Zip Back up?

  • Thread starter Thread starter LisaB
  • Start date Start date
But if it's an external drive it does not have to be turned on all the
time and can be switched on for only when you use it. That adds a lot of
protection for everything from viruses to internal PC problems.
Click to expand...


Of course. I didn't suggest anything about using anything but an external
drive. My point was that you can either buy an external drive or make the
same thing yourself by buying an internal drive and mounting it yourself in
an external enclosure that you've also bought. My suggestion was that it was
almost always better to explore both alternatives--store bought external and
external you've made yourself--and compare their prices. Sometimes one is
cheaper, sometimes the other.
 
Twayne.......does that mean I can take it to my parents house and do a
back
up of their computer with it?
Click to expand...


Yes, if there's gig enough for your backup and theirs.

Also; each time it does a back up; does it remove the old one?
Click to expand...


That depends entirely on what software you use for backup.

By the way, my view is that it's better to have at least *two* external
drives and alternate between their use. That way, you are never in the
position of having the act of backing up also being the act of destroying
your backup, which is dangerous.

In the instructions it says to format the drive? I'm confused on that.
Click to expand...


Your drive may not have been formatted when you got it.
 
(Lisa later adds...)
Thanks everyone. I just went and picked up a 500 GB external hard drive on
sale for $100Cnd from Best Buys (SimpleTech). (The cheapest pendrive was
$40 for 16GB; so ya it makes sens to pay the differance and get this).

Thanks again,
LisaB
Click to expand...


(Lisa later adds...)
Twayne.......does that mean I can take it to my parents house and do a
back up of their computer with it?

Also; each time it does a back up; does it remove the old one?
In the instructions it says to format the drive? I'm confused on that.

I'm new at this back up stuff ha.

Thanks
LisaB
Click to expand...


LisaB:
Now that you have a USB external hard drive you must consider a backup
program to use in conjunction with that piece of hardware.

I'll assume that your primary interest is in backing up your *entire* system
including the XP operating system (OS), all your programs & applications,
and of course your personal data - in short, *everything* that's on your
day-to-day working hard drive (HDD). And hopefully you would plan to do this
on some sort of routine basis so that you would maintain a backup system
that's reasonably up-to-date and could be used to *completely* restore your
system should things go awry, i.e., your internal HDD becomes defective and
is no longer usable, or for one reason or another your OS becomes corrupt
and is no longer bootable or functional. And you're also thinking of using
this kind of backup system for your parents' computer as well.

If I've correctly surmised your objectives, read on. If not, you can stop
right now...

I would strongly recommend that you use a disk-to-disk "cloning" program.
The particular one I have in mind is the Casper 5 disk-cloning program. For
a variety of reasons I won't go into now I prefer this program over all
other disk-cloning (and disk imaging) programs that I've used over the
years. It's a superb program and particularly well-suited for the average PC
user.

Should you (or others) desire I can post additional detailed information
about the program. In the meantime you might want to take a look at Casper's
website at http://www.fssdev.com. Note a trial version of the program is
available. While the trial version is somewhat crippled it should give a
potential user a good feel as to how the program works. Just one other
thing...The program is not particularly inexpensive - it's total cost comes
to $59.90 and AFAIK it's only available through the developer and not
through online vendors nor retail outlets. To my mind it's well worth the
cost given the quality of the program and its frequency of use by a
purchaser. However, we have found that many potential users are "put off" by
the rather high cost as compared with other disk-cloning/disk-imaging
programs.
Anna
 
Here is what the SimpleTech manual says:
(I'm confused on how to do this) Thanks LisaB

Formatting SimpleDrive
SimpleDrive is preformatted as an NTFS volume. If you plan to use
SimpleDrive in Windows 98SE,Me, 2000, XP and Vista environments, consider
creating two partitions on the drive—a FAT 32 volume to support Windows 98SE
and Me, and a second larger NTFS partition for Windows 2000,XP, and Vista.

For instructions on formatting disk drives, refer to your Windows operating
system documentation.
 
