Backups

[Jim Slager]

Is the built-in backup utility under accessories-system
tools a good product? How about the Emergency Repair Disk
option? Does it work? Apparently the idea is that it
creates a CD and floppy which can be used to boot from in
order to recover from something like a disk crash. What
should I do since my Notebook doesn't have a floppy?

Do you use this utility regularly? Any advice would be
appreciated.

PS: Does it work on w2000 and 98se, also?

 

[Frank]

Is the built-in backup utility under accessories-system
tools a good product? How about the Emergency Repair Disk
option? Does it work? Apparently the idea is that it
creates a CD and floppy which can be used to boot from in
order to recover from something like a disk crash. What
should I do since my Notebook doesn't have a floppy?

Do you use this utility regularly? Any advice would be
appreciated.

PS: Does it work on w2000 and 98se, also?

I have never had any luck with system restore or the
backup utility shipped with XP. I recommend an
external HDD with a Drive Image type of software.

 

[Alex Nichol]

Is the built-in backup utility under accessories-system
tools a good product? How about the Emergency Repair Disk
option? Does it work? Apparently the idea is that it
creates a CD and floppy which can be used to boot from in
order to recover from something like a disk crash. What
should I do since my Notebook doesn't have a floppy?

In that case I would use something else for your emergency backup
method. Laptops are difficult because they rarely have any satisfactory
method of making the backup *off* the machine. If you have it
networked, *and* have the hard disk in two partitions then you could
make a backup of the C: into a file on the other drive, then push that
over the network to a machine with a burner. For that I use Image For
Windows - , from http://www.BootitNG.com ($27 shareware - 30 day full
functional trial). ITs related free BINGBurn, run on the other machine,
will then turn the backup file set into a set of bootable CDs, or even
better a DVD

This is all really separate from backing up data files so you could
restore earlier versions, or recover ones that get damaged. For that
the NTBackup does the job, but is not particularly good - and again
there is difficulty in getting backup off the machine with a laptop

 

[herbzee]

Jim Slager wrote:




In that case I would use something else for your emergency backup
method. Laptops are difficult because they rarely have any satisfactory
method of making the backup *off* the machine. If you have it
networked, *and* have the hard disk in two partitions then you could
make a backup of the C: into a file on the other drive, then push that
over the network to a machine with a burner. For that I use Image For
Windows - , from http://www.BootitNG.com ($27 shareware - 30 day full
functional trial). ITs related free BINGBurn, run on the other machine,
will then turn the backup file set into a set of bootable CDs, or even
better a DVD

This is all really separate from backing up data files so you could
restore earlier versions, or recover ones that get damaged. For that
the NTBackup does the job, but is not particularly good - and again
there is difficulty in getting backup off the machine with a laptop

To Alex Nichol,
Picking up the thread, I've been trying NTBackup and agree that's it's
nt so good inasmuch as I can't maintain directory structures in the
"restore". Is there a way to do this?
Cheers-Herb.

 

[Jim Slager]

Alex,
I am networked wirelessly and have been hoping to back my
various machines up on each other by wireless file
sharing. I ran the emergency repair utility last night
and it created a 7 GB file which is too big to transfer on
wifi. Apparently the idea is that it would restore your
machine exactly to the previous state. Since it does work
very well anyway I'll just give up on that idea.

Instead I'll try to achieve this: If I have a disk crash I
can replace the disk and reload the OS and use my backups
to restore My Documents plus stuff like favorites,
cookies, and organizer data. Is the file backup portion
of the Backup utility good for that?

 

[Al Dykes]

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To Alex Nichol,
Picking up the thread, I've been trying NTBackup and agree that's it's
nt so good inasmuch as I can't maintain directory structures in the
"restore". Is there a way to do this?
Cheers-Herb.

What do you mean ? If you use ntbackup to save a partition for directory
you get a file called <something>.bkf

Start ntbackup again, open the .bkf file and you will be able to drill down
and pick individual files or folder when will be extracted and restored
when you say "go".