How does one back up a partition?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Nick Mirro
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Nick Mirro

Ok I know how to do it to a local disk but there seems to be a serious
problem in creating an offsite backup.

The goal is to create an offsite backup of partitions for several machines.

To get a backup of this size, offsite, a dedicated drive is needed. A
portable hard drive of the usb or firewire type would seem to make sense,
but there is a shortcoming. Programs such as Ghost and Drive Image only
work in dos for ntfs partitions. This means that in order to restore a bad
partition, the portable drive needs to be recognized in dos by Ghost or
Drive Image, when booting to a Ghost or Drive Image floppy.

My understanding is that these backup drives are not recognizable. If this
is the case, how is the partition restored if Ghost and Drive Image won't
recognize the portable drive? For that matter, how is the ntfs partition
created? On the boxes, none of the portable drives say that they function
in dos.

Nick
 
Drive Image when booted from CD can recognize an external USB drive and
probably firewire as well) and restore an image from it.

I'm actually doing that as we speak. Here's the process:

I used Disk Image Version 7 to back up the image of an NTFS partition of a
Dell laptop to an external USB drive. I replaced the Dell Hard drive,
booted the laptop using the DI bootable CD. I selected to restore image.
DI sees the USB drive and allows me to select the source image there. It is
presently restoring it to the new laptop hard drive. (painfully slowly, I
might mention, since the laptop is USB 1)

I believe Ghost has similar capability. Of course, you need up to date
versions. If you're looking at something that has no NTFS support, it's
probably an old version.
 
Nick Mirro said:
Ok I know how to do it to a local disk but there seems to be a serious
problem in creating an offsite backup.

The goal is to create an offsite backup of partitions for several
Click to expand...
machines.

Use TrueImage www.acronis.com
To get a backup of this size, offsite, a dedicated drive is needed. A
portable hard drive of the usb or firewire type would seem to make sense,
but there is a shortcoming.
Click to expand...

Consider an SATA drive in a removable shock mounted tray like KF-83(~$30)
from www.kingwin.com
Programs such as Ghost and Drive Image only
work in dos for ntfs partitions.
Click to expand...

TrueImage works under Windows.
 
Hello Nick,

I have found that the easiest way to back up a partition is use "Partition
Magic" or "Norton Ghost" both work extreamly well. The only down side is
they arent free ;). I believe Partition Magic is about $80 and worth every
penny.

Michael Ortega
 
Michael said:
Hello Nick,

I have found that the easiest way to back up a partition is use "Partition
Magic" or "Norton Ghost" both work extreamly well. The only down side is
they arent free ;). I believe Partition Magic is about $80 and worth every
penny.

Michael Ortega
Click to expand...

Michael can you clarify this? As far as I know Partition Magic does not
do backups. Drive Image yes, but not partition magic.
 
It is true it doesn't do "back ups" in the same fashion, but it makes and
exact copy of an given partition. Which can be used as a back up, how ever
there is no compression.
I also like it because I can take that copy and hide it in its own partition
so nothing will ever happen to it.

Michael Ortega
 
In
Rock said:
Michael can you clarify this? As far as I know Partition Magic does
not do backups. Drive Image yes, but not partition magic.
Click to expand...

Me thinks he was thinking of Drive Image from Partition Magic, but that
would be a SWAG.
 
Blair said:
What are the shortcomings of a USB Drive? I was about ot purchase one for my
laptop
Click to expand...

They are more expensive and not as fast as a good drive in a tray but then I
haven't seen any trays that are likely to fit in your laptop<g>.

A USB2 HD works fine.
 
Your welcome. Note that powerquest was recently bought by Symantec. They
seem to be selling Drive Image 7 (or equivalent) under the Norton Ghost name
now.
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