quick storage solution question

phill1978

phill1978

phill1978

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seen as its not enterprise, nor just about 'harddiscs' i thought id post in this section 'roit :mad:!' :D


Ok,

seen as my computer has just thrown a BOOTMGR wobbly and im typing on an old comp now it got me thinking more and more about storage backups for my stuff. Now saving valuable Pictures,mp3, documents and movies is one thing and i guess there are a few easy solutions. But what im really after is a storage device(s) and some software that will easy ghost an image.. perhaps even pop up with the request monthly so i dont forget, at the same time i would like multiple ghosts.. so if i want to ghost PC (a) and PC (b) to the same storage device i can do it easy.

will norton suffice i imagine its pricey, are there any decent ghosting and backups that will work nicely to a remote storage area.

cheers
 
Buy a decent external HDD and use Acronis. I have found Acronis to be much better than Norton for use in the home and you can pickup a decent 500GB external HDD for under £70 these days.
 
philtorrens said:
Buy a decent external HDD and use Acronis. I have found Acronis to be much better than Norton for use in the home and you can pickup a decent 500GB external HDD for under £70 these days.
Click to expand...

cheers phil sounds like a plan

is your external disc sat in some sort of NAS/DAS or is it Sata

cheers
 
also saw this thing..

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=HD-011-IO&tool=3

not quite enough space for both pc`s but would backup my upcoming gaming build id expect. the thing is it features MozyHome Online Backup service with 2GB free.

now i know its just a hd enclosure but looking at Acronis its about £25 a year for 250GB online space? i suppose i could use a cheap decent ghost util for win7 and backup to this thing and then in tern backup and image online ?

does that sound alright or am i missing the fine print where mozy online`s 2gb is only free for a year etc..
 
Hi mate. I have a 500GB external Lacie HDD and currently use the built in image creation software on Win 7 ultimate for backups. When I was running Vista I used Acronis True Image Home to create an image of my HDD which I then stored on the Lacie drive. Acronis true image home can be picked up for around £30. Or you could try EASEUS Todo which is free and will clone your HDD also :) http://www.easeus.com/disk-copy/
 
philtorrens said:
Hi mate. I have a 500GB external Lacie HDD and currently use the built in image creation software on Win 7 ultimate for backups. When I was running Vista I used Acronis True Image Home to create an image of my HDD which I then stored on the Lacie drive. Acronis true image home can be picked up for around £30. Or you could try EASEUS Todo which is free and will clone your HDD also :) http://www.easeus.com/disk-copy/
Click to expand...

sounds good m8, one more question.. lets say i have the same problem i got now like a BOOTMGR fail or full harddisc fail but luckily thanks to your advice i went out and got myself an external HD and used Win7 image creation (for the sake of argument)

how easy would it be to get the pc working again if the image was stored on a remote disc ? is there an option to boot from it and hows that setup.. ideally my thoughts are broken hd :( plug in ghost copy HD and works :) how easy is it to get that working

the idea of an image to me is for full recovery so if my system wont boot i can use the ghost image

cheers
 
It's very easy - with Acronis for example you can create a bootable recovery disk which you can use to boot your system and then browse to the backup image you have stored on the external HDD which will then restore your system from that image. With regards to the issue you describe - the BOOTMGR error... have you tried booting from your o/s disk and selecting 'repair your computer'. There should be an option to 'fix startup problems' and it should replace the missing/corrupt boot manager file.
 
^^ same applies to Windows 7 - you can create a recovery disk and boot from this, then browse to the backup image you have created on an external HDD.
 
Well with RAID everything gets instantly backed up including boot data etc, with absolutely 0 loss in speed or need to manually initiate it.

Plus if you're extremely paranoid you could get 3 or 4 drives in RAID1.
 
philtorrens said:
It's very easy - with Acronis for example you can create a bootable recovery disk which you can use to boot your system and then browse to the backup image you have stored on the external HDD which will then restore your system from that image. With regards to the issue you describe - the BOOTMGR error... have you tried booting from your o/s disk and selecting 'repair your computer'. There should be an option to 'fix startup problems' and it should replace the missing/corrupt boot manager file.
Click to expand...

phil thanks for all your help m8. Acronis is worth a look i think and il get an external enclosure.

with regards to BOOTMGR

I have vista 32bit on c:\ 32bit win7 on J:\ now i have no dvd/cd as it is a download from Microsoft academic for university students so the whole process was fine i had win7 and vista but then after moving lots of stuff to my tiny win7 partition i thought id try and get rid of the huge vista partition.. of course it wouldn't let me but i read online (incorrectly) that the bit-locker 'area' wasn't needed, so that was promptly deleted.. ohh dear

i had tried to create a win7 recovery before the reboot but my it wouldnt accept my CD-R, so i downloaded a win7 recovery file and put the files on a cd and hoped to boot from cd.. when i did i got the same message.

i have now just downloaded a vista and win7 recovery boot and burnt as an iso to cd and hopefully this will work :(


cheers for all your help
 
Hi mate. I have a 500GB external Lacie HDD and currently use the built in image creation software on Win 7 ultimate for backups. When I was running Vista I used Acronis True Image Home to create an image of my HDD which I then stored on the Lacie drive. Acronis true image home can be picked up for around £30. Or you could try EASEUS Todo which is free and will clone your HDD also http://www.easeus.com/disk-copy/
Click to expand...

I'm interested in this as well but wondered if the above facility only comes with windows 7 ultimate - what about the professional version??
 
Hi hitman - have a look in the backup and restore centre to see if you get the option to create a system image. I would have thought the professional edition has this feature too :)
 
To get to the image creation tool in Windows 7, open the Start menu, and type "backup." Then click the Backup and Restore entry that appears. "Create System Image" is the first link to the left within the Backup and Restore dialog box..
 
To get to the image creation tool in Windows 7, open the Start menu, and type "backup." Then click the Backup and Restore entry that appears. "Create System Image" is the first link to the left within the Backup and Restore dialog box..
Click to expand...

cheers - found it ! :)
 
phil used EASEUS tool it works great !!

now have my ghost drive made. and a new spintpoint F1 500gb running as the main drive.

cheers for the help

will investigate nas/das solutions later on when i have some money :)
 
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