Can someone tell me how to efficiently back up two 80GB hard drives?
When I did "serious business" with my computer, I had a tape backup
that I ran every night. This was, of course, over ten years ago and
now I just periodically burn things that are important to me on CDs.
I've never been able to use the backup utility included with Windows
because it won't back up to CDs.
Since I'm having so much trouble with my computer lately, I bought an
external 160GB hard drive last night, thinking I'd just back
everything up to that overnight, and do a clean install today.
I woke up this morning to discover that the largest file allowed to a
FAT 32 drive is 4MB -- I'm sure that I knew that at some point years
ago, but didn't realize it last night. Reviewing all the
possibilities I do have, I don't see a valid option for a full
"backup."
Do people not do "backups" anymore -- but just call it that? Are they
mirroring? People talk about backups -- but realistically and
efficiently, how is it done?
Right now, I'm just copying everything to the new hard drive -- is it
as simple as that?
TIA
BlueBrooke:
Most likely you would be interested in considering a disk cloning/disk
imaging program such as Acronis True Image - a more popular one these days -
to meet your basic objective. ATI is a disk cloning/disk imaging program
that's designed to completely back up your system.
The advantage of these disk cloning/disk imaging programs is that they are
comprehensive in nature - not only do they back up your user-created data,
but they also back up the operating system and all your programs &
applications - in short - everything that's on your day-to-day working HDD.
So through the use of a disk cloning/disk imaging program if and when for
one reason or another your working HDD becomes dysfunctional you are able to
restore the drive to its previous state in a reasonably simple &
straightforward way.
A program such as the Acronis one can either create a "clone" of your
working HDD (the so-called "source" disk) on your "destination" disk, i.e.,
your external USB or Firewire or SATA HDD, or it can create a "disk image" -
in effect, a "snapshot" of your system - which you can store on your
external HDD. There are advantages/disadvantages to each, but in either case
the backup/recovery process is straightforward, reasonably quick, and quite
effective.
BTW, while the Acronis program *does* have the capability of backing up &
restoring individual files and/or folders, most users employ the program in
the more comprehensive fashion of backing up the entire system as noted
above since both the backup & restore process is not terribly time-consuming
in that situation.
You can avail yourself of the opportunity to download a 15-day trial version
of the Acronis program (
http://www.acronis.com) and try it out to determine
if it meets your needs.
I've posted to this newsgroup on a number of occasions step-by-step
instructions on using the Acronis program both for disk cloning & disk
imaging and the recovery process. If you're interested, so indicate and I'll
post them again.
Anna
