop ’cause I need to be portable. I’ve always backed up my data files and photos, but I’m getting tired of all the CD’s (I don’t have a DVD burner). My local computer guru recommended the Maxtor One Touch, plus the reviews I’ve read of this drive are very good. Ease of use and the fact that it’s external were big selling points for me. It should be on my doorstep tomorrow.

Pete D. I too have a home network and wanted to be able to at least backup my data files and photos. I have yet to figure out how. I haven’t installed XP SP2 on the family desktop yet, but when I do, I’m going to get brave and start from scratch. SP2 has a new Wireless Wizard setup utility in the Control Panel, maybe it will help???

Patti

Patti Anderson wrote:

Just this past Friday I ordered a 120GB Maxtor One Touch external hard drive. I do all my work on a laptop ’cause I need to be portable. I’ve always backed up my data files and photos, but I’m getting tired of all the CD’s (I don’t have a DVD burner). My local computer guru recommended the Maxtor One Touch, plus the reviews I’ve read of this drive are very good. Ease of use and the fact that it’s external were big selling points for me. It should be on my doorstep tomorrow.

That’s a good product, and the one touch backup concept is very good. Just remember that you are powering this from the same power system that holds your system hostage.

All of the ideas under this thread are great, given enough time and money. People get away from backups because they do take time, sometimes go wrong, and we simply outgrow the backup media. You do have to address backup in some way, though. It is interesting how everyone learns to become a system administrator over time, and those duties encroach your regular job.

There are two items that are just as important as the backup. A UPS will add years of life to all components in the system. Regularly using a disk utility like Disk Doctor helps minimize the cumulative effect of crashes and file system errors. For the UPS, you just plug it in and use. Disk utilities are sometimes trickier, and it helps to keep a few notes about what went wrong, so that you can try to eliminate the problem with troubleshooting.

Ed

Patti,

I bought the Maxtor One Touch 250 GB MAC configured external hard drive a while back. As far as I can tell, the drive itself has worked well. I have been confused about the Retrospect backup software. I did not understand at the time that Maxtor is prepared to deal with all Retrospect questions dealing with the version Maxtor has on its harddrives (version 5 then). So, I turned to Retrospect and was sold the latest version which was 6 at that time which did not include the One Touch button feature. Things really got messed up then with the Retrospect 5 from Maxtor on the drive and the added 6 from Retrospect. Maxtor got me straightened out and I finally got a reimbursement from Retrospect. Subsequently I was notified that Retrospect(I think) released 6 with the One Touch button functioning. I did download that but have not used it yet.

Questions I still have include:

1) Should I only backup my homefolder which takes only minutes or my entire drive which takes an hour or hours;

2) Do I need a bootable backup if I always have my original OS 10.3 installation CDs handy. If I need the bootable version, how do I do that and make sure its there;

3) Should I move to the Retrospect 6 software and, if so, should I look to Maxtor or Retrospect for technical help? So far, Maxtor has been a lot more help to me that Retrospect. And, if I understand it correctly, for the version of Retrospect that comes with the drive, the Retrospect support is quite limited.

If you and/or anyone else can help I would appreciate it. I do have an Airport equipped computer and use it wirelessly so if going to a networked system would be preferable, how would that work and what would I need?

Thanks

Carl

Carl, those are all good questions and deserve answers, but do remember that reinstalling your operating system on the Mac isn’t the huge time investment that people who use Windows face. I can do a complete reinstall of my OS, the few updates there are (actually there’s a combo version that does all six at once), and reinstall all of my software in less time than I spent doing nothing but downloading and installing 43 critical updates to a Win XP Pro system I rebuilt a couple of months ago.

Personally, on the Macs, I focus on making sure all of my data and image files are backed up. I also make sure I have copies on CD of any programs I’ve downloaded from the internet, and I usually keep a copy of the disk image or zip files, too.

I’m not at my OS X computer right now, but I on my old OS9 computer, I also make a copy of the "System" folder, which can usually serve as a replacement if I have some corrupt files, and it saves me the hassle of doing a complete rebuild. I can’t remember what/if the equivalent is in OS X. Maybe someone can answer that for both of us, too. That was one neat feature before OS X, so I hope the Macs still have something similar.

Hi, Beth and Carl. No, it’s not as easy as dragging a system folder in X, but the odds of a total irretrievable loss are much less. Usually an Archive Install takes care of anything but a hardware failure.

Carl, I have a LaCie and not a Maxtor so I don’t have the one touch, but what I did was to partition the lacie. I have a small partition that has absolutely untouched versions of X and OS 9 (my imac will boot from 9) in case I ever need it to start up from. (However, you can’t partition once you’ve got data on the drive without losing what’s there. You need to do it when you begin or else back everything up someplace else and copy it back when you’re done.)

