Backup it up

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20 Dec 2004
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im starting to think its about time i backup windows etc, never really bothered before and just format and reinstall whenever needed, but as we all know that can take up a lot of time, just wondering what others have and use for their backups needs?

how fast can windows+drivers be installed thesedays? and what hardware / software do you use?
 
Don
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for full system backup, the program that really sets the standard is acronis true image

you can make a bootable cd (with just acronis software on), boot from that and create a full 'image' of your hard drive, you can save it on a hidden partition (that acronis can create for you) or onto a cdrs/dvdrs or onto a usb/firewire hard drive, or a networked pc, it has a very simple gui looks like this..

ati_main.png


really awesome software, works really quickly, i think you can download the demo (from say from here http://www.majorgeeks.com/Acronis_True_Image_d2236.html ), in the program use the 'create bootable media' option, burn it to disc, uninstall the software and just boot from that for free :)

for backuping up things like documents and media files (aconris does do a whole system backup, so does include these mind) use something like SyncToy its from microsoft and it's free and simple to use

you can tell it to backup from say C:\Files to E:\Files and it saves the job's you've done before, so next week when you run the C:\Files to E:\Files job, it'll only copy the updated files, saving tons of time (and effort) :)

eb02be1685ea445e.jpg


http://www.majorgeeks.com/download.php?det=4757 (synctoy download)


-edit

i keep an acronis image of my current setup (i run it say weekly i guess) and have an image of a very basic xp install with no drivers installed incase i want a fresh one (takes about 2 mins to restore this one, wheras an xp install takes about 15-20 mins)
 

mrk

mrk

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Only this month I started a backup routine too, weekly I will run Synctoy on my 320GB external disk which pretty much mirrors an exact copy of my second disk (a 320GB seagate sataII) - the primary drive is the 250gb seagate which has just the OS on, I use the second dirve for my docs and backing up program file folders and app setings so backing up the second dirve is the one to do. Synctoy handles it fashionably!
 
Associate
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have you needed to use the backup at all? if so how long did the process take? and did everything restore without any errors
 

mrk

mrk

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which is not going to be too slow :)

I managed to copy over 129GB in roughly 1 hour which is excellent especially over USB 2 !
 
Don
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my basic xp image is 180mb (its a fairly light XP mind), it uses pretty good compression

when you start acronising mp3 and xvid's into your image, it can't compress them very much at all, so the size increases dramatically, the biggest i've made was about 30gb (had loads of games on it)
 
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