Back-up questions

[mikehende]

Just how much backing up is really necessary? And what should a person back up each time he/she has to install a new device or just do anything in general to a pc?

[Dan18960]

Just how much backing up is really necessary? And what should a person back up each time he/she has to install a new device or just do anything in general to a pc?

Backing up is basically reduced to one question "How important is your data?"

If you can afford to loose all your data - backup isn't that big of a deal. BUT if you lost 2 years like one of the users here did - then backup is critical!

I have multiple backups of my emails, favorites, documents, accounting, utilities, etc, etc, etc. Because loosing ANY of my data can cost me MONEY. My client accounting is the lifeblood of billing, warranty, sales, and service. My emails are records of "conversations" we had, favorites are required to support them via advance tech support (you may notice I don't ask many questions here because I am involved in network administration which is a lot more than worrying about a home computer - not bragging just explaining that I work more in the LAN / WAN / VPN and server environment than basic user computers), and utilities to monitor network servers.

I would advise an image of your drive BEFORE any hardware or software is installed - it is always nicer to have your machine up in a matter of minutes than having to spend hours and days recreating a system.

[mikehende]

Seeing that a user's pc is always undergoing changes, how often can can a person do an "image" backup and what is the best way to do this?

[writeco]

If you use a mirroring-type of program, like MirrorFolder, you can ensure your critical and frequently changing data is backed up in real time. This will significantly reduce the mean time between full-image backups. This automatic process also works for my wife, who cannot be bother with backups. As an additional measure, I routinely compare my critical desktop data folders (source) with the same folders (target) on my laptop and transfer files as needed. I use ViceVersa Pro for this.

I am more concerned about my OS and applications since they present totally different types of problems. You can encounter an OS or application-related problem that prevents you from booting your PC and making all data inaccessible. I keep my OS and apps on a physically different drive from the drive that I have reserved purely for apps data. I also maintain a log of all OS and application changes (i.e. new apps, upgrades, and major OS changes). When I feel that it would be more time-consuming to reload apps, I take a full-image backup of my OS and apps drive. This event is also captured in the log. It takes discipline but I never want to go through 8, 16-hour days reloading the OS and apps that I did 7 years ago. Particularly during football season and cold weather, what else is there to do?

[mikehende]

I've always thought that you need special software to create a full image of your pc and that these softwares like Laplink's pc mover only gives you a license to do this once so I was wondering what you use to keep doing these image backups on a day to day basis? I will look into the Mirrorfolder thing but in the meantime so you go to fix someone's poc and wish that you backup their info before doing anything, what do you do? Do you tell them to buy an extra hard drive to create an image backup or do you back up only certain things?

[dbarrow]

Mike, as we have mentioned, many of us here use Acronis and have a long history with the company from back in their earliest days.

Note the difference between backup and image.
An image is made of a complete partition or drive, although you can do incrementals on a regular basis to pick up any changed files.
A backup program is more generally used to make compressed archive backups of files and folders.

An image program should, like Acronis, give you the ability to restore an entire drive or partition, without an operating system, and bring that drive and partiton(s) back to the state they were in when you made the image.
This is necessary for disaster recovery, like blowing a drive.

Backups of files are something you do where you have a folder, like documents, which has daily changes you don't want to lose. If you blow a file, or accidentally delete a file, you can easily restore it from your backups and incrementals.

If you search the forums, you will find many posts on "backup solutions and philosophy"
It is important you have a well planned out backup "solution" that fits your needs and includes "disaster recovery" as a working part of it.
WHERE you keep your backup media is also an important consideration.

In constructing your "backup solution" just say to yourself,
"Tomorrow my house will be hit with lightning and my computer will melt down", "How do I recover?"

I subscribe to the "automated" backup solution.
The backups that have to be done manually are the ones that never get done or are way out of date.
Almost all backup programs have some type of scheduler, whether it is internal to the program, like Acronis, or uses Windows Scheduler, like NTbackup.
Determine a reasonable frequency for full and incremental backups depending on how often files in a folder, partition, or drive will change and how fresh you need the backup to be. For critical work or data files that change daily or even hourly, there are backup programs that can write backups upon any file changes and provide "real time" backup with incrementals retaining older versions.
AUTOMATE your "backup solution" so you never have to touch it, other than checking now and then to make sure the backups are running as per your schedule.
If you break down your tasks by partitions and folders or even individual files, you have small backups that run quickly and are not a bother running in the background on a staggered basis.

