I've actually never performed a backup of my system. I would like to change that, only I'm not famliar with the process or various methods. I would like backup my entire system. I do not have a DVD burner, and I have 11 gigs of free space. I cannot afford any type of portable storage at this point in time. Would it be possible to store a backup on another partition, or would the backup be too large? I have Acronis True Image 9 if that helps. I'm just not exactly sure how much space an image file of my disk would take up. TIA
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I need help backing up my system
- Thread starter Zer0_II
- Start date
Chances are, your backup would be too large. It's also a bad idea to store your backup on the same drive that is in use by the system. If the drive dies, your data and your backup are gone. DVD Burners can be found for $30 if you look. It's cheaper than getting an external HDD.
Nasty_Savage
Extremely [H]
- Joined
- Mar 19, 2001
- Messages
- 37,650
Well, here's how I take it. For the most part, you don't really need to or want to back up your entire system. Down the road, doing a clean install when things get klugey is often the best bet. It also is a good mental checker to rid yourself of all the crap you installed, used once, then never used again. Lean and mean and clean install for the win.
Now, what to do about your important stuff you want to keep? Me? I play with danger. I have mutliple computers I occasionally toss my data in a redundant fashion on my various servers/workstations. But for the most part, its rarely up to date and if something goes wrong I'm going to lose something that's important for sure. At some point when I get off my lazy butt I'll put a more server centric solution in place with the stuff I have.
Now for a single workstation, with no other computers networked there are several things you can do. Poor man's best setup in my opinion is to have seperate partitions that seperate your OS and your important files. I occasionally installed my games and the like to the D:\Program Files folder back in the day. That way, if the OS ever took a crap, I can format the C:\ partition and reinstall windows clean and my data on the D:\partion would be intact (like my saved games, etc.) where all I would generally have to do is move the folder out of d:\program files, reinstall the game, then copy the new one back over and overwrite the clean install. Saved tons of patch downloads. Of course, this does not help if the entire Hard Drive gets hosed. Then you are SOOL, unless you get lucky and have a second drive and are able to rescue your files (did this with my game rig last year.)
So the second best solution IMO is to obviously have a second HD. If your computer supports RAID-0, then you can hook it up and install it and pray to god both HD's don't die at the same time. To be honest, it would be a rarity that this would actually happen, but it IS possible. If your computer does not support raid, I would consider a second HD anyway and buy something like Ghost and maybe once a week, clone your HD to the second drive or create a disk image of it on your second drive so all you have to do is boot up ghost and clone it back down again. That would probably be your best bet and quickest way back in action. The downside to this is if you have something that is generally eating away at the system, you've ghosted that too, but if you ghost once a week and you catch it in time, you only lose a week's worth of work if that virus or whatever smoked your machine you are able to catch in time.
Next best soultion would be an external drive. Firewire or USB 2.0. I favor Firewire because I'm a Mac guy at heart. But don't buy one of those ridiculous premade ones. Buy a drive enclosure and your own hd and put it together. Save a ton of cash that way. The external you can at least disconnect after your through with it, so if you were a bad boy and god strikes down your computer with a lightning bolt your data may be spared. This solution I tend to like the best. Only one caveat. I would make a compressed image of a clean install w/o programs and just toss my data on the drive with the space left over. This way you can shave time off a rebuild but just imaging with a clean lean and mean Operating System and erinstall the things you need as you need them. Then you can drag the data down off the same drive after the image is complete.
As a side note, you can also install the operating system on the external drive and boot off of that to save data on your hosed drive. That is if you are lucky the bad drive is not mechanically screwed up, and your BIOS supports booting from a USB or Firewire drive. Lots of modern Motherboards will allow this, at least with USB 2.0 in the boot sequence section of your motherboard. Its pretty much been a standard with any Mac with a firewire port. One thing about OSX that's cool is it doesn't have that sticky/dicey driver installtion routine and you can install Mac OS X on a spare drive and generally not have to worry about what model Mac you are booting. It works flawlessly, and its great for a tech support guy like myself.
That's my quickie opinion, feel free to poke holes in them or add to them. I could go into tape drives and whatever, but I still say the best bet is to build yourself a low end server with high disk capacity. But that's for the uber nerd in us all.
Now, what to do about your important stuff you want to keep? Me? I play with danger. I have mutliple computers I occasionally toss my data in a redundant fashion on my various servers/workstations. But for the most part, its rarely up to date and if something goes wrong I'm going to lose something that's important for sure. At some point when I get off my lazy butt I'll put a more server centric solution in place with the stuff I have.
