I need to back up my data, what is the best solution?

Message

ghp542 · #31 Post by **ghp542** » Thu Mar 24, 2005 5:03 am

I purchased a couple cheap hard drives, bought a $15 dollar ide raid card off of ebay and set up an old machine strickly for backups. I set the raid to 0 to mirror the hard drives.

I am using this freeware to backup my machines every nights.

http://www.2brightsparks.com/syncback/

I only backup my data, and not the operating system and programs. Depending how fast you need to get back up, this could an option.

This does require a network, but don't most of us already have one set up?

George in TN
240x for the motorcycle
600x as the workhorse
T42P on the way (Thanks Bill!)

LeoB · #32 Post by **LeoB** » Thu Mar 24, 2005 7:50 am

Yep -- I already back up to a large hard drive on an old Compaq PC. But I needed back-up to take with me on trips. I have a smal 20GBl 2.5" drive that I use, but I also wanted all my working files on a DVD, just in case.

Leo

JohnV · #33 Post by **JohnV** » Thu Mar 24, 2005 10:01 am

You guys might also want to take a look at the Iomega REV drive. It can backup 35 gigs uncompressed to a cartridge. The benefit over a USB hard drive is you can rotate cartridges making sure you have a valid backup that is not corrupt. With the cartridges you can also archive data off your machine easily. The drive also comes with software to allow you to backup your drive automatically.

I am a Network Admin and a firm believer that the backup process should be automatic as possible. When you make it a manual process you will forget to do something and that is when your drive with fail. Most backup systems whether cartridge or external USB will include software that will do a full backup initially and then only incremental backups which only backup the changed files after that. That is the best method since it takes less time to backup your laptop/PC.

Another option is offline files. If you have another machine networked on your home network or you run a full domain at home like me you can use offline files. Essentially the files are stored on the server, but then synced to your laptop allowing you to take them with you while you are off the network. When you return to the network the files are synced automatically back to the server machine thus updating them. This process is a simple method of backing up your essential files easily.

http://www.iomega.com/na/products/famil ... 1675902394

John

Uncletoad · #34 Post by **Uncletoad** » Thu Mar 24, 2005 7:41 pm

Ok I like the idea of clone drives, father and son and all that. Bill I read your post 3 times and I'm not sure exactly what you meant. Sounds like you all are suggesting I buy a harddrive or two just like the one on my T42 and make regular clones of it with something. I see we can use Acronis True Image for software but how do I transfer that stuff from the harddrive in my machine to the other one thats not in there? Bounce it off my desktop? Put it in the other T42 I've got? Get some changeable drive thing? I'm not sure I get the whole idea but I'm quite sure I need to get on this thing.

#35 Post by **aamsel** » Fri Mar 25, 2005 12:49 am

The hard drives do not need to be hard drives like you have in your Thinkpad. Get USB 2.0 external hard drives, 3 1/2" drives in enclosures. You can buy them "ready to go" as external drives, or you can make your own. To do this, buy external enclosures for $25-$55 each. newegg.com sells about 100 different models. Just pick enclosures that are made to hold 3 1/2" drives and that run USB 2.0. Then get Seagate, Western Digital or Maxtor IDE drives as inexpensively as you can find them on sale (or after rebate) and install them in the enclosures. Takes about 10 minutes. Again, if this is an unknown to you, either find a friend who knows how to do it, or just buy a Maxtor or Western Digital as a "ready-to-go" external kit. It will cost more, but no assembly required. Then buy Acronis True Image or Symantec Ghost and image your Thinkpad drive to the external drive.

Andrew
Austin, TX

Uncletoad wrote:Ok I like the idea of clone drives, father and son and all that. Bill I read your post 3 times and I'm not sure exactly what you meant. Sounds like you all are suggesting I buy a harddrive or two just like the one on my T42 and make regular clones of it with something. I see we can use Acronis True Image for software but how do I transfer that stuff from the harddrive in my machine to the other one thats not in there? Bounce it off my desktop? Put it in the other T42 I've got? Get some changeable drive thing? I'm not sure I get the whole idea but I'm quite sure I need to get on this thing.

bvaughn · #36 Post by **bvaughn** » Wed Apr 13, 2005 5:49 pm

Mucus Man wrote:Nero has a small, free and downloadable utility (InfoTool) which you can use to learn all about your T40's drive capabilities, including whether it reads DVD-RAM (it's a snazzy tool).

