What’s the best way to backup the following onto an external HDD?

PC running:
> C: program files (the most important ones)
> work files (in My docs)
> F: program files (less important ones)
> all personal files/photos etc

Best to make regular disc images and store away? Or backup everything on some kind of ‘incremental’ basis?

Worth going automated?

Have tried a couple of methods in the past but never felt I was doing the right thang. What do you PC folk reckon? Ta

Well,

Program Files shouldn’t need backing up at all; it’s not data, just apps. If you want to be able to restore your PC to as it is now including all the apps (rather than having to reinstall everything) then simply copying the folder isn’t enough; there may be files in other places, registry settings etc. If you want a ‘bare metal’ recovery policy then something like Acronis might be what you’re looking for.

Your personal files should be backed up, basically anything that’s irreplaceable. How often you do that and how you store the backups would be wholly dependent on how current you need the data. For instance, the last time there was any change to my data was when I copied photos off from my camera. There’s nothing of any consequence gone on here since, so daily backups would be a waste of time.

Whether you’d need to automate that or not would again depend how valuable your data is. I’ve never bothered personally.

Depends on what you’re actually trying to store.

Family photos + documents? Backup once per week for me, small external drive, stored in the safe.

Music / Films / TV series? Nightly backup to second volume large enough to cope with it.

Whole PC itself? The Windows backup facility is good enough for most people – backup to external USB maybe once per month, depending on how often you install/remove software (i.e. does the PC change that much?)

For personal files, have you considered online cloud backup? Dropbox et al?

What PC backup policy?

[img]http://rexyjolly.files.wordpress.com/2011/05/fingers-crossed.jpg[/img]
harddrives last forever right?

apple timemachine – must be something like this for PC?

Depends what it is you’re worried about. If you want to recover the PC if the whole thing gets trashed then you need to use some kind of total image backup solution – I use Windows complete PC backup to a USB drive periodically for this; not sure if all versions of Windows have this though. Precious data (photos etc) gets backed up to a USB drive that’s stored in a fire safe when not needed; I’ve set this up to happen weekly on the PC using Windows backup (or whenever Time Machine gets unhappy on the Mac).

Beware of using proprietary backup solutions that use their own storage formats – you might not be able to get the data back in future if the product is no longer available.

Yeah, would like to recover the whole PC (or maybe just apps) if it gets trashed. Hence creating a full image once a month might be wise. Can imagine this might cause registry conflicts etc though?

Incremental backup of everyday data (work files and personal stuff) is key because of the amount of data I go through. Daily or weekly I guess. Haven’t the time to faff through stuff.

Maybe this is the way forward?

Time Machine equivalent? Might be something here …

If you want a ‘bare metal’ recovery policy then something like Acronis might be what you’re looking for.

An Acronis-a-like for much cheapness – look at Drive Snapshot – though to be fair I’ve no idea how much Acronis for a desktop is.

We’re using this for server imaging for BMR in some circumstances, and it works a treat. It’s being used as the imaging format for a certain large scale OS deployment suite, but I’m not sure if that’s under NDA or even published so I won’t say which.

Can imagine this might cause registry conflicts etc though?

Restoring a total image will also restore the registry, so no.

On the Time Machine equivalents, note my comment on backup formats. See if you could recover your data if the product was no longer available. Sometimes a simple copy to an external drive is best.

maybe just apps

You need to get away from this. You can’t backup “just apps” in any sort of meaningful sense (and there’d be little point even if you could).

You need to get away from this. You can’t backup “just apps” in any sort of meaningful sense (and there’d be little point even if you could).

Agreed … I’m talking about making an image on a regular basis so to cover apps. Maybe my use of the word ‘backup’ is too generalised.

Ok so this is what you need to know….

Dropbox.com for a on the fly 2gb important files backup that can be accessed anywhere.

VMWare Converter to create a Virtual Machine Image of your computer so you can then play it on any computer with VMware Player incase of catastrophic hardware failure to get you back up and running asap.

CloneZilla to create a carbon copy of your harddrive or partitions to restore your PC under a harddrive failure.

With all the above you’ll be bombproof – just remember to keep 2 copies of critical files (if documents/small files or priceless photos use Dropbox)… if larger files and you don’t want to pay for dropbox – then make sure said files are on an external hard drive and another source…

If you put your VMware backup and clonezilla backups all on your external hard drive and nowhere else… biggest chance of failure is you dropping your external hard drive and losing it all… so make sure you have it burnt on a disk or another drive also.

done!

Crashplan software is good, even if you don’t subscribe to their online backup service. You can use the software FOC to back up to an external drive or another computer, either on the same network or over the internet. If you had a mate with spare disk space then you could be backing up to each other’s machines.

That said, their service is good VFM, especially if you’ve got a few machines and fast enough upload speeds to do the initial backup.

For pretty much the last decade, all Windows software should be storing things related to you under your profile (“Documents & Settings” or “Users” folders) including all your files/photos/music, program settings, etc. Stuff under Program Files should be more or less untouched after the software is installed (and a standard user won’t have rights to change stuff in there), everything else it deals with should go under the profile. If you’ve moved things about, then you’ll have to be more careful about what you get.

Thus you should aim to grab everything under the profile, and should the machine die, you reinstall Windows, reinstall software, restore your profile and you should be good to go. Imaging software can make that process a bit quicker, but will tend to only be useful if the machine stays the same (say a hard disk dies and you replace the disk) rather than changing the whole thing.

Personally, I have four tiers of data:

– current working files, which fits inside a free 2GB Dropbox account and gets replicated around all the machines I use and can be accessed from the internet should I need it. Anything deleted can be recovered inside of 30 days.

