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igalan · 07-04-2003, 04:00 AM

Recently one of our members had serious faliure in the main drive, loosing many valuable files (hopefully he could recover most of them

). This kind of things can happen to anyone, anytime. So I think it's a good idea if we can share some ideas and experiences with backups

.

Hardware:
-I have a DVD+-RW with InCD installed (so I can format a CD-RW or DVD+-RW and use it like any other removable drive). You can use any CD-R/RW (except very old burners, most support packet writting), or any removable drive.

Software:
I have tried a few programs, but now I use
PolderBackup. With this program you can define several backup sets and some options for each backup. Each set consist on a selection of folders, files/wildcards and exceptions (the last one is important for me). The back up is done on a folder of your choice (in my case on a folder on a CD-RW) and it's done compressing each file to zip (so you can easily restore single files).

There is also MOB (My Own Backup), but I can't find a link. It's also a very good program, but does not support wildcard exclusions.

-What do I back up:
I have a backup set for my documents that consists on:
"...\My documents\*.*" except "*.mpg *.wmv *.avi *.asf *.jpg *.tif" (my documents except video files and pictures -I back up them separately)
"...\Program data\Identities\*.*" (email)
"...\Program data\Address book\*.*" (address book)
"...\Program data\Opera\Opera7\opera6.adr" (bookmarks of Opera)
"...\Favorites\*.*" (Internet Explorer bookmarks)
"c:\Program files\P2P\eMule\config\*.*" (eMule settings and stats)
"c:\Program files\Trillian\Users\*.*" (Trillian settings and logs)

Backing up the whole "c:\Documents and settings" is overkill, because you don't want to back up things like Internet Explorer Cache, and many other files that Windows XP installs by default.

I have another backup set for the pictures (on a separate CD-RW and without zip compression).

-When to back up:
I have two CD-RW for back ups. At least once a week I do a backup on one CD-RW (incremental back up), and next week I use the other CD-RW. Since I do incremental back ups, it's very fast.

-Full backups:
With my DVD burner came Veritas Simple Backup. This program is really good, with it you can do a full backup on DVD or CD (or any combinations, since a full backup will probably need a few DVD/CD). It can even create a set of disks for emergency crash recovery. The problem is that to back up 35 GB you need 8 expensive DVD+RW disks (or a lot of CD-RW). So I don't do full back ups... You can also do selective back ups, so sometimes I do a back up of the whole C:\documents and settings" on DVD+RW.

07-04-2003, 04:00 AM	#1 (permalink)
igalan PCTT Articles Join Date: Apr 2002 Location: Barcelona, SPAIN Posts: 1,018	Backups and strategy Recently one of our members had serious faliure in the main drive, loosing many valuable files (hopefully he could recover most of them ). This kind of things can happen to anyone, anytime. So I think it's a good idea if we can share some ideas and experiences with backups . Hardware: -I have a DVD+-RW with InCD installed (so I can format a CD-RW or DVD+-RW and use it like any other removable drive). You can use any CD-R/RW (except very old burners, most support packet writting), or any removable drive. Software: I have tried a few programs, but now I use PolderBackup. With this program you can define several backup sets and some options for each backup. Each set consist on a selection of folders, files/wildcards and exceptions (the last one is important for me). The back up is done on a folder of your choice (in my case on a folder on a CD-RW) and it's done compressing each file to zip (so you can easily restore single files). There is also MOB (My Own Backup), but I can't find a link. It's also a very good program, but does not support wildcard exclusions. -What do I back up: I have a backup set for my documents that consists on: "...\My documents\." except ".mpg .wmv .avi .asf .jpg .tif" (my documents except video files and pictures -I back up them separately) "...\Program data\Identities\." (email) "...\Program data\Address book\." (address book) "...\Program data\Opera\Opera7\opera6.adr" (bookmarks of Opera) "...\Favorites\." (Internet Explorer bookmarks) "c:\Program files\P2P\eMule\config\." (eMule settings and stats) "c:\Program files\Trillian\Users\." (Trillian settings and logs) Backing up the whole "c:\Documents and settings" is overkill, because you don't want to back up things like Internet Explorer Cache, and many other files that Windows XP installs by default. I have another backup set for the pictures (on a separate CD-RW and without zip compression). -When to back up: I have two CD-RW for back ups. At least once a week I do a backup on one CD-RW (incremental back up), and next week I use the other CD-RW. Since I do incremental back ups, it's very fast. -Full backups: With my DVD burner came Veritas Simple Backup. This program is really good, with it you can do a full backup on DVD or CD (or any combinations, since a full backup will probably need a few DVD/CD). It can even create a set of disks for emergency crash recovery. The problem is that to back up 35 GB you need 8 expensive DVD+RW disks (or a lot of CD-RW). So I don't do full back ups... You can also do selective back ups, so sometimes I do a back up of the whole C:\documents and settings" on DVD+RW.