Backups

[Icerat]

Hi guys

I've also posted this in microsoft.public.windowsxp.perform_maintain as
wasnt sure where to put it.

After some thinking i thought it was about time i got my self into a
good backup routine (something I've never done before), I've got
hundreds of photos of our new baby and lots of documents and stuff I've
created i want to keep.

So i started to look around for some free backup software and came
across Cobian Backup 7 http://www.cobian.se/

It's nice and easy to use and backs every thing up into is own store
archive (zip).
After each time i run it i get 10 achieves with what i've asked it to
back up stored in them i.e. separate achieve for Photos, one for docs,
oine for manual backups i do first (Mozbackup, Thunderbird and Firefox)
ect. ect.

At the moment I'm just doing full back up one a week and burning that to
a new DVDRW that is only ever going to be used for backups. I usually
just copy the files created buy the software to a new folder on the disk
(multi session so i can keep adding folders).

On the disk at the moment there are five folders with the following
names (each folder contains about 800mb of data):

BK 02-12-05
BK 09-12-05
BK 16-12-05
BK 23-12-05
BK 30-12-05

Now as you can imagine creating a full backup each time takes up allot
of space, so i have a few questions:

1. I know there are a couple of types of backups (incremental
differential) but what are they? and what's the difference?
2. Is this the best way to back up my data?
3. Is there a more efficient way of doing this?
4. Is the software I'm using any good? ( I liked the idea of the
individual things I backed up being stored in there own archive). Keeps
everything nice and organised.

If anyone has any ideas on how i can improve this or recommend any other
software it would be great.

Many thanks in advance

Mike

 

[Guest]

Youre best back up utility is the File Transfer Wizard,already installed in
xp.
Install xp cd,locate file transfer wizard in perform other options-i
believe it is.
Set as old computer in wizard,set the files,folders,settings you want it to
save,
save the data in a new folder that you create.Once the data is completed,send
the folder to cdrw,or dvdrw.Now if xp fails or hardware,simply reinstall
xp,then
open xp cd,locate the wizard,set as new computer,then all that is needed are
the updates.

 

[Enkidu]

Hi guys

I've also posted this in microsoft.public.windowsxp.perform_maintain as
wasnt sure where to put it.

After some thinking i thought it was about time i got my self into a
good backup routine (something I've never done before), I've got
hundreds of photos of our new baby and lots of documents and stuff I've
created i want to keep.

So i started to look around for some free backup software and came
across Cobian Backup 7 http://www.cobian.se/

It's nice and easy to use and backs every thing up into is own store
archive (zip).
After each time i run it i get 10 achieves with what i've asked it to
back up stored in them i.e. separate achieve for Photos, one for docs,
oine for manual backups i do first (Mozbackup, Thunderbird and Firefox)
ect. ect.

At the moment I'm just doing full back up one a week and burning that to
a new DVDRW that is only ever going to be used for backups. I usually
just copy the files created buy the software to a new folder on the disk
(multi session so i can keep adding folders).

On the disk at the moment there are five folders with the following
names (each folder contains about 800mb of data):

BK 02-12-05
BK 09-12-05
BK 16-12-05
BK 23-12-05
BK 30-12-05

Now as you can imagine creating a full backup each time takes up allot
of space, so i have a few questions:

1. I know there are a couple of types of backups (incremental
differential) but what are they? and what's the difference?
2. Is this the best way to back up my data?
3. Is there a more efficient way of doing this?
4. Is the software I'm using any good? ( I liked the idea of the
individual things I backed up being stored in there own archive). Keeps
everything nice and organised.

Instead of writing all backups to one DVD you SHOULD really rotate the
backups, so that if a disk goes bung, the most recent backup would be on
another disk.

Are you using packet writing software or are you just burning the new
files to the disk? Either way, I'm not a fan of multi-session disks.

So far as types of backups are concerned, incremental backups just back
up changed or new files. So if you do a full backup of A, B, C, D and E,
and by the next backup only A and D have changed, then an incremental
backup will only backup A and D. This backs up less data, but at the
expense of complexity. Also, if you take an incremental, and the backup
is bung and you can't restore from it, all subsequent incrementals may
be useless. And if the full backup fails, the incrementals are probably
useless too.

Cheers,

Cliff