Now for a single workstation, with no other computers networked there are several things you can do. Poor man's best setup in my opinion is to have seperate partitions that seperate your OS and your important files. I occasionally installed my games and the like to the D:\Program Files folder back in the day. That way, if the OS ever took a crap, I can format the C:\ partition and reinstall windows clean and my data on the D:\partion would be intact (like my saved games, etc.) where all I would generally have to do is move the folder out of d:\program files, reinstall the game, then copy the new one back over and overwrite the clean install. Saved tons of patch downloads. Of course, this does not help if the entire Hard Drive gets hosed. Then you are SOOL, unless you get lucky and have a second drive and are able to rescue your files (did this with my game rig last year.)
So the second best solution IMO is to obviously have a second HD. If your computer supports RAID-0, then you can hook it up and install it and pray to god both HD's don't die at the same time. To be honest, it would be a rarity that this would actually happen, but it IS possible. If your computer does not support raid, I would consider a second HD anyway and buy something like Ghost and maybe once a week, clone your HD to the second drive or create a disk image of it on your second drive so all you have to do is boot up ghost and clone it back down again. That would probably be your best bet and quickest way back in action. The downside to this is if you have something that is generally eating away at the system, you've ghosted that too, but if you ghost once a week and you catch it in time, you only lose a week's worth of work if that virus or whatever smoked your machine you are able to catch in time.
Next best soultion would be an external drive. Firewire or USB 2.0. I favor Firewire because I'm a Mac guy at heart. But don't buy one of those ridiculous premade ones. Buy a drive enclosure and your own hd and put it together. Save a ton of cash that way. The external you can at least disconnect after your through with it, so if you were a bad boy and god strikes down your computer with a lightning bolt your data may be spared. This solution I tend to like the best. Only one caveat. I would make a compressed image of a clean install w/o programs and just toss my data on the drive with the space left over. This way you can shave time off a rebuild but just imaging with a clean lean and mean Operating System and erinstall the things you need as you need them. Then you can drag the data down off the same drive after the image is complete.
As a side note, you can also install the operating system on the external drive and boot off of that to save data on your hosed drive. That is if you are lucky the bad drive is not mechanically screwed up, and your BIOS supports booting from a USB or Firewire drive. Lots of modern Motherboards will allow this, at least with USB 2.0 in the boot sequence section of your motherboard. Its pretty much been a standard with any Mac with a firewire port. One thing about OSX that's cool is it doesn't have that sticky/dicey driver installtion routine and you can install Mac OS X on a spare drive and generally not have to worry about what model Mac you are booting. It works flawlessly, and its great for a tech support guy like myself.
That's my quickie opinion, feel free to poke holes in them or add to them. I could go into tape drives and whatever, but I still say the best bet is to build yourself a low end server with high disk capacity. But that's for the uber nerd in us all.
In RAID-0 if even one of the drives shits the bed you're up a creekNasty_Savage said:this with my game rig last year.)
So the second best solution IMO is to obviously have a second HD. If your computer supports RAID-0, then you can hook it up and install it and pray to god both HD's don't die at the same time.
The back up solutions are so varied in both technologies and prices now a-days there is absolutely no excuse not to have at least one form of backup be it dvd or external harddrive...doubly so in ANY business environment
The price points are so low I'd say go with an external HD like Nasty mentioned, or get yourself a CD-Burner.
http://www.acnc.com/raid.html
Nasty_Savage
Extremely [H]
- Joined
- Mar 19, 2001
- Messages
- 37,650
I got my shtuff confuzzled, what you want is drive mirroring. I forgot which one was which (Raid-0, or Raid 1). Its Raid-1 you want. Raid-0 is striping which balances the load between two disks, increasing performance (how much increase with onboard controllers is debatable in some instances....depending on the quality of the controller)
Its Raid-1 you want. Raid-0 is striping which balances the load between two disks, increasing performance (how much increase with onboard controllers is debatable in some instances....depending on the quality of the controller)Thanks for all of the advice. Unfortunately I am very broke at the moment, and might be for some time in the future. There is no way that I can buy a DVD burner or external harddrive at this point. Am I just screwed until I can come up with the money to buy one?
weed out all the erroneous stuff you can....like programs you only used once and haven't since...get as much free space as you can. Then create a partition with that free space and copy all the stuff you want to keep to that partition, ie save games, word docs, music.
As said above you're out of luck if the driver ever fails mechanically, but this will protect you from losing data if your OS shits the bed, so to speak.
In fact if you think ur os is clogged up and slow I'd recommend backing up all your stuff to that new partition and starting with a clean install of the OS.
-dx2
As said above you're out of luck if the driver ever fails mechanically, but this will protect you from losing data if your OS shits the bed, so to speak.
In fact if you think ur os is clogged up and slow I'd recommend backing up all your stuff to that new partition and starting with a clean install of the OS.
-dx2