Backup help – suggestions

slipd · 23 Sep 2011 at 22:02

Hey guys,

I've near on given up a machine I'm looking at for a mate that won't boot so I've decided I’m going to start again…

The machine only has an 80gb (45gb in use) hard drive and it's completely accessible in any other environment apart from its native one! Ubcd4win, slax, my test machine - the list goes on.

So what I want to do is copy everything off of the drive onto a backup drive (in my test machine), reinstall windows on the dodgy drive back in its own environment and then copy the old data back to it when its working again. If I try to manually select folder and start copying/pasting you get protection errors which you have to keep responding to, I don't want that. I just want to get EVERYTHING off of the drive and be able to get EVERYTHING back afterwards. My mate can then pick through it and decide what he does and doesn't want to keep afterwards – that won't be my problem

Any ideas on the best solution for this scenario? Any nice free apps that might be able to help me?

slipd · 23 Sep 2011 at 23:52

Would norton ghost be up to the job?

theheyes · 24 Sep 2011 at 11:46

Could you explain the 'protection errors' a bit more, as I've always just manually copied over the users folder from within Linux without a problem.

KIA · 24 Sep 2011 at 11:55

He's probably got the drive connected to a Windows box. Use an Ubuntu live CD.

slipd · 24 Sep 2011 at 12:04

Yeah, the drive I'm trying to copy is in a windows box

I think its the system files on the drive that are either protected or they want confirmation etc... Ubuntu Live then? Pretty easy to do?

I was looking at ghost last night. I don't want the copied files/folders to perform as a bootable drive after I've copied them, I just need the content; pictures, documents etc. They'll be copied back on to the system once I've reinstalled windows.

theheyes · 24 Sep 2011 at 12:34

Yeah whack in a live CD. If it's in a Windows box you'll have to take ownership of the files because it respects the permissions on them.

slipd · 24 Sep 2011 at 13:51

theheyes said:
Yeah whack in a live CD. If it's in a Windows box you'll have to take ownership of the files because it respects the permissions on them.

Ubuntu Live okay? Will it be as simple as copy/pasting or do I have to set something up first? How do I take ownership

KIA · 24 Sep 2011 at 14:22

Ubuntu live is fine. It's a copy and paste job. No need to worry about permissions.

theheyes · 24 Sep 2011 at 17:25

Yeah Ubuntu is fine, I use Linux mint but it really doesn't matter although sticking to one of the popular distros is the best bet. Once it's booted it's simply a case of accessing the local hard drive and then copy pasting the files you want to an external drive. It's a easy as that.

edscdk · 24 Sep 2011 at 17:28

boot from an erd disk

rename windows windows.old
program files program files.old
Docuemtns and settings (take a guess)

manually delete the system restore folder (the hidden system one on the root that windows puts restore info in).

reinstall his OS, tell him to delete the 3 .old folders once he is happy all his files are back in place...

if anything gets lots its his faulty not yours... 0% chance of a you losing anything...

slipd · 25 Sep 2011 at 13:07

edscdk said:
boot from an erd disk

rename windows windows.old
program files program files.old
Docuemtns and settings (take a guess)

manually delete the system restore folder (the hidden system one on the root that windows puts restore info in).

reinstall his OS, tell him to delete the 3 .old folders once he is happy all his files are back in place...

if anything gets lots its his faulty not yours... 0% chance of a you losing anything...

I used an erd disk recently actually, at work. It's discontinued now isn't it?

Is it still available anywhere, I wouldn't mind having a copy for home

Going back to backing up with ubuntu, I'm 'testing' not installing from the cd which is fine but I'm getting similar errors to ones you would get in a windows environment; atm I'm not copying everything, just doing one folder at a time. I've started with docs and settings and I'm getting 'error copying' errors - I think it was an avg .dat file or something so not a major problem. I just skipped it and it carried on...

Something else though, I left it working and came back and the monitor had gone to sleep, when it woke up I was presented with a screen saver error – is that normal?