The rest of the drive is used for back-up, although I wish now I had set it up with another partition just for photos. I only back up my home folder and any software or software updates that I download. I just send the compressed files over there for safekeeping before I ditch the originals. If I had broadband I wouldn’t bother with that.

EDIT I might add that all photos and important documents also get backed up to CD as soon as they are created.

You really do need to have a hard disk failure from time to time as helps get rid of all the shit you don’t really need. 🙂

Grant

Brent,

I e mailed you but it was rejected by server a number of times. Maybe I used wrong address but tried a number of combinations. Post here or respond if you got it.

Pete

Brent,

Ignore last message. I got yours.

Pete

BTW. Office Depot has a 12X DVD burner on sale this week. Anyone know of any compatibility problems with an HP computer? Or any problems with Sony burners in general?

Pete

Pete,
I just bought a Sony DVDburner, the dual layer DVD job ( if dual layer DVD’s ever hit the market, supposedly by the end of the year ) and it is definitely a nice burner. I have two other "cheapies" that work, but not as smooth as the Sony . The Sony also works on media that the others don’t like ( even though they’re all the same CD+-R +-RW DVD=-R DVD +- RW compatibility, is this too complex a technology for me? You bet it is ! <G> ) .

🙂

Brent

Having a Mac I tend to do the same as Beth … make sure that Data and image files are backed up and downloaded program files are on CD. I have only had to reinstall the OS once and it wasn’t too bad.

I also keep extra backup copies on the LaCie drive and (to a more limited extent) the iBook.

Trouble is you can’t cover everything 🙂

Grant I love you humour … 🙂 and glad to see that you still have it 🙂

Wendy

For windows users I would suggest a RAID 1 set up for back ups. There are many forms of RAID, but the one most of us would find most useful, and the one I use myself is RAID 1. To set up a RAID Array, you have to have a RAID compatible mother board, OR a PCI Raid Card. (they are pretty inexpensive, about $25 last time I bought one for a older dell I have for a back up computer.)
All you do is buy a hard drive at LEAST as large as the one you are using NOW, or bigger. (So if you have a 40 gig drive now, do not go smaller than another 40 gig drive.) To go bigger is ok, but your TOTAL DISK SPACE will ALWAYS only be as big as your SMALLEST drive size. For instance, if you install a 40 gig, and an 80 gig, and set them up in a RAID 1 array, when you click on MY COMPUTER, it will show you have ONE 40 gig hard drive. With Raid 1, you will ONLY have ONE drive showing on your computer.
The set up is simple and pretty straight forward, you load the drivers for the raid card, or mobo..then pop in the two drives, and load your OS. Once that is done, from THEN ON, EVERYTHING that you save to your hard drive has an EXACT duplicate saved on the second drive. Every bit of information is written TWICE, once to your main raid drive #1, and AGAIN to your raid drive #2. In case of a disk failure, all you do is pull out which ever drive died, pop in a second, turn on your computer, it will boot from the drive with the OS already on it, and it will make a TOTAL BACK UP of the remaining drive all on its own.
The best thing about a raid set up, is that you NEVER have to REMEMBER to back up ANYTHING. It is all done for you, every time you enter OR delete ANYTHING on your computer. The only down side I have ever seen to it is, you have to be willing to invest in double the drive space for this protection. But with the price of hard drives these days, it is not that big of an investment anymore.
I use 2 – 250 gig WD HDs in my Raid 1 configuration. (The larger the buffer size on the drive, and the faster the drive speed, the better.) It is BEST to use two MATCHING drives, but it is not mandatory. I also run a USB 2.0 300 gig WD in a external enclosure as well. In this I save old home photos, and any other information I don’t want to EVER run the risk of losing. I also partition that drive into 3-100 gig partitions. On one of those partitions, when I did a fresh reinstall of my OS, RIGHT THEN, I did a back up of the drive, with all driver updates done, as well as any service packs that were out at the time.
Now when I do a fresh install a couple of times per year, just to keep it running smoothly, ( I Disconnect the RAID control, and just reformat ONE DRIVE ONLY) I reformat the computer’s main Hard Drive, and install a copy of the OS from my back up drive that I keep in my gun safe, ( which is fireproof, I would store it off site, but then I would never really USE it. (laugh) The family photos are my main concern anyway..and the originals of those I DO store in another location.)
When I need to do a SYSTEM restore, I use the 300 gig hard drive, send ALL information FROM the 250 gig RAID that is NOT disconnected, to it that I really want to keep. Then reformat the Main Drive. When it is done, which does not take long, I then load the clean OS from the partition on the 300 gig to the RAID Main Drive, then add back the folders I stored over there as well. I boot up, if all is well and good. I THEN disconnect that MAIN drive, connect the back up RAID DRIVE #2, and reformat it to blank, then just plug them both back in again. The main drive will SELF COPY all the information on it, over to the blank raid drive I just reformatted. And I have a clean system to screw up again.(smile)
One more thing that you may find useful is, you can get ALL the current updates on a cd from MS for FREE, as well as the NEW service pack they just released as well. If you have an XP system, I would recommend it highly. No more downloading all those patches, just pop in the disk, and its done in a minute or two, then go on line, and update anything NEW that came out after the CD was made.( Which is not much usually) I know it saves me a lot of time anyway.
All of this takes longer to write and to read than it actually DOES to DO IT.(LAUGH) After your initial RAID set up is done, you can then rest easy knowing you will probably NEVER lose your web sites, email, receipts, scans, etc..etc..etc..EVER AGAIN. And better yet, you NEVER have to remember to BACK IT UP!! If you use your computer for business, which I do, then I would highly recommend a RAID set up. It is what most ISP’s use, as well as web hosts to make sure they can reload your web site they are hosting, just in case they lose a hard drive as well. (Only they use hot swappable drives in a raid 4 or 5 configuration, which is over kill, for most of us anyway.)
So the bottom line is, if you run say an 80 gig drive, you can pick up a second one, AND a RAID controller card for about $100, pop them in, and your worry free. It wont protect you against fire, but not much will. I have lost drives to surges before, but never BOTH of my RAID drives go. (I am not saying they CANT..but if they do, it would really be unusual.) And if you want to do back ups on DVDs before a reformatting session, or you just don’t reformat your system unless you really HAVE TO, then you wont need an external back up drive either.
If anyone wants to set up this type of drive system, just google RAID, and you will find TONS of information about it on line,(such as this ( <http://www.acnc.com/04_01_00.html> ) along with simple set up instructions as well. If you do have any trouble with it, just drop me a line, and I will be happy to help anyone interested in doing so.
Sorry to hear of your mishap Grant, I am glad you are back up and running again. Gary~*

