"P.Schuman" <pschuman_no_spam_me@interserv.com> wrote in message
news:ABmBj.554$LV5.140@newssvr19.news.prodigy.net. ..
> with laptop disk capacity getting bigger and bigger,
> wonder how folks are backing up their critical laptop information ?
>
> I have Acronis loaded from when I installed a new disk...
> but have not used it for creating backup images.
>
> My laptop has all my financials, taxes, and business stuff,
> along with photos, docs, email, music, videos, etc
>
> SO - with a 30, 60, or 120MB laptop disk -
> how and what can we use to back these up in a reasonable amount of time
> ?
> Heck - it takes an hour just to perform a complete disk virus scan.
>
I was thinking about this on Sunday - when I saw a 1 Terabyte disk for
sale at Best Buy for $230.
I bought an HP laptop just as Vista was being released, so I got it with
XP and was mailed the DVD's to upgrade to Vista. I prefer XP, but was
thinking - I could Ghost laptop to it as-is, then backup each of the 2
partitions, then upgrade laptop to Vista ?? If I don't like it could
then go back to XP using the USB drive and Ghost.
How long would it take to format a 1Tb disk drive ?
with laptop disk capacity getting bigger and bigger,
wonder how folks are backing up their critical laptop information ?
I have Acronis loaded from when I installed a new disk...
but have not used it for creating backup images.
My laptop has all my financials, taxes, and business stuff,
along with photos, docs, email, music, videos, etc
SO - with a 30, 60, or 120MB laptop disk -
how and what can we use to back these up in a reasonable amount of time ?
Heck - it takes an hour just to perform a complete disk virus scan.
--
----------------------------------
"If everything seems to be going well,
you have obviously overlooked something." - Steven Wright
On Mon, 10 Mar 2008 22:00:50 -0500, "P.Schuman"
<pschuman_no_spam_me@interserv.com> wrote:
>with laptop disk capacity getting bigger and bigger,
>wonder how folks are backing up their critical laptop information ?
>
>I have Acronis loaded from when I installed a new disk...
>but have not used it for creating backup images.
>
>My laptop has all my financials, taxes, and business stuff,
>along with photos, docs, email, music, videos, etc
>
>SO - with a 30, 60, or 120MB laptop disk -
>how and what can we use to back these up in a reasonable amount of time ?
>Heck - it takes an hour just to perform a complete disk virus scan.
I use a large USB-connected hard disk that does real-time backup
whenever the PC is on.
>My laptop has all my financials, taxes, and business stuff,
>along with photos, docs, email, music, videos, etc
>SO - with a 30, 60, or 120MB laptop disk -
>how and what can we use to back these up in a reasonable amount of time ?
>Heck - it takes an hour just to perform a complete disk virus scan.
Here's what I do:
1. I have a directory named C:\NoBackup, which gets all kinds of stuff
that I don't want to be part of the backup set - typically stuff that
can be recreated if necessary. That includes video captures (I still
have the original camera tapes), ripped audio (I still have the original
CDs), digital camera images (they're backed up separately manually).
2. In XP's Backup utility, I have added exclusions for C:\NoBackup plus
a couple pieces of software in Program Files that are too large to be
worth backing up (MS Streets&Trips, MS Flight Simulator, other games).
So when I backup C:, these things don't get backed up. Backup
automatically excludes the swap file, hibernation file, etc.
3. Several times a week, my main desktop machine wakes up at 6 AM and
does a backup of C: and "system state" onto a second drive in the same
machine. This happens while I'm still asleep.
4. A few times a week, at my leisure, I run SyncToy to synchronize the
local disk backup folder with one on the house file server (a Linksys
NSLU2 and USB disk). This is slow because it's copying data across the
Ethernet and the NSLU2 is no speed demon, but it runs in the background
happily.
5. Once a week, I use SyncToy (again) to synchronize one of these backup
folders to a 160 MB 2.5 inch external hard drive. This drive is tiny,
and spends almost all its time at work.
My wife's PC does something similar, except that the backup goes
directly to the home fileserver.
So, if the main drive in my PC (or my wife's) dies, I have backups of
the important files in 3 other places (though some are a week or two
old). If my PC power supply dies and wipes out both internal drives, I
still have a recent backup on an external disk with its own power
supply, plus the copy at work. And if the whole house burns down,
taking both the PCs and fileserver, I *still* have one copy on the disk
at work.
Perhaps this is overkill, but it's mostly automated and not a lot of
work. I don't really *need* the copy on the local disk, but that speeds
up copying to the 160 MB pocket-sized drive when I bring it home.
>with laptop disk capacity getting bigger and bigger,
>wonder how folks are backing up their critical laptop information ?
>
>I have Acronis loaded from when I installed a new disk...
>but have not used it for creating backup images.
>
>My laptop has all my financials, taxes, and business stuff,
>along with photos, docs, email, music, videos, etc
>
>SO - with a 30, 60, or 120MB laptop disk -
>how and what can we use to back these up in a reasonable amount of
>time ? Heck - it takes an hour just to perform a complete disk virus
>scan.