Anna,

Yes; seeing that I have 500GB I would want to backup 'everything'.

What is disc cloning?

The hard drive I purchased comes with backup software (I'm told) and very
easy to use according to the salesman. Would this include disc cloning?

(There were a few brands to consider and the rep suggested the SimpleTech).
I have yet to do my backup with it (so far just copied things on CD with a
condensed back up - about 2GB and did photos seperate).

Thanks
LisaB
 
My computer says it's NTFS file system.

LisaB

Patrick Keenan said:
There are at least two basic problems here.

First, it's too big for any optical media other than Blu-Ray, unless you are
using backup software that will split files at a specific size. And at 9.5
gig, you're going to need - 14 to 16 CDs or three DVDs.

Another problem is that many non-NTFS file systems, and may *zip utilities*
cannot create files larger than about 4 gig. You would have to split it,
and that means you run into the problem above of an unreasonable number of
disks.

It also creates a problem that you simply can't verify that the backup is
valid, and that basically means it is useless. You can not know that you
can rely on it if you can not test it.

Yet another problem is that ntbackup can't write to optical media.

In this case, you should back up to an external hard disk. These are not
expensive now - you can buy a decent case for about $30, and a 500 gig hard
disk for around $70. It takes about five minutes to assemble and requires
only a small phillips screwdriver. Format as NTFS, and you're ready to go.

HTH
-pk
Click to expand...
 
Wondering now if the guy steered me the wrong way. Think I should have got
the Seagate (from my online reading). I want to make sure I bought something
reliable. Any comments?

Thanks!
LisaB
 
LisaB said:
Anna,

Yes; seeing that I have 500GB I would want to backup 'everything'.

What is disc cloning?

The hard drive I purchased comes with backup software (I'm told) and very
easy to use according to the salesman. Would this include disc cloning?

(There were a few brands to consider and the rep suggested the
SimpleTech).
I have yet to do my backup with it (so far just copied things on CD with a
condensed back up - about 2GB and did photos seperate).

Thanks
LisaB
Click to expand...


Lisa:
I'm not at all familiar with the backup program that came with your
SimpleTech USBEHD. I would guess it's not a disk-cloning type of program but
it's entirely possible it is. In any event that backup program might well
serve your needs. I assume the program came with instructions on its use and
it probably would be wise for you to become familiar with such to determine
if the program is suitable for your objectives.

A "disk-cloning" program is, as its name indicates, a program that will
"clone" the contents of one HDD to another HDD so that the recipient of the
clone - the "destination" HDD - will be (for all practical purposes) a
precise duplicate of the "source" HDD. So in your particular case you would
use the disk-cloning program to clone the contents of your day-to-day
internal HDD to your USBEHD. Since, as you've indicated, you also want the
USBEHD to serve as a backup system for your parents' PC you could create two
partitions on your large USBEHD and clone the contents of your source HDD to
one of the partitions and use the other partition to store the cloned
contents of your parents' HDD. Hopefully you'll be doing these things on a
more-or-less routine basis so as to maintain up-to-date backups of the
involved systems.
Anna
 
The date and time was 11/11/2008 7:50 AM, and on a whim, LisaB pounded
out on the keyboard:
Twayne.......does that mean I can take it to my parents house and do a back
up of their computer with it?

Also; each time it does a back up; does it remove the old one?

In the instructions it says to format the drive? I'm confused on that.

I'm new at this back up stuff ha.

Thanks
LisaB
Click to expand...

Hi Lisa,

You can back up just about any computer with a USB drive. If your
parents have XP, you don't have to format anything, as the drive is
ready for XP as you stated in your other post (preformatted as a NTFS
volume). If they have Windows 98 or Me, you'll have to create two
partitions, one for FAT32 that those older OS's can read, but that's the
only exception.

Most backup software allows you to name the backup. On the external
drives I use for clients, I name the file using the computer name, drive
and date.