– photos and other “self-created” stuff (garageband projects, video edits, etc)

– iTunes library, videos, etc.

– things downloaded off the internet, which can be easily obtained again (software ISO images off Technet, etc). Also things that can be easily re-created like testing virtual machines.

The first two get backed up off-site via Crashplan. The first three get backed up via Time Machine on my Mac. The last generally doesn’t get backed up much beyond an occasional copy to a USB drive.

Work out what is important stuff to you, and what you’d not lose sleep over. Protect the important stuff as much as possible, against all scenarios (not just hard disks dying – computers get stolen, houses burn down or get flooded), the less important bulkier stuff do a “best effort” with.

As Acronis has been mentioned above.

You can create a full image with Acronis and then set it to incrementally add to the image daily, this will allow for daily documennt backups and you will always be covered should the whole drive go tits up.

Without totally hijacking, what are folks using as backup media? I have a couple of external HDDs and a bunch of USB sticks. I’m still making CDR and DVDR copies of stuff I’d like to keep forever such as family photos and videos etc. Is there anything better/quicker/more permanent I should be thinking of? Backing up a HDD to HDD doesn’t seem like long term sense in terms of MTBFs etc. Should I dig out my Iomega ZIPdrive?

Bloody hell, this is getting more intense that I expected 🙂

Dropbox – have been using that for 2-3 years for a mix of stuff that I access on the fly. So that’s covered.

VMWare – will check it out.

Clonezilla – same.

CrashPlan – a bit like Dropbox’s bigger brother but with onsite options too?

Interesting. Cheers guys.

re : long term storage

CDs and DVDs degrade over time, so I just use either USB sticks (16GB ones), and keep both in the safe (primary and secondary)

CDs and DVDs degrade over time, so I just use either USB sticks (16GB ones), and keep both in the safe (primary and secondary)

That sounds like a very good plan.

Anyone offer a better long term storage solution before I order a couple of dozen USB sticks?

If you’re really paranoid, get two different brands of USB stick – ensuring they use different chips inside.

ps I’ve heard a lot of bad things ie bugs and failed backups with acronis.. the vmware and clonezilla way is bomb proof and doesnt rely on anything other than you keeping the files safe.

it doesnt however offer incremental backups but Id rather my backup plan didnt.

to give you a quick idea of what I do.

format my system and reinstall, tweak windows – add all updates and software.

I then create and image of this in clonezilla and vmware.

I then store all my files on a seperate internal harddrive and then have this synced with an external harddrive so I always have two copies.

I then use dropbox esk space for on the fly stuff

Another option would be to go down the RAID route so your harddrives are setup for redundancy so if anything fails on your system it wont have downtime.. still doesnt stop your psu blowing up or setting on fire mind!

eggs in basket scenarios

muppet – just make sure they arnt the cheapest nastiest sticks you find.. get one with a brand name like

http://www.ebuyer.com/231479-kingston-datatraveler-i-g3-8gb-usb-flash-drive-dtig3-8gb

As above – whatever method you choose, make 2 copies of important stuff, either physical or on-line.

I had a problem during a backup once, leading to deletion of both source and target files! Or imagine when you come to need a backup copy, the backup drive itself has failed.*

I now do regular backups and then verify it – before running another backup that I keep safe and secure (and, for extra paranoia points, off site at work/family/mates house!). 1TB drive was only £50 – so £50 for peace of mind was worth it.

* most people, like me, only put in place a robust backup plan after loosing lots of precious data!

Can’t you do a complete image of the system disc in Windows 7 these days?

EDIT: Control Panel > Backup & Restore > Create a System Image[/i]

Another option would be to go down the RAID route so your harddrives are setup for redundancy so if anything fails on your system it wont have downtime.. still doesnt stop your psu blowing up or setting on fire mind!

No it wouldn’t, RAID is not backup. If the controller has a fit and writes a bad stripe you’ve lost your data. You still need a separate copy of whatever you want on something else.

I’ve heard a lot of bad things ie bugs and failed backups with acronis..

Oh? Got a link for that? I’ve never had an issue with it myself.

I then store all my files on a seperate internal harddrive and then have this synced with an external harddrive so I always have two copies.

Live? What if a file gets corrupted, does it sync the corruption and you lose both copies?

alexxx – typical newbie mistake – RAID is not backup

It’s for continuity of systems.

Also, vmware is far from bomb proof either – you ever tried to recover a VM image when one of the .vmdk files is corrupted?

Thought not.

FWIW, I actually do an MD5 of all my backup files (including the .md5 file itself..), for integrity checking. Very occasionally, a bit or two does go missing.

vmware is far from bomb proof either

It’s a clever idea but it’s probably overkill for most home users.

Having just skimmed over the way I’m currently organising my data, methinks I’m going start by restructuring it. There’s so much stuff but it has to be done.

Also had a play with SyncToy 2.1. If it’s proven to be stable then this could be ideal for one-touch synchronising of (specified) folders. Then the apps stuff can be looked after by regular images. Hmm …

I haven’t found synctoy that stable (x64 version) with large data sets.

It ‘locks up’ while processing individual files – so it can bomb-out when transfering a 2GB MP4 file. Also, it hates my 25,000 MP3 collection…

RoboCopy is an excellent piece of sync’ing software.

I’m subscribing to the 3 2 1 backup idea:

3 Backup copies of anything you want to keep.
2 different storage media.
1 offsite storage site.

More here

Although I’ve not really got the offsite storage happening regularly.

Had a play with EaseUS over the weekend and it looks mighty good; full disk image, incremental backup, recovery etc – and that’s just the free version. Solid reviews too. Have decided to stick with a local solution and keep with DropBox only for my day to day stuff.

Their partition manager is pretty good too, should you have need of such things. </tangent>