wrote:

Having a Mac I tend to do the same as Beth … make sure that Data and image files are backed up and downloaded program files are on CD. I have only had to reinstall the OS once and it wasn’t too bad.

I also keep extra backup copies on the LaCie drive and (to a more limited extent) the iBook.
Trouble is you can’t cover everything 🙂

Grant I love you humour … 🙂 and glad to see that you still have it 🙂
Wendy

Having lost a whole HD a couple of years ago, I try to make sure my picture files are on at least 3 different HDs on two different computers… About time to backup some more…

Hi Gary,
While I like RAID drives a lot ( I have a Raid array for my data files, but an Ultra320 scsi drive for booting and programs ), the RAID array does nothing for the issue of OS corruption/virus infections, etc. My experience as both a user and a system administrator is that more computers are screwed up by the above and user errors, than by hardware faults. My network servers’ data was never so at risk as when I was logged in as Supervisor, and performing some data maintenance or OS tasks. One thoughtless move, and a partition is gone !
I’d recommend everyone get a RAID subsystem, and I’d recommend everyone find a way to image their OS and program hard drive areas and put them away somewhere safe ( offline) to give them a "known good" bootable system for that day when the "bogeyman" strikes.
I guess it boils down to " one strategy can’t fill all needs ".

🙂

Brent

Ronald,

I did forget to say that important images get backed up to CD too …. the thought of losing some of those is awful.

Maybe when we get a new Mac (still dreaming of a G5) I will keep the iMac as a backup computer ….

Wendy

"the RAID array does nothing for the issue of OS corruption/virus infections, etc. My experience as both a user and a system administrator is that more computers are screwed up by the above and user errors, than by hardware faults."
Nothing does, that I know of anyway. Other than being virus smart, and only loading what you NEED on your computer. As well as making a log on for yourself as a USER, so you not logged on as “administrator” all the time. (Or taking the human factor out of the equation all together.(Laugh) )
But the subject WAS hardware failure, or so I thought anyway. Grant losing his hard drive..right? I simply said, that if you keep a back up of a clean install on an external drive, you can reformat a LOT faster than doing it ALL, Drivers, updates, etc..etc.. each time you want to reinstall your OS, and reformat your hard drives.
BUT, if you do use RAID, and you blow a hard drive, as many do, it works great as a back up. (Plus, you don’t have to do ANY backing up at all, it does it for you)
As you know, working with them all the time, if you don’t have an “auto backup system”, odds are it wont get used as often as it should.
But anyway, if Grant had a Raid set up, he would not have lost ANY data, and could have been back up and running in the time it took to put in a new hard drive. Which is what RAID is designed to fix.
Enjoy,
Gary~*