InfoTool <ftp://ftp6.nero.com/InfoTool.zip> is indeed snazzy. It tells me that the Matshita DVD-RAM UJ-812 drive in my T42p can read DVD-ROM and CD Text discs, and it can both read and write CD-R, CD-RW, DVD-RAM, DVD-R, and DVD-RW discs. The read speed is 12X, the write speed is 8X (presumably those are maximums). Firmware version is K104. The drive also has buffer underrun protection when writing (whatever that means). There is some additional DVD-related information that means nothing to me (I'm DVD-ignorant).

Now . . . if only I could figure out how to append files to a CD-RW disc (using RecordNow! or whatever other means is available), then I'd be cooking with gas, as my dad used to say.

Uncletoad · #37 Post by **Uncletoad** » Wed Apr 13, 2005 6:22 pm

With the help of a friend I found a Fujitsu hard drive just like what's in the computer for $71. A case w/ USB II/Firewire interface for $28. I'm going to have two and make clones. My friend likes "Max Blast". He's suggesting that for software over the Acronis True Image. Any opinions about that?

Thanks for all your tips.

pae77 · #38 Post by **pae77** » Wed Apr 13, 2005 7:12 pm

FrankK-F wrote: Thus I have 3 identical Hitachi 72K60 HDDs -- and I use Norton Ghost-2003 via DOS to clone my current Primary HDD once a week. This takes about 32-33 minutes.

I then take the clone and swap it into the primary position. I use this step to assure myself that the cloning was successful .. and this step also rotates my HDDs thus pushing out the time for a potential crash.

The last step in my "backup" is to rotate all three dirves -- but keep one off-premises.

It works for me. Is there a weakness in my method?

Frank K-F

A31p / A31p ...

The backup method is OK, but the problem I see is that IBM warns about swapping the primary HD in and out too many times. They claim the connector is not designed for repeated swapping unlike the ultrabay second hard drive adapter. So I just don't think it is a good idea to be routinely frequently swapping out the primary hard drive. I would just keep cloning to the two 7k60's alternately and not swap them into the primary position unless you have a failure.

jtreble · #39 Post by **jtreble** » Thu Apr 14, 2005 8:53 am

Bob Collins wrote:
so we not graduate to running a raid1 at the least...cut
How about good ol Vinum under FreeBSD...cut

Or the newer GVinum,
http://www.vinumvm.org/vinum/how-to-debug.html

jtreble · #40 Post by **jtreble** » Thu Apr 14, 2005 9:03 am

daeojkim wrote:
carbon_unit wrote:Or if you want more Network attached storage go get an old 486 or low end pentium, stuff it with 4 160GB hard drives and run this:
http://www.serverelements.com/naslite.php
That will give you 640GB of storage.
It works very well, I have one here running a Pentium 75 with 40 MB ram and it runs flawlessly. It has no CPU fan and is very quiet.
This seem like the most efficient and cost effective method of backing up data. since internal HD's are cheaper than external. I could just stuff the PC in a closet so that it stays quiet and control the machine via telnet.

Thanks carbon_unit for the info.

I wish I had not thrown the P133 machine a year ago. I have a Cel600 machine that I could use. I wonder how much I could downclock the CPU so that a fan will not be required. Replace the power supply with a very quiet one and it should be set.

If you are going to go this route I would also suggest you look at a **simple** iSCSI config. (especially if you are going to be backing up a number of boxes/laptops),
http://www.tomshardware.com/storage/20050204/

and this,
http://www.datacore.com/products/prod_SANmelodyLite.asp

awolfe63 · #41 Post by **awolfe63** » Thu Apr 14, 2005 1:11 pm

A disk clone is a wase of time for most people. Put your data in the My Documents folder then back that up. I just use a 3.5" USB drive in the office. You can get 160GB for well under $200. If you need super reliability - get two.

I do still back up some things to a 5-disk raid-5 NT server - but that's only because it has been running for years - I wouldn't go the trouble to set up another one.

pae77 · #42 Post by **pae77** » Thu Apr 14, 2005 2:16 pm

awolfe63 wrote:A disk clone is a wase of time for most people. . . .

Have to respectfully disagree with that, at least for my situation.

It only takes me about 20 minutes (mostly unattended) to clone my entire 7k60 to a second drive in the ultrabay. If something happens to my primary HD, I can be up and running with my OS and all its installed updates, all the latest drivers, all my applications installed with their updates and customized configurations, and all my data where it belongs, in just the time it takes me to swap HD's, about 5 minutes. If I didn't have a simple clone of the entire installation, it would probably take me a couple of days and a lot of aggravation to recover my system to that degree because I would then have to install and update the OS, download and install the drivers, install and update the applications, configure all my apps to my liking (not so easy with some apps) and then get my data back where it belongs. Consequently, a disk clone seems pretty useful to me.

