Bootable CD

[DaveS]

I would like to begin to back up my system onto a 300Gb Maxtor external
drive instead of my CD's, which I've been doing nicely all along. However,
one of the things I worry about is that if my system hard drive were to
crash I would have to have a set of "start-up" disks to begin to reload my
system onto a virgin drive.

I've tried to research this but everything I read says I have to create a
"floppy" start-up disk. I do not have a floppy drive on my system, however,
so I'm thinking I can use my CD. The problem I have is I cannot find how to
create a Start-up set of "disks" utilizing the CD. Is this possible?

Now I know I can do a "drive Image" backup but I use NTI as my back up
software and to do this I have to use 27 CD's to image my system as it
doesn't allow me to utilize the external hard drive.

Can anyone help me with this? And thanks in advance.

--
to email me replace "spam" with "comcast"

We could learn a lot from crayons: some are
sharp, some are pretty, some are dull, some
have weird names, and all are different colors
but they all have to learn to live in the same box.

 

[R. McCarty]

Good Question, that brings up a number of Pitfalls with backups &
processing issues. To create a bootable CD-R isn't that difficult. It
is possible to download an .Iso image of a floppy boot disk and burn
it to CD-R - Essentially, turning a CD-R disk into a bootable floppy.
You can add you tools to the disk. The issue with that is because a
CD is read only, any tools that need to create Temp or Workspace
files will fail. In my own case, I have a bootable CD-R, that creates
a Ramdrive and copies the DOS-Mode tools to it, for that purpose.

27 CD-R's, - You really should consider an alternate application to
handle backup/imaging. Most all Imaging apps employ compression
algorithms to make the end result saveset much smaller than the source.
-or- DVD-RW unit prices have dropped significantly. You could get
a unit for ~$70. Of course blank media costs are greater than with
CD-R's. The newer DVD-RW units are 16X speed and support the
dual-layer burn technology that allows a single disk to hold upwards
of 10.0 Gigabytes of data. Some brand drives ship with an imaging
program included in the purchase price.

The reason I suggest that is the higher the number of disks in a saveset,
the greater the chances of issue(s) with recovery.
Also, a more recent imaging program is likely to have native USB
boot support. Many of these imaging program CD's are themselves
bootable and can read USB drives to retrieve/recover the saveset.

Also, you should consider data segmenting. With today's large drives
(150+) Gigabytes keeping everything on one partition makes backups
very time intensive. I also strongly recommend a verification pass on
Images. If you keep everything on one disk/partition, as in your case
imaging ~20 Gigabytes with Verification can take a good bit of time.

Pardon the long post - But the easier and more efficient your backup
process, the more likely you'll do it on a regular schedule.

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

I would like to begin to back up my system onto a 300Gb Maxtor external
drive instead of my CD's, which I've been doing nicely all along. However,
one of the things I worry about is that if my system hard drive were to
crash I would have to have a set of "start-up" disks to begin to reload my
system onto a virgin drive.

I've tried to research this but everything I read says I have to create a
"floppy" start-up disk. I do not have a floppy drive on my system, however,
so I'm thinking I can use my CD. The problem I have is I cannot find how to
create a Start-up set of "disks" utilizing the CD. Is this possible?

Now I know I can do a "drive Image" backup but I use NTI as my back up
software and to do this I have to use 27 CD's to image my system as it
doesn't allow me to utilize the external hard drive.

Can anyone help me with this? And thanks in advance.

--
to email me replace "spam" with "comcast"

We could learn a lot from crayons: some are
sharp, some are pretty, some are dull, some
have weird names, and all are different colors
but they all have to learn to live in the same box.

One way out of your dilemma would be to boot your PC
with a Bart PE boot CD (www.bootdisk.com). You will,
of course, need a CD burner.

Another way would be to buy & install a floppy disk
drive. They cost next to nothing, and sooner or later
you will need one anyway.

 

[Darrell S]

I would like to begin to back up my system onto a 300Gb Maxtor
external drive instead of my CD's, which I've been doing nicely all
along. However, one of the things I worry about is that if my system
hard drive were to crash I would have to have a set of "start-up"
disks to begin to reload my system onto a virgin drive.

I've tried to research this but everything I read says I have to
create a "floppy" start-up disk. I do not have a floppy drive on my
system, however, so I'm thinking I can use my CD. The problem I have
is I cannot find how to create a Start-up set of "disks" utilizing
the CD. Is this possible?
Now I know I can do a "drive Image" backup but I use NTI as my back up
software and to do this I have to use 27 CD's to image my system as it
doesn't allow me to utilize the external hard drive.

Can anyone help me with this? And thanks in advance.

I have a setup similar to yours. I have a 200 GB USB drive. I use
DriveImage 7.0 to image my hard drive to the USB drive. I keep 3 rotating
images of my hard drive. If I can't boot to the C: drive I have my BIOS set
to boot from a CD if it's bootable. I can put my DI 7.0 CD in my CD drive
and boot to it. It is not only bootable but contains the logic to "find" my
USB drive and recover the saved image to re-write my hard drive.

My first line of defense is GoBack. I use GoBack frequently whenever I have
trouble. I also have most of my data backed up on my 80GB USB drive and I
have 3 versions of DriveImage 7.0 complete hard drive images I keep on my
200 GB USB drive. If my hard drive was to become inaccessible (but was
physically OK) I can hit the space bar when GoBack shows during the first
stages of boot up and go back to a condition before the problem. If that
doesn't work I can put my DI 7.0 CD in the drive and boot to it. It has the
ability to "see" my USB drive and to completely image my hard drive back to
"that" saved condition.

One other nice thing about GoBack is that you can go back and recover files
you have deleted (within its available memory). If you have changed a file
and would like to have the previous version back you can use GoBack to find
all earlier versions of that file (within its memory). You can choose to
overwrite your current version or you can recover previous version(s) to a
different folder or slightly change the filename. That way you have your
current version to compare with earlier versions and you can pick and choose
portions or all of the file to make your final choice.

Right now I can go back to the 19th of January at 0940 or any "system safe
point" (hundreds) between right now and the 19th. That includes the ability
to change my complete hard drive back to the way it existed at any of those
times.
It also has all versions of files changed or deleted back to the 19th. I
can select how much hard drive room that GoBack can use for its memory.
Right now I give it 10%. So it's volume not time that fills it up. If I
have low activity it might go back over a week into the past. When I
installed my video editing and was working with BIG video files GoBack's
memory was only back to early that same day.