Where to store them is another matter.
Obviously, you don't want to store your backups on the same drive you are backing up since, if you lose that drive, you lose the backup with it.
External, internal, or network, it is a good idea to have your backups stored someplace besides the machine you are using.
A "retired" older machine, with a few spare large HD, makes an excellent network storage place as it does not have to be fast or powerful to serve as a backup repository.
I have an old but faithful P3 machine with a few 120g drives on a Promise card that stores multiple backup versions from 4 other machines. I could rebuild any of them from scratch in hours from the backups stored on the old machine.

Redundancy is another thing to consider.
Never trust one single backup or image as your salvation.
I'm sure we have all experienced the image file that was corrupt and won't restore. It happens! The one time you need to use it is the one time you will end up with a bad image file that won't restore!
I match my network backups on each machine with an internal backup to an alternate drive on that machine. I always have at least two versions of a current backup, one internal and one on the network machine. On daughter's machine, I also have an external hd strictly for backups (purchased prior to her moving back home and joining the network).

Backups won't become important to you.... until.... the day you sit starting at a BSOD on a machine that won't boot, with a blown OS or hd! Then.... you tell me how much a backup is worth!

[writeco]

I have always maintained that a backup (as Doug Barrow has defined it) of the OS and apps is a crap shoot. How do you restore part of the OS or an individual application without worrying about such things as OS updates and registry settings? This is why your OS and applications should be on a separate drive, or in a separate partition, from your data. While you may want to selectively restore data, I am of the mindset that you always do a complete image restore of your OS and apps. From a personal standpoint, incremental backups require more time to keep track of than the extra time is takes to do a full backup or image backup. With the lowering prices of external USB 2.0 hard drives, full image backups are no longer cost prohibitive.

And "Yes", if I am considering a major change to a working environment of a PC, I always take an image backup.

I agree with Doug that automatic processes are preferred and I am usually a strong proponent of such services. However, for some unexplained reasons, I prefer to manually control the backup procedures. I'll be getting ready to watch a long movie or sporting event, the PC is doing nothing and being near the TV, why not create an image backup? In less than 2 minutes, the imaging process is underway. It works for me and that an important aspect of a personal backup strategy.

[mikehende]

[QUOTE=dbarrow]
Note the difference between backup and image.
An image is made of a complete partition or drive, although you can do incrementals on a regular basis to pick up any changed files.
A backup program is more generally used to make compressed archive backups of files and folders.
[QUOTE]

This is where I was confused, appreciate you guys explaining this issue so well, thanks. I will look further into this and get back to you guys here if neccessary.

BTW, so that's what the "D" in Dbarrow stands for, Doug!Cool!

[dbarrow]

All my machines are setup with XP living alone on a 10g E: partition.
All programs are installed to a 40g G: partition.

90% of major crashes occur in the OS itself, usually from a failure to complete disk writes on exit which blow the registry hives, the last thing XP writes to as it exits to shutdown.

While there are several ways to repair this, having an image of the OS partition covers most of your XP crashes.

Acronis can make a full image of that 10g partition in less than 10 minutes. An incremental to pick up any recent changes runs in less than 3 minutes.
Since these are very short run backups, I set Acronis scheduler to:
Image E: to an internal drive weekly with a daily incremental set.
Image E: to a drive on my network machine weekly.
All full backups are set to overwrite the previous version.
The network drive also contains a monthly E:.
All the machines follow this schedule to yield a minimum of 3 versions of their OS stored in internal and external locations.
OS restore from an Acronis image takes less than 15 min.

G: Programs 40g partition on each change less frequently and only get a monthly backup in both internal and network.

Other partitions have a varied schedule depending on frequency of use.
My huge MP3 music library, which lives on the network machine, could never be replaced so an image resides on each machine and gets a monthly backup.
It also has two NTbackup sets of the Music folder stored out to other machines. That eats a lot of storage space but space is cheap, the collection is irreplacable.

NTbackup, which is part of XP, is a very good backup tool.
It can be completely automated.
I have numerous NTbackups on various files and folders that contain critical data or programs running on varied schedules depending on need, ie: daughter has a folder for her OneNote program that gets daily additions which gets weekly NTbackups with daily incrementals along with a straight COPY .bat file to make daily copies to several locations. Her time investment in that program and the files it contains are again, irreplacable.

The only drawback to NTbackup is that you must have a functional XP to use it. It won't run from a crashed OS.
Therefore: to restore XP, I rely on the Acronis Images and once restored, I can get to the NTbackups if needed. Restoration of the OS is the primary "disaster recovery" priority, from there, the rest is easy.