Torque · #43 Post by **Torque** » Thu Apr 14, 2005 2:21 pm

I use my 120GB IcyBox external HDD for backups. I update an imagefile regularly. So a complete recovery takes about 10mins. Also very handy when XP suddenly goes ballistic.

Uncletoad · #44 Post by **Uncletoad** » Thu Apr 14, 2005 2:29 pm

pae77 wrote:
awolfe63 wrote:A disk clone is a wase of time for most people. . . .
Have to respectfully disagree with that, at least for my situation.

Agreed. The whole idea of a clone drive is just smart to me. I use the notebook as a desktop backup for a small buisiness and to drive the accounting. It needs to have zero down time. I have two identical machines that can substitute for each other. Having a clone hard drive available with very recent updates is just another layer of disaster prevention.

baraider · #45 Post by **baraider** » Thu Apr 14, 2005 4:22 pm

can i ask this question to verify or change the way i backup my data.

I install xp fresh on a new sata 200 g, with all latest patches, drivers and such. Now i install Acronis software, create boot cd and then create a image.

When i do that, it will create a 3G image in iso format. I save that iso file in a external USB drive.

Now everytime i change something on the main HD, i use Acronis to make another image and replace my old ISO backup with this new ISO file.

So if something goes wrong with my main HD, can i just bootup the boot cd, and connect the USB drive and somehow it will give me back everything from the latest ISO backup?

Can i use this boot cd and ISO backup to fresh install on another machines?

Is making image better than clone? If i want to clone, i need a new HD with no data on it?

#46 Post by **K. Eng** » Thu Apr 14, 2005 4:49 pm

For those of us who don't have 200 GB of data to back up, a USB flash drive is pretty good

Nolonemo · #47 Post by **Nolonemo** » Thu Apr 14, 2005 5:47 pm

Baraider:

1. Yes, the Acronis boot CD should have drivers for the USB drive, and it should be recognized as a drive once you're in the restore process

2. Yes, you can restore the image to an blank drive, so you can use it to clone. Acronis will set up the partitions you need. What I don't know is whether you would first have to do a low level format of the new drive or not. I believe, but I'm not sure, that Acronis will resize existing partitions to accommodate a restore, but I'm not sure.

I have several computers networked. I have a partition set up for the OS, a partition set up for Applications, and a partition set up for data (including mailboxes, favorites, etc). I image the partitons to other computers on the network, the idea being that one drive may go down, but it's unlikely that two drives will go down at once. I image the OS partitions, I image the Apps partiton occasionally (on the theory that it is changing less than the OS partiton). The data partition is a little different. That partition is on the "main" computer that has two physical drives, and is is seen as a networked drive on the other computers, with Windows' make available offline feature enabled. The "real" partition is mirrored (rather, changes to it are mirrored) to a folder on the other physical drive on the main computer every four hours and on shutdown. The mirrored floder also keeps one level of copies of changed files.

I personally am leery of DVD backup, having lost some photos to a DVD that somehow became corrupted. I now burn 2 DVDs of everything I offload, using two different burning programs (Prassi & Nero). I do burn DVDs of my initial OS and core application installs, so that if I decide to rebuild when my registry gets too gummed up (I keep installing and removing new stuff to try out - though I'm getting better at setting restore points and rolling back after the trials).

I have not had a major crash using this system, but I have used the OS partition image to roll back the partition after drivers or something got corrupted (that was with win2k, I'm now on XP, so I tend to use the rollback feature for that kind of stuff now)

baraider · #48 Post by **baraider** » Thu Apr 14, 2005 5:53 pm

thanks for the answer..

now, what are the real differences of acronis image and doing clone? making image will create a iso, doing clone will create an exact copy or the source HD to a destination HD?

dfumento · #49 Post by **dfumento** » Thu Apr 14, 2005 8:35 pm

You might consider using a 2.5" drive w/USB 2.0 enclosure if you travel at all and want a portable backup solution.

Torque · #50 Post by **Torque** » Fri Apr 15, 2005 12:01 am

baraider wrote:thanks for the answer..

now, what are the real differences of acronis image and doing clone? making image will create a iso, doing clone will create an exact copy or the source HD to a destination HD?

Its the same thing. An image IS a clone of your harddrive, and you can do with it as you please. Split it up, and burn it onto DVDs. Copy it all to an external harddrive etc etc. Any removable media from where you will be able to restore it.