After you do a full backup, you can either append the existing backup
(which keeps the same name), or create new files that only backup what
has changed since the last full backup (called an incremental or
differential), which a differential is what I recommend. I would do a
full backup first, and then (depending on how valuable your data is and
how often it is modified), a differential at least once per week, daily
if you can't afford to lose any of what you work on each day. My data
is backed up each day when the computer shuts down.

An incremental backs up what has changed since the last incremental
backup, and a differential backs up everything that has changed since
the last full backup. Problem with incrementals is, you have to go
through each one to find a possible file, as the file may not have been
modified when you last backed up and the backup is on an earlier backup.
A differential keeps all the files that have changed since the last
full backup, so on a restore, you only have to restore one file. A bit
confusing, but you'll get the hang of it. ;-)

--
Terry R.

***Reply Note***
Anti-spam measures are included in my email address.
Delete NOSPAM from the email address after clicking Reply.
 
Twayne.......does that mean I can take it to my parents house and do
a back up of their computer with it?
Click to expand...

Yes. If your backup utiity has compression, almost certainly. It's
possible but pretty unlikely that you would not have enough room unless
you run a LOT Of programs and have a LOT of data files or huge images.
e.g. this particular machine I'm on at the moment has a total of 2
drives and 5 drive letters, each drive letter at least 50% used and a
total of 440 Gig. I'm using compression for backup, and my 500 Gig is
holding 4 full backups and about 30 incremental backups per full backup,
and it occupies around 166 Gig on the 500 Gig external drive. That
number will rise to about 350 - 380 Gig by the end of the month, at
which time it optimizes and space used goes back to around 300 Gig
again. On that same drive I have images of around 80 installation CDs
and downloaded programs plus a full suite of video editing applications
and several image editors.
Monthly, since it only gets used for email & our banking work, my
wife's computer is also backed up, encrypted, to the same 500 Gig drive
plus my laptop backup, but it only has an 80 Gig drive, so doesn't take
a lot of space.
I have the alarm set to go off on it at 80% full, (so I can be sure of
being able to defrag, etc.), and it has never gone off.
So, being a rather heavy user myself, you should be able to judge
whether you'd come close to that or not. 500 Gig is quite a bit of data
when it's compressed.
Also; each time it does a back up; does it remove the old one?
Click to expand...

That would be a function of whatever software you use to back up with.
Read the manuals for that detail. Mine does and many do, but then
several do not also. My Ghost does it automatically, not sure of True
Image, and I know XPs ntbackup.exe will not do any automagical
optimization.
In the instructions it says to format the drive? I'm confused on that.
Click to expand...

Why? It's just like any other drive you would install in your computer
for the most part. Format it as an NTFS file system (which XP uses by
default) and you should be all set.
Anyway, if you're still confused, try to rephrase whatever is confusing
you; someone here will be able to assist, I'm sure.
I'm new at this back up stuff ha.
Click to expand...

We all were at one time<g>!

For your reading pleasure:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backup
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norton_Ghost
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acronis_True_Image
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ntbackup

Cheers,

Twayne
 
Twayne said:
Of course. I didn't suggest anything about using anything but an
external drive. My point was that you can either buy an external
drive or make the same thing yourself by buying an internal drive and
mounting it yourself in an external enclosure that you've also
bought. My suggestion was that it was almost always better to explore
both alternatives--store bought external and external you've made
yourself--and compare their prices. Sometimes one is cheaper,
sometimes the other.
Click to expand...

Ah, I misread it; sorry about that. All good points.

Twayne
 
Here is what the SimpleTech manual says:
(I'm confused on how to do this) Thanks LisaB

Formatting SimpleDrive
SimpleDrive is preformatted as an NTFS volume. If you plan to use
SimpleDrive in Windows 98SE,Me, 2000, XP and Vista environments,
consider creating two partitions on the drive-a FAT 32 volume to
support Windows 98SE and Me, and a second larger NTFS partition for
Windows 2000,XP, and Vista.

For instructions on formatting disk drives, refer to your Windows
operating system documentation.
Click to expand...