(still dreaming of a G5)

Well… <http://www.apple.com/imac>

EDIT Sorry, links don’t seem to be working. Here, Wendy:

<http://www.apple.com/imac/>

Barbara,

Oh Wow !! it is beautiful … but I can’t justify buying another Mac this one isn’t old enought yet AND its not long ago since we bought the iBook … Oh but I want to 🙂

Wendy

it is beautiful

Haven’t decided what I think. Kind of like an ibook on a stick from the side and an emac on a stick from the front. The only thing I don’t like about the specs (important for PS/PE) is the graphics card. I hope they do better than that in the first revision.

Barbara,

Lots of questions for you. I may need (liberal use of the word need) to buy my wife and daughter their own MACs to use with iSight. My daughter has a Sony and we haven’t been able to work out video conferencing between her and me yet(if you know of a simple reference please let me know-I have tried to follow the discussions on the Apple Forum and just get confused). How do the lower speeds of the G5 compare with the higher speeds of the G4 in the Power or iBooks for video transmission from the iSight? If the G5 total is better even with a slower clock speed, how long might we have to wait for the G5 in the PowerBook? Any related data would be appreciated. I don’t know enough to even ask good questions.

If you have need for back ups for both MAC and , oh shoot, what’s that called again, oh yes, Windows, just sent me this ********** THE TIP **********

Formatting your hard drive to support both Windows and Mac file systems

With the popularity of hot-pluggable serial technologies, such as USB and FireWire, it’s easy to have truly portable data. By setting up an external hard drive to support both Microsoft Windows and Mac file systems, you can easily carry your data with you, regardless of which operating system you’re running. However, you can’t just use the standard GUI-based disk utilities to create separate partitions and then format them accordingly. The reason for this is that each platform uses a different partition-mapping scheme, which is incompatible between Windows and Mac systems.

Fortunately, with Panther’s diskutil command and its associated option partitionDisk, you can use the Windows partition-mapping scheme on a Mac system. At the same time, it allows you to format a separate partition with a Mac file system. For example, the following command line string partitions an 80 GB external hard drive into two equal partitions, and then formats one partition as FAT32 and the other partition as HFS+:

diskutil partitionDisk /dev/disk1 2 MBRFormat
=> MS-DOS DOS_Vol 38.5G HFS+ Mac_Vol 38.5G

When you plug this drive into a Windows system, it mounts the volume called DOS_Vol and when you plug it into a Mac system, it mounts the volume called Mac_Vol.

If this seems like a good idea, I would appreciate it if someone would interpret "command line string" so I could do it.

Thanks

Carl

Hi, Carl. I’ll email you off-list, since explaining how to partition via terminal may take a while.

Hi all,

Might as well post this url in this thread, too, as it’s been such a motivator for me recently wrt reinforcing the need for backups before doing anything major to your system (like applying SP2):

< http://www.crn.com/sections/breakingnews/breakingnews.jhtml? articleId=23905071>

As has been made clear already here, backup is a non-trival issue with significant tradeoffs all around. My pictures directory is 35 GB and it would take 40 800MB CDs to back it up. Not a very fun option.

For me, Norton Ghost or equivalent is the best choice. If you don’t want to bother remembering to backup then you can always schedule automatic backups. RAID is great for recovering from disk failures and it has the benefit/drawback of writing everything to both copies of the disk immediately. So if you overwrite a photo by mistake or clobber a directory then you could be stuck with that mistake. WinXP makes it easier by allowing rollback to a point in time, but it’s still potentially an issue.

Robert Ash

Further up this thread someone said there’s no perfect backup system. Here’s one that comes pretty close.

I have three hard drives. HDD No. 1 is divided into two partitions; C:\ and D:\. C:\ holds only my OS and Programs and D:\ holds only Data..

HDD No. 2 is also divided into partitions; E:\ holds a bootable image clone of C:\, using Norton Ghost. Norton just bought Powerquest and is now selling it as Ghost v. 9.0. F:\ holds data backups from D:\, using automatic scheduled backups by Stomp’s Backup My Computer software, which is awesomely fast. This keeps all my data off CDs and on HDD’s, which is faster and generally a more reliable way to archive data over the long term.

HDD No. 3 is in a box in my closet, ready to be slammed into whatever bay where it may be needed. We reckon this system can be back in operation from 15 to 30 minutes after an HDD crash, depending on where the crash occurs.

Michael….

Sounds a good set up. Just hope your not in an earthquake zone or similar…..:-)

Colin