Nolonemo · #51 Post by **Nolonemo** » Fri Apr 15, 2005 8:18 am

torque is right. I didn't think that Acronis made .iso (my understanding is that .iso files are images of CD or DVD disks) format files, they use a proprietary format, the file extension is .tib. You can, of course, burn a .tib files to CD or DVD, Acronis has the ability to split the image into whatever size files you specify when the image is created.

pae77 · #52 Post by **pae77** » Fri Apr 15, 2005 12:05 pm

Actually, I don't think an image and a clone are exactly the same thing. Doesn't an image have to be restored? Can't an image be compressed? A clone is an exact sector by sector copy of an entire drive that doesn't have to be restored.

Nolonemo · #53 Post by **Nolonemo** » Fri Apr 15, 2005 1:12 pm

pae77 wrote:Actually, I don't think an image and a clone are exactly the same thing. Doesn't an image have to be restored? Can't an image be compressed? A clone is an exact sector by sector copy of an entire drive that doesn't have to be restored.

Query: can you clone a hard drive to another hard drive? Do you clone a partition or can you only clone an entire physical drive?

I think of a clone as the replication of the hard drive contents on another hard drive. I think of an image as the replication of the hard drive contents in a data file that can then be written to the original or a different hard drive.

Uncletoad · #54 Post by **Uncletoad** » Mon May 02, 2005 6:09 pm

Let me dredge this topic back up. I bought a USB2 harddrive bay. Loaded another Fujitsu Drive exactly like the one in my T42. Bought Acronis True Image 8. Having a hard time getting the new drive to be an exact clone. I get an error message "Partition Configuration has changed" when it's trying to reboot before the drive is cloned.

I went to an Acronis message board where others had this problem and one person suggested to use the Rescue Boot CD made with Acronis to do the clone when it reboots. I did that and it seems to have written to the other disc. By the numbers they are the same but when I swap the drive into my harddrive bay it won't boot up. Sticks right after the IBM screen before windows XP.

Ideas?

Nolonemo · #55 Post by **Nolonemo** » Mon May 02, 2005 8:11 pm

A couple random thoughts....

Some people have reported problems with Acronis and imaging to USB disks. Hopefully that's not your problem.

Is the jumper set correctly on the new drive when you swap it in (I presume it has to be jumpered as the master)

With the cloned drive in your TP, try powering up and going into the bios, see if it recognizes the drive (in desktops with older bios, I found that when you swapped out a drive you had to go into the BIOS setup in order for the BIOS to recognize the new drive), then save the BIOS and reboot.

Sorry not to have anything more specific for you.

tttttada · #56 Post by **tttttada** » Mon May 02, 2005 9:03 pm

I am replacing my desktop with a T43 this coming summer. I was in the process of drag n' dropping only the important files into my new Western Digital external HD. Is this a bad way of backing up? Will the Thinkpad be able to read the files?

d lehmann · #57 Post by **d lehmann** » Mon May 02, 2005 9:59 pm

Uncletoad wrote:Let me dredge this topic back up. I bought a USB2 harddrive bay. Loaded another Fujitsu Drive exactly like the one in my T42. Bought Acronis True Image 8. Having a hard time getting the new drive to be an exact clone. I get an error message "Partition Configuration has changed" when it's trying to reboot before the drive is cloned.

I went to an Acronis message board where others had this problem and one person suggested to use the Rescue Boot CD made with Acronis to do the clone when it reboots. I did that and it seems to have written to the other disc. By the numbers they are the same but when I swap the drive into my harddrive bay it won't boot up. Sticks right after the IBM screen before windows XP.

Ideas?

I have used Acronis for years. There have been a host of problems with acronis and usb and, and,. They are slowly being worked out, acronis is very poor and very, very slow on support, in fact they will disappear for weeks and weeks until they can solve a problem. Nonetheless, I find it a good reliable imager, once you get it working for your situation. I still use v7.
In my version, cloning moves the contents from drive 1 to drive 2.
I use complete hdrive image instead. You must use a second drive to do this and store the image. The easiest method I have found is to boot from the TI boot cd, make a complete drive image to my desktop network hdrive, but set the size of the .tib files to 650mb. When done, I sometimes drop and drag the .tib files to cd or as many as will fit on dvd. To restore I boot the TI boot disk and then insert the dvd and select the last file when prompted. Restoring from a network hdrive is even easier.

can i ask this question to verify or change the way i backup my data.

I install xp fresh on a new sata 200 g, with all latest patches, drivers and such. Now i install Acronis software, create boot cd and then create a image.

When i do that, it will create a 3G image in iso format. I save that iso file in a external USB drive.

Now everytime i change something on the main HD, i use Acronis to make another image and replace my old ISO backup with this new ISO file.