Ah, that helps. I don't know what SimpleDrive is (brand name?), but if
you are going to use it with XP and not 98 or 2000, then it's already
formatted for you.
XP CAN have a need for FAT formatted partitions, and if it does, and
this is your computer, you would know it. If not, then just start using
it as it is.

There seems to be a typo in the description above. If you were going to
have a dual-boot (say, win98 AND XP), then you might have need of the
FAT32 volume. If that is not your case and you are only concerned with
XP, then you should not have to format it.

Since it's preformatted as NTFS, you would ONLY need to reformat it if
you needed to add a small FAT32 partition to it. Nothing you have said
so far indicates that is the case for you.

If you presently only have NTFS on your computer , then for sure
that's all you need for the external drive, and it says above it's
already preformatted for NTFS. Meaning, plug it in and start using it.

HTH

TWayne
 
Wondering now if the guy steered me the wrong way. Think I should
have got the Seagate (from my online reading). I want to make sure I
bought something reliable. Any comments?
Click to expand...

As someone already mentioned IIRC, the hard drive you have is THE same
hard drive you would get if you had bought the internal hard drive
configuation. Mechanically, the difference is one comes with a case and
circuitry so it can live outside the computer case and the other one
does not.

If your plans for the drive are for backup/archive operations, the
external drive is the generally preferred solution. If it's not going
to be used for backup and you don't care about it being external, then
the type that fits inside the case might be your preference.
"Reliability" isn't really a big issue since the actual disk drive
itself might be the same exact one.
Exceptions to that, which are not reliability determinants, would be
to make sure the internal drive matches the wiring configuration
available inside your computer case for it. In other words, is it EIDE
or SATA? IDE has the couple inch wide data cable and most any machine
can use those, while SATA has a much smaller cable, a different power
cable, and the computer needs to have a SATA controller and plugs, along
with the correct power plug.
Just about any current computer these days has SATA capability at
least, and probably SATA drives, but those a couple years or more old
may not have them. It depends on the designers and buildes what's in
them. This nearly 5 year old computerI'm using at the moment had both,
as delivered. SATA is the faster and better method, but there isn't
anything wrong wiht PATA either. Sorry; PATA = IDE/EIDE.

HTH a little,

Twayne
 
Ok thanks; well the more I read the more confused I get LOL seems everyone
has a complaint about one or the other external HD so I guess I'll stick with
this one.

What I didn't realize is that the software it comes with doesn't do a full
system back up (from what I've read on CNET).

Thanks again,
LisaB
 
Brand is SimpleTech (as I indicated) the info is a cut and paste from their
manual.

I'm not sure about the rest of your reply (over my head) lol. "XP CAN have a
need for FAT formatted partitions, and if it does, and this is your computer,
you would know it".

When I turn it on it's straight forward and seems ready to use. Just wasn't
sure if I had to format it (like it indicates) unless I'm reading it wrong
ha ha.

Hey What I noticed is when I turn it on and check the properties of the
drive; (right mouse click properties) it only shows 465 GB available and 211
GB used. I haven't used it yet. It has 500GB. This doesn't add up. What is
that all about?

Ok I guess I can just use it and not worry about the formatting thing.

Thanks!
LisaB
 
The date and time was 11/11/2008 3:58 PM, and on a whim, Twayne pounded
out on the keyboard:
Yes. If your backup utiity has compression, almost certainly. It's
possible but pretty unlikely that you would not have enough room unless
you run a LOT Of programs and have a LOT of data files or huge images.
e.g. this particular machine I'm on at the moment has a total of 2
drives and 5 drive letters, each drive letter at least 50% used and a
total of 440 Gig. I'm using compression for backup, and my 500 Gig is
holding 4 full backups and about 30 incremental backups per full backup,
and it occupies around 166 Gig on the 500 Gig external drive. That
number will rise to about 350 - 380 Gig by the end of the month, at
which time it optimizes and space used goes back to around 300 Gig
again. On that same drive I have images of around 80 installation CDs
and downloaded programs plus a full suite of video editing applications
and several image editors.
Monthly, since it only gets used for email & our banking work, my
wife's computer is also backed up, encrypted, to the same 500 Gig drive
plus my laptop backup, but it only has an 80 Gig drive, so doesn't take
a lot of space.
I have the alarm set to go off on it at 80% full, (so I can be sure of
being able to defrag, etc.), and it has never gone off.
So, being a rather heavy user myself, you should be able to judge
whether you'd come close to that or not. 500 Gig is quite a bit of data
when it's compressed.
Click to expand...