Automation is extremely important to me as I am very lazy. If I had to rely on manual backups on 4 machines, they would surely never get done.
It is extremely easy to run a manual backup, should I be messing with a program install or some major change, simply by choosing the "job" in either Acronis or Scheduler and clicking on it to launch. The "job" is already configured for the particular task.

Not so much paranoia but experience...
Having gone through the fix or repair daily '98 and ME days, I have gone through the outdated, corrupted, and otherwise unusable backups that won't restore. I have lived through HD crashes and other major disasters that required rebuild from scratch. No one who has never experienced these major malfunctions can understand the total frustration they present on the inevitable day when you sit staring a a blank screen on a machine that won't boot!

It is impossible to calculate the amount of time you incrementally invest in modifying and setting up a machine to your liking, the numerous programs and utilities you have installed (many of which you won't have the original install files, license, or other necessary info to re-install, or the ability to find them again).
Recovery from scratch is not an option without backups!

Investment in a quality backup software and establishing a "backup solution" is just one of those things you have to do. It is far more important than any malware cleaners, AVs, and all the other junk you buy to keep your machine running. Your time invested is money!

There are a few worthy new "tools" in the backup department that may be handy, depending on needs.
SmartBackup, which I posted in another thread, appears to be a cheap and handy solution for "real time" backup of critical files that can instantly store backups to a network or even FTP upon creation or file modification. Tested it out for a remote backup solution and it works as advertised!
Acronis Workstation version also appears to have much potential with similar features. Prior to daughter moving back home, I had been looking at a remote backup solution to store her critical files to my network using the FTP server on my backup machine. On cable, it worked flawlessly and reasonably fast. Both programs can be automated and scheduled.

When considering any "backup solution" take the time to actually calculate what you could afford to lose and how long it would take you to rebuild from scratch. It will shock you into figuring out you can't afford to be without a "backup solution" that works for you!
This is of immeasurable importance on any "work" or productivity machine where downtime or loss of crucial files would put you out of business until you get it fixed!
Should that machine go down due to major mechanical melt down, flood, fire or other disaster, could you quickly and easily deploy those backups from remote or alternative storage to another machine and get back in business quickly?

BTW: Don't forget to look into "remote" storage potential via FTP from your ISP provider. Comcast "My space" gives you considerable FTP storage space. While not big enough for a whole machine, it can handle considerable file storage for "off site" retention of crucial data files. Here again, the possibilites of Smartbackup or Acronis Workstation should be considered.

[mikehende]

My huge MP3 music library, which lives on the network machine, could never be replaced so an image resides on each machine and gets a monthly backup.
It also has two NTbackup sets of the Music folder stored out to other machines. That eats a lot of storage space but space is cheap, the collection is irreplacable.

The main backup issue with my pc is also music. I have all of my mp3's backed up on approx 40 quality cd's which I do multisession whenever I add something new, same with my videos so no back up issue there really, what I need is simply to back up the rest of the stuff that's on my pc, since my music and videos which are on my 2nd bigger hard drive which are backed up on cd's, I only need to back up what's on the C drive which contains the OS and all softwares of which there are many. This is what I will be looking into.

BTW, regarding music, if any of you wants a pro DJ mp3 player for FREE, check this out

http://o***urntables.com/

I use the main player OTSDJ which costs $400 and is a mix between a Radio and DJ software and is THE most stable music software on this planet, I like the automation side of it and there are a few different packages starting from the basic $75 which is all that's needed really. Maybe we should start a thread for all the free and/or cool music/video stuff out there so everyone here will benefit? What do you guys think?

[dbarrow]

CD and cdrw ROT!
They never made a big public stink about it but it has been published time and time again.
Even the most expensive name brands have had the problem. It is a chemical reaction inside the strata of the cd. Amplified by heat and light.
Even cds stored in their cases in a temp controlled environment, in the dark, will eventually suffer.

If you have ever seen one (music I keep in the car are great for this) just hold it up to the light and look for little pinholes all over the place. You start losing tracks until it no longer plays.

If you value your cd collection, transfer them all to a HD ASAP!
You can always burn a copy from there.

[mikehende]

CD and cdrw ROT!
You start losing tracks until it no longer plays.


Now this is news to me, I subscribe to a few music forums and this the very first time I am hearing of this but it does clear up a mystery for me. I have come across one or two songs which were transferred in perfect condition unto the backup cd's and always wondered why or how these songs got damaged? If this is the case then there is a lot of false advertising on the part of the cd manufacturers whose claim is that their cd's are guaranteed to last 100 years.

