cheap safe backup method

[dcouzin]

Today I replaced my C:\ contents with yesterday's image made by SelfImage v1.2.1. SelfImage is freeware and worked perfectly, and should be recommended. http://selfimage.excelcia.org/

One can pay money for backup software full of convenience. Scheduled, silent, sequential backups are great when 100% reliable. But all complex software can interfere with other complex software, and can foul up itself, so I prefer my less convenient, cheap safe backup method.

I don't run SelfImage from Windows, but from a boot disk, namely BartPE, which is also freeware. SelfImage v1.2.1 is available in plugin form. When you don't demand too much from somewhat amateur software, then it can be very good software.

SelfImage can make uncompressed or compressed images. Uncompressed imaging is extremely fast, probably limited by the write speed to the USB hard drive. With such speed, who needs sequential backing up?

[Brad]

I downloaded the program and am going to give this a try the next time I need to make a copy.

Thanks

Brad

[bill bolton]

cheap safe backup method

Well, its cheap. As for safe, that's another matter entirely.

Cheers,

Bill B.

[pkiff]

One can pay money for backup software full of convenience. Scheduled, silent, sequential backups are great when 100% reliable. But all complex software can interfere with other complex software, and can foul up itself, so I prefer my less convenient, cheap safe backup method.

If looking for backup simplicity, that is cheap and safe, I would recommend simply using XXCOPY. It's hard to get much simpler than that. No messing around with backup "images" and the potential danger of having a corrupt image, this will make actual copies of each and every file you are backing up. You can use the /clone option to duplicate an entire directory or hard drive. It's been around for many years and all bugs have been quashed long, long ago, so it is 100% reliable, every time. It is free for personal use.

XXCOPY:
http://www.xxcopy.com/

I have no relationship, business or personal, with XXCOPY, I am just a happy user.

Phil.

[Stargate199]

There is a backup utility built into Windows, though its more usable in Windows XP and Windows Vista. The Backup utility will make a copy of your documents and other data you choose for it to backup. You can put the backup on a server drive or on another hard drive, I would not recommend backing up to the same hard drive. Now you have system restore that will restore Windows to previous date in case you screw up Windows.

My backup is a 1GB USB flash drive, and having two computers. Not only is a copy of my music and documents kept on two computers, all important stuff is also saved to my flash drive that I can keep on me or put in a safe location.

[dcouzin]

Thank you bill bolton, for the necessary reminder that what has worked one time for me has not been proved safe.
Thank you pkiff for the lead to xxcopy. I look forward to trying it.
I was surprised pkiff said file-by-file backups are simpler than bit-by-bit backups (images). To back up files requires jumping around the input disk in some sequence given by some address system. And does this back up everything? To back up bits requires just gliding through the input disk and, like a pantograph, reproducing onto the output disk. This certainly backs everything up.
OK, if you start with the operating system as a given then file-by-file backups are simple, but they still must take longer than bit-by-bit backups.
The point of my post is that somewhat amateur software can be reliable when it doesn't try to do too much. Backing up c:\ is simpler when performed by a program running outside of c:\. Restoring c:\ from the backup is much simpler when performed by a program running outside of c:\.

By "uncompressed image" I meant what I think pkiff calls "clone". An uncompressed image is the full contents of a partition, while a compressed image is a single file. pkiff writes: "No messing around with backup "images" and the potential danger of having a corrupt image". Is this a special problem with the compressed image only? Corruption of a single file means you lose the whole backup. Corruption within an uncompressed image means you lose just the affected file. Is it correct to conclude: the chance for corruption is greater with an uncompressed than with a compressed image, but the damage from corruption is less.

[kulivontot]

pkiff, you're disapproval of image files makes little sense to me. If there is corruption of an image file, at least you know that your data is damaged. If say, you were to do an XXCOPY or something along those lines and you still had corruption on your hard drive and only your important documents (say tax returns from 3 years ago). You would not know there was a problem until you had to use those files, and even worse you wouldn't know which ones were bad. So a corrupted image is far better a situation than corrupted files. Unless of course it's an old image from 5 years ago and you are able to recover nothing from it.

On a different note, image based recovery better for backup than file-copy based recovery in that it copies the data bit for bit from the original image. Once it is restored on the target drive, the data will match exactly. For some programs that look for files at a certain sector on the hard drive this is important (mostly operating system type applications). And more importantly, image-based recovery schemes will get the Master Boot Record information and copy that as well. This is extremely important if you are performing backup on your boot drive. Even if you were to copy each file exactly from one drive to the other, without the MBR copied, the system would not boot with the new drive.