So if something goes wrong with my main HD, can i just bootup the boot cd, and connect the USB drive and somehow it will give me back everything from the latest ISO backup?

Can i use this boot cd and ISO backup to fresh install on another machines?

Is making image better than clone? If i want to clone, i need a new HD with no data on it?

Basically the answer is yes. Acronis supports incrimental backups that can append your original for changes.
Your restore will be exactly what you imaged.
You can do fresh installs on other IDENTICAL machines (hardware) but you may run into activation problems depending on your build pf xp.

Query: can you clone a hard drive to another hard drive? Do you clone a partition or can you only clone an entire physical drive?

I think of a clone as the replication of the hard drive contents on another hard drive. I think of an image as the replication of the hard drive contents in a data file that can then be written to the original or a different hard drive.

You can only clone a complete drive to one that is at least a big as the original.

Let me dredge this topic back up. I bought a USB2 harddrive bay. Loaded another Fujitsu Drive exactly like the one in my T42. Bought Acronis True Image 8. Having a hard time getting the new drive to be an exact clone. I get an error message "Partition Configuration has changed" when it's trying to reboot before the drive is cloned.

I went to an Acronis message board where others had this problem and one person suggested to use the Rescue Boot CD made with Acronis to do the clone when it reboots. I did that and it seems to have written to the other disc. By the numbers they are the same but when I swap the drive into my harddrive bay it won't boot up. Sticks right after the IBM screen before windows XP.

Ideas?

Write zeros to the target drive before recloning. Use the TIboot disk to do your clone and don't reboot until your new hdrive is installed as your boot drive. Basically you have lost your mbr. You can do a repair install of xp with a xp cd, if you need to recover data etc.
Acronis images of op system partitions will NOT boot. You must do a complete drive image for the restore to be bootable.

A word of caution with imaging. TEST your program and images at least the first time. Not just the test procedure in the program, but restore to a scratch hdrive and see if it really works. Many users have been greatly disappointed by a failed restore.

pae77 · #58 Post by **pae77** » Mon May 02, 2005 11:05 pm

I recently used acronis true image 7 to clone a 60 gig hard drive containing 18 gig or so of data to a 20 gig drive in the ultrabay. Even though the clone was a smaller drive than the original, the cloning worked perfectly. I tested it by installing it in the primary hd bay in my TP and seeing if it would boot up. It did with no problems and was a perfect clone of my 60 gig drive, minus the extra space.

Second, the clone did not "move" the contents of the 60 gig to the 20 gig drive. It copied them. The 60 gig drive was not impaired in any way by the procedure.

hurog · #59 Post by **hurog** » Tue May 03, 2005 10:21 am

I'm a relative newbie here, but I thought I'd muddy the waters with a comment or two. I see lots of comments about backup methods, ranging from low-budget home solutions to semi-enterprise solutions. So far, however, we haven't asked the fundamental questions of what files we're trying to protect. I'm an Oracle DBA, and I work with data backup and recovery on a daily basis.

Different backup strategies fit different user needs. My home network has a SAN, with groups of raid 5 and 1+0 disks allocated for different purposes. There's 16 SCSI's spinning in there, which is frankly more than I or just about any home user needs, but it's a great backup system.

My wife is an author -- she works on one book at a time. Her system is set to make a daily copy of her /work directory to the SAN, as well as loading any changed files into a CVS repository. Once a week I sftp her data to an off-site data store, just in case the house burns down.

This is fine when she's at home, but we're buying her a new T42 to play with. On the road, a simple flash drive is a perfectly viable option for her system. Why - because the volume of volitile she deals with is small. If she were reloading giant databases, her backup needs and strategy would be radically different.

So, first decide WHAT you need to protect, and HOW OFTEN it changes, and HOW CRITICAL having the most recent version is, THEN build your backup strategy.

--Mike

FTC · #60 Post by **FTC** » Tue May 03, 2005 12:56 pm

Hi, as others have said, I think your best option is a big (200GB or so) hard drive inside an USB drive enclosure, and then use something like GHOST, TrueImage or (my preferred due to simplicity) Drive Snapshot.
This is what I do, and I can backup my full 7K60 in 30 minutes. Having a big external drive allows you to mantain *several* backups at the same time, in a cheap and convenient manner. It is true that you lose the ability to do incremental backups, ... but being so easy, I just backup almost any other day.

I need to back up my data, what is the best solution?

How about this?

Huh, now I'm a bit befuddled.

Re: Huh, now I'm a bit befuddled.

Re: DVD-RAM and my T42

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