Got to look into this issue deeply now!

[mikehende]

My take on this now, in a nutshell, is to do BOTH, backup on cd's and Hard drive. Regarding the backing up of emails, why the need for this? Is this just as a precaution in case the email service provider's Server should crash?

[Terry Hanushek]

Mike

Regarding the backing up of emails, why the need for this? Is this just as a precaution in case the email service provider's Server should crash?
I don't know about you but I have thousands of emails that I have sent and received. They exist only on my computer. Very little of my email resides on my service provider (a few days at most). Backing up my email is one of my most important backups.

Terry

[mikehende]

Don't understand Terry, I too have tons of saved emails in many folders and also important bookmarks and I have always thought that these emails and bookmarks reside on a server belong to my email account provider and not on my pc? If they reside physically on my pc, how then can I acess them from "any" pc? Please clear up this misconception for me, anyone?

[dbarrow]

What email service are you using? Web based or POP3?
POP3 email is generally downloaded from the server and stored in your Outlook or Outlook Express. That file is backed up with your OS backup in Documents and settings.
Web based email: Netscape, Yahoo, Excite, etc. is stored on their server and accessed via the web. While they all give more than adequate storage for hundreds of emails, they can and do flush accounts or lose saved files now and then (although I have saved Netscape email that is very old).
To save web based email, forward a copy to your POP3 account, dl it with Outlook Express and move it to a saved folder where it will remain until you delete it.
With web based email, I don't know of a way to save your "contact" list of email addresses other than forwarding copies to your POP3 email and adding them to your contact list.

BOOKMARKS
IE stores them in Favorites folder in your User\Documents and settings, unless you moved the default folder elsewhere.
Firefox stores in Documtents and Settings\User\Application Data\ Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\defaultPZ1\bookmarks
There is also a bookmark backup utility/plugin in FF to create a backup set.
It is a good idea to keep a COPY of that file somewhere else as Mozilla has, over the years, had an occasional problem with wiping out the bookmarks file.

[mikehende]

[QUOTE=dbarrow]What email service are you using? Web based or POP3?
QUOTE]

Web based [Yahoo], I've never lost an email or bookmark yet but I guess it's about time I should look into saving my emails/bookmarks.

[dbarrow]

Back in the days of Netscape, the original Mozilla gekko engine, it was very prone to crashing the bookmarks file on a regular basis. I learned to keep copies!
Firefox, in early versions carried the same defect. It has not done that in quite a while to me. Son had a problem for a while with it losing the bookmarks file.

If you have tons of bookmarks saved, seriously consider making an occasional copy of the file and saving it somewhere, like on another drive, cd, etc. or just make sure it is included in your overall "backup solution" where you can easily extract and replace it if needed.
Losing a whole collection of bookmarks can be a real PITA!

For email, you should have a POP3 email account from your ISP. Some web based email providers do have a "forward" feature to automatically forward your mail to another account. If Yahoo does not, I would just forward any you want to keep a copy of and use Outlook Express to dl and save, ie: I use my Excite email sometimes for online orders, as it is a junk mail account. When I receive the email confirmation, I forward a copy to my Comcast POP3 where it gets saves in Purchase folder.

[mikehende]

Pete had very generously tried to help me set up an email voice notification using Eudora [Pop3] but I simply could not get it to work mainly becuase I needed Yahoo's help to make it happen and they couldn't figure it out so I abandoned it but my wife has been encouraging me to start using Outlook although I am thinking of giving Eudora another shot, at any rate, yes, i do see the need for this.

[casey]

I usually move different E-Mails to folders I made to correspond with the contents of the E_mail. After that I then copy these folders to the root directory and use a DBX converter program to change these files to eml files. They can then be put on a cd disk and labeled for time and date or content so when you want to find them you just have to insert CD and they will come up as the E-mail you first received. I keep all receipts, other
stuff like family mail, rebates on these cd's and update as I see the need. It works for me...

[mikehende]

I think I will try this method you've mentioned soon, thanks. In the meantime, MM's book mentions that XP has a "Backup" wizard but I can't find it, I am using XP Home. Anyone know of this?