To my mind, there are 3 types of backups;
1) System backup -- This type of backup does a backup of my system
partition (note that I do keep OS/Apps on a separate partition from my
data). I do this backup once a week at night when I am not on the
computer.
2) Data backup -- This type of backup is of my entire data partition
and is done to an external USB drive. At least one of my external USB
drives is kept off site so that in the event of fire/theft I don't lose
too much data.
3) Real-time backup -- for this I use SecondCopy to make sure that my
work data files are backed up to a second internal partition. This is
especially important for me since my work source code files tend to be
on my system drive and I would hate to lose hours of work due to a
system crash.
There are of course applications that will allow you to do incremental
backups which will of course speed up the backup process.
I think though that you need to decide the types and levels of backup
that you will use for your backup strategy before you can determine
what tools will do the job best.
Kalman Rubinson wrote:
> On Mon, 10 Mar 2008 22:00:50 -0500, "P.Schuman"
> <pschuman_no_spam_me@interserv.com> wrote:
>
>> with laptop disk capacity getting bigger and bigger,
>> wonder how folks are backing up their critical laptop information ?
>>
>> I have Acronis loaded from when I installed a new disk...
>> but have not used it for creating backup images.
>>
>> My laptop has all my financials, taxes, and business stuff,
>> along with photos, docs, email, music, videos, etc
>>
>> SO - with a 30, 60, or 120MB laptop disk -
>> how and what can we use to back these up in a reasonable amount of
>> time ? Heck - it takes an hour just to perform a complete disk virus
>> scan.
>
> I use a large USB-connected hard disk that does real-time backup
> whenever the PC is on.
>
> Kal
my laptop has USB 1.1 - but I have a PCMCIA card for USB 2.0 that I use for
video editing.
If my laptop right now has about 30GB used,
then the Acronic backup software might be able to create a 2x compressed
backup file - 15GB -
I would need to create that on the USB external drive real time,
as I don't have another 15GB free on the disk.
The issue would be creating that 15GB file on the external drive via USB
2.0,
and how long it would take....
Guess I'll have to get an external disk + USB case.... and try it.
There seems to be a ton of these USB cases out there... hmmm....
>
> The issue would be creating that 15GB file on the external drive via USB
> 2.0,
> and how long it would take....
Actually, I think the main issue would be whether or not your software
will be able to 'see' that USB backup file (especially with the PCMCIA
card) in case you need to restore from scratch. If it doesn't, well,
then obviously the scheme is useless.
With a 2nd hard drive, you could test your scheme and know for sure.
Use the 2nd as a scratch drive, so your actual system drive is safe and
sound on a shelf somewhere.
>
Even at 1.1, I don't think it would be an outrageous length of time.
I've backed up a 6 GB system drive, with USB 1.1, and it was only about
40 minutes (that's with Ghost 10). For 15Gb, I'd guess 90 minutes. If
that were necessary just for a catastrophic restore, it still beats
starting from scratch with your OS CD's and applications.
You won't be backing up the whole mess each time -- the incrementals
shouldn't be too terrible.
> Guess I'll have to get an external disk + USB case.... and try it.
> There seems to be a ton of these USB cases out there... hmmm....
>
>
>
"Robert Barr" <not@for.harvest> wrote in message
news:9vEBj.13814$5K1.8104@newssvr12.news.prodigy.n et...
>
>>
>> The issue would be creating that 15GB file on the external drive via USB
>> 2.0,
>> and how long it would take....
>
> Actually, I think the main issue would be whether or not your software
> will be able to 'see' that USB backup file (especially with the PCMCIA
> card) in case you need to restore from scratch. If it doesn't, well, then
> obviously the scheme is useless.
>
The latest bootable restore disks that Trueimage produces seem to work with
all manner of USB and firewire interfaces. It should certainly work with a
Cardbus USB2 interface.
Re: "The latest bootable restore disks that Trueimage produces seem to
work with all manner of USB and firewire interfaces. It should
certainly work with a Cardbus USB2 interface."
In general, WRONG.
The problems isn't so much USB as Cardbus; if the USB ports were on the
motherboard, it MIGHT work. But it is very unlikely that your software
(TrueImage) will have a driver for the PC Card, and without that, the
USB ports won't even be seen.
"Barry Watzman" <WatzmanNOSPAM@neo.rr.com> wrote in message
news:47dc1548$0$6164$4c368faf@roadrunner.com...
> Re: "The latest bootable restore disks that Trueimage produces seem to
> work with all manner of USB and firewire interfaces. It should certainly
> work with a Cardbus USB2 interface."
>
> In general, WRONG.
>
> The problems isn't so much USB as Cardbus; if the USB ports were on the
> motherboard, it MIGHT work. But it is very unlikely that your software
> (TrueImage) will have a driver for the PC Card, and without that, the USB
> ports won't even be seen.
>
It allegedly works with USB and firewire ports that are not on the
motherboard. It certainly works with USB and Firewire ports that are on PCI
or PCI-E cards (and thus it must have drivers for those). Knowing how
quickly Acronis respond to such issues, I would be very surprised indeed if
support for cardbus were missing.
Re: how to backup a laptop's disk 
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