The average user has WAY less than you do, even for a full backup.
Compression is the least of her worries. Rather than ramble on about
YOUR disk space, why not have a one line explanation on how to check her
disk space?

That would be a function of whatever software you use to back up with.
Read the manuals for that detail. Mine does and many do, but then
several do not also. My Ghost does it automatically, not sure of True
Image, and I know XPs ntbackup.exe will not do any automagical
optimization.

Why? It's just like any other drive you would install in your computer
for the most part. Format it as an NTFS file system (which XP uses by
default) and you should be all set.
Anyway, if you're still confused, try to rephrase whatever is confusing
you; someone here will be able to assist, I'm sure.
Click to expand...

She gave the info on her drive and it stated it was preformatted. Why
confuse her more?

--
Terry R.

***Reply Note***
Anti-spam measures are included in my email address.
Delete NOSPAM from the email address after clicking Reply.
 
The date and time was 11/11/2008 4:08 PM, and on a whim, Twayne pounded
out on the keyboard:
Ah, that helps. I don't know what SimpleDrive is (brand name?), but if
you are going to use it with XP and not 98 or 2000, then it's already
formatted for you.
Click to expand...

W2k uses NTFS also, so the only reason for a FAT32 partition is for
Win9x and earlier or Me.

XP CAN have a need for FAT formatted partitions, and if it does, and
this is your computer, you would know it. If not, then just start using
it as it is.
Click to expand...

What NEED is that? I'm not aware of ANY need XP has for a FAT formatted
partition. Even if the drive is formatted for FAT32 for XP, it can still
read and write NTFS.

There seems to be a typo in the description above. If you were going to
have a dual-boot (say, win98 AND XP), then you might have need of the
FAT32 volume. If that is not your case and you are only concerned with
XP, then you should not have to format it.
Click to expand...

No MIGHT about it, and there's no typo. If someone is going to back up
a Win9x or Me partition, they would HAVE to have it formatted FAT32,
unless they pay for a utility that allows those programs to read and
write to NTFS.


--
Terry R.

***Reply Note***
Anti-spam measures are included in my email address.
Delete NOSPAM from the email address after clicking Reply.
 
Wondering now if the guy steered me the wrong way. Think I should have got
the Seagate (from my online reading). I want to make sure I bought
something
reliable. Any comments?
Click to expand...

My point had nothing to do with reliability, just with cost. The two options
are equally reliable, because whether you assemble it or buy it already
assembled, it's the same.
 
As someone already mentioned IIRC, the hard drive you have is THE same
hard drive you would get if you had bought the internal hard drive
configuation. Mechanically, the difference is one comes with a case and
circuitry so it can live outside the computer case and the other one does
not.
Click to expand...


Once again, the only difference is whether it comes with an external case.
You can buy it in the case, or you can buy it without a case and yourself
put it into a case you bought separately. The result is the same. The choice
of which alternative to buy should be based on the relative prices of what's
available.
 
The date and time was 11/11/2008 7:50 AM, and on a whim, LisaB pounded out


Hi Lisa,

You can back up just about any computer with a USB drive. If your parents
have XP, you don't have to format anything, as the drive is ready for XP
as you stated in your other post (preformatted as a NTFS volume). If they
have Windows 98 or Me, you'll have to create two partitions, one for FAT32
that those older OS's can read, but that's the only exception.
Click to expand...


She doesn't *have to* do that. Alternatively, she can make the entire drive
FAT32, since XP can use that too.
 
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