[Guest117]

As a long time tech, I have seen presidents of large companies break down and cry when I tell them their hard drive is fried and I need their backups.
"Backups??" waaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!!!
Or people who thought they had backups but never bothered to test them.
Again: waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!!!
You will only be behind as far as your last full backup.
Incremental backups are fine but not a substitute for full backups,
on a separate drive, stored away from the system.
Only two types of computer people:
Those that lost all their data and those that will.:cool:
3 most important words in computers:
BACKUP! BACKUP! BACKUP! Is that crystal enough for you.:rolleyes:

[PeteF]

As a long time tech, I have seen presidents of large companies break down and cry when I tell them their hard drive is fried and I need their backups.
"Backups??" waaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!!!
Or people who thought they had backups but never bothered to test them.
Again: waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!!!


I can relate. I've seen many a secretary break down and cry because
they didn't backup or save their work while doing wordprocessing. I
tell them to save their work every 10 mins or so, but often they don't
do it or they leave at the end of the day with their work still open and
on the task bar, never having been saved. Eventually the day comes
where they lose hours of work and they break down and cry. Then
they get the backup religion. :)

Bottom line, people don't listen or change until somthing
dramatic or catastrophic happens to influence them.
It's just human nature.

---pete---

[Guest117]

Yes, pete, it happens on a small scale every day. Multiply that times thousands and think of a company that had to hire 10 data entry people to input lost data working 8-10 hrs/day for 3 weeks. You'd think, huh?
Most of my catastrophic failures were years ago but it still happens to this day and age. There is absolutely no excuse for not being back up and running within the hour or so after complete data loss. I've preached it for years but still, some do not listen until it's too late.:director:
(I do feel sorry for them a little......for about 3 seconds.:yield:)

[dale@fcg]

Mike,
the windows backup is the nt backup app that dbarrow referred to, and it needs to be installed from xp home cd. I don't remember the file name and folder on the drive, but I'll look it up when I get home tonite (if someone doesn't remember off top of head).

[mikehende]

Thanks Dale but don't bother, got the link yesterday, sorry I forgot to post it here

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/302894/EN-US/

Anyway, from that article:

"Note: Automated System Recovery is not a supported feature in Windows XP Home Edition using Backup, but Backup is provided on the CD-ROM as additional value to help back up critical system data. For additional information, click the article number below to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:
302700 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/302700/EN-US/) An Error Message Is Displayed When You Attempt to Use the Automated System Recovery Wizard"


So I think the end result is it does not make sense to use this, Acronis will be easier and more efficient I think.

[dbarrow]

Windows NTbackup is a (stripped down) Veritas backup program that can backup files, folders, partitions or whole drives. It has selectable compression, incrementals, password protection, scheduling and other advanced features.
Excellent program for many uses and backup "jobs" can be scheduled to run automatically with Windows Scheduler.
MAIN DRAWBACK:
NTbackup requires a functional Windows environment.
There is no way to restore a working system from archive or boot from a restore cd program.
Windows no boot... NTbackup useless!

To get around this, MS came up with the most convoluted bassackwards solution possible ... ASR or Automated System Recovery, a function I have never gotten to work.
It requires saving an ASR backup with NTbackup and creating ASR boot disks. Been there, done that...
Find something else like Acronis for SYSTEM RECOVERY!

Other than that, I still have quite a number of scheduled NTbackups running on FOLDERS and FILES (rather than whole partitions as with Acronis) with backup jobs created according to need and frequency. For THIS function, NTbackup is great.

Note that while you can do daily incrementals, NTbackup can NOT do "real time" backup where you want a file to make a backup upon any changes or revisions. To obtain that kind of function, try Acronis Workstation or Smartbackup.
Real Time backup is another "backup solution" that you would put in place for those critical files that must have immediate backup upon file change and the ability to retain archives of previous versions, ie: secretary doing revisions on a long document with many man hours of work involved. In this instance, rather than relying on WORD automated backups, you can set up one of these programs to immediately ship off a copy to any location, ie: network drive, FTP, remote storage, any time the designated file changes. Also important here is the ability to retain numerous archives of the revisions all the way back to the first original file.

NTbackup is a most excellent program that fits many needs with a reasonable span of functionality, not to mention it is FREE and included with XP.
NTbackup has "saved the bacon" for me more than once, enough that I still rely on it today.
Just keep in mind when designing your "backup solution" to include a System Restore capable backup image and boot recovery program like Acronis.

If you require some of the additional features like real time backup, FTP, file and folder backup, look into Acronis Workstation version which offers all of this.

Then again, experience has "learned me" not to rely on any one backup program alone as Murphy's Law dictates that the one time you really need it, that will be the one time you get a corrupted backup you can't restore!