Back-up
 

Have tried backing up files and when I put in a CD in drive D: or a mem stick in drive E: it doesnt seem to be recognised.
The programme seems to run and then says insert cd etc, wasted hours sitting thinking it's working:ugh::ugh:

Lot's of possibilities here.....

Please tell us more about the hardware /software in use, ie computer model (in broad terms), operating system (essential), backup software (if any), brand of memory stick etc, and what sort of files / information you want to backup.

We've got something to work on then .... :ok:

Thank you for helping F.O.R
advetnt laptop
intelceleronT3100
windows 7 home premium
3072mb ddr2RAM
hard drive 320gb
wireless 802.11b/g
graphics Intelmobile 4 series


advent has a backup programme as well as windows, both unhelpful in this case

am trying to use cd r+w discs or a memory stick (drive d: and e: respectively)

Back up system reboot info in case things go orribly wrong!

Then if successful, other programmes I feel important.

Hope I've given what you need ?

and thank you again.

I use Acronis to take a complete image of my main machine onto a large USB (2TB) drive- that a way I get all my programes and settings back as well as the data if it all goes pear-shaped

I wonder if it's simply that the capacity of the media you are attempting to back up to is too small, and the program is prompting you to feed in another disc?

What size media are you backing up to and how much data are you trying to backup?

A DVD has a capacity of 9.5GB max (double-sided), whereas a CD has a max capacity of only 10% of that.

If you are trying to back up your system drive, which is going to be much bigger than that, you will need either a) a bigger receptacle or b) lots and lots of media.

SD

Thanks for the extra information Victor Tango.

I think SD may be onto something here. I know it involves some extra outlay, but I wonder if an investment in an external hard disk drive might be the way to go. The existing programs may be hung up on the backup media being too small (memory stick) or (relatively) too complex (writing to a DV or CD).

Mixture is a great advocate of backups for all occasions. I'm sure he will assist with good advice when he's able.

Other suggestions as offered need also to be considered, but I'll stay with the suggestion of an external HHD to start with ...

FOR

I just want to make an emergency back up of the computers main system files should a catastrophy occur where everything gets wiped.

I feel Im expecting too much to think I can back up the WHOLE of ALL files.
A sort of contents of laptop on a disc !!! ???

Maybe Im a dummy but I'm using a DVD+RW 4.7 GB up to 4X multispeed.

VT,

I'll second SD's and FOR's suggestion. Don't mess around with DVDs, buy an external disk and make a bootable clone.

My wife's computer had a hard disk failure last year, but because of a bootable clone, she was able to keep working, after I had taken the failed disk out and sent it away for a warranty replacement.

I'm not familiar with Acronis - I use Super Duper on a Mac - but the key with these programs is to set them up to do an incremental backup every night. After the first backup (of all the files), which might take a few hours, the nightly backups are quick and each morning, you will have a complete, bootable copy of your whole disk.

These disks are becoming amazingly cheap. The other day, I bought a Windows/Mac compatible 1TB USB 3 disk from my local Apple store for C$82 ( ~£40).

It is more expensive in the UK, but still good value:
G-Technology G-DRIVE Mobile USB 3.0 1 TB External Drive - Special Edition £59.95

You can setup the disk to have two logical partitions - one matching the size of your hard drive for backups and the other for storing other files.

It will be well worth the investment to avoid the pain and time taken to rebuild a working system from a DVD backup.

India four two and all you other chaps, your help is much appreciated for this numpty !

If I bought this external drive and backed up the whole computer would I be able to relaod it into a newly purchased laptop ??

What is a TB

I found this one and will go for it if you say it'll do the job.

Await your reply Sir.

Samsung M3 1TB USB 3.0 Slimline Portable Hard Drive - Black
by Samsung
5,364 customer reviews | 652 answered questions
#1 Best Sellerin External Hard Drives
RRP: £79.99
Price: £45.99 & FREE Delivery in the UK. Details
You Save: £34.00 (43%)
In stock.
Dispatched from and sold by Amazon. Gift-wrap available.
Want it tomorrow, 17 Feb.? Order it within 5 hrs 57 mins and choose One-Day Delivery at checkout. Details
57 new from £45.99 1 used from £65.00
Size Name: 1TB

1.5TB
£64.99


1TB
£45.99


2TB
£65.99


500GB
£35.99
Handy portable storage - Massive 1TB
Future your conectivity with USB 2.0 and USB 3.0
SafetyKeyTM protection for your data
Enjoy stable HD videos and gaming

I do these things in a different way so my 'advice' should be read with some reservation as to its suitability for every situation.

With a 320 Gb drive one of the smaller external drives in your catalogue, (1Tb or less) should be adequate.

As I see it - probably not.

A new laptop will almost certainly have an operating system (probably W8) already installed. The operating system files in any given computer were loaded with the specific hardware options in that machine as a blueprint for the whole job. Every computer (other than (perhaps) exact clones of a prototype production machine) will, after the OS is installed have significant differences in what files are installed both in the OS itself and most other programs / applications which are installed to any other computer.

What this means is that unless it is an exact physical clone of the failed machine, simply loading a complete saved C drive partition unto a 'new' machine will not result in a working alternative. I need also to add that given the 'protection systems' built into Windows, it's unlikely that even a reload to a clone machine will be successful.

India four two's suggestion is a good one - one which follows my own process - but it's only going to be totally successful if loaded back onto the computer which 'fathered' it. This assumes that the potential failure in the machine is a HD crash and nothing else.

My backup 'policy' is simply to save all data (photos, documents etc) onto external hard drives, and if a smoke should appear from the computer at some time, be prepared to start again with a new installation of the OS and all programs on a rebuild or new box and selectively then add the saved data from the previous computer.

You can also save your emails, address books and favourites /bookmarks and reload them into a new machine. Most of these programs have a backup facility for these parameters in their tools options.

Most backup up programs - like the ones you already have - will probably do more or less that same thing (as far as I know) but in an automated and structured manner.

I hope that other esteemed contributors to this board may add their observations and personal experiences in this matter.

However a purchase of a modest external HDD - one of those you've mentioned - and using your existing programs to operate with this as the backup medium may well be all you need.

Please let us know how you go.....

FOR

VT,

A TB is a Terrabyte or 1000 GB (Gigabytes), so a 1TB drive has slightly over three times the capacity of your laptop's 320 GB hard drive.

The 1TB Samsung on Amazon is a very good price, but BE CAREFUL. It requires a USB 3 port. Depending on the age of your computer, yours may only be USB 2.

So check the specs on your computer's USB ports, and make sure you choose the right version of USB, before buying a hard drive.

Having said that, get a 1TB drive and use it for your backups. I agree with FOR's comment about backed-up clones of C drives only being reloadable onto the 'father' machine.

My recommendation, given that there is a lot more space on a 1TB drive than you need to back-up your hard drive, would be to partition the 1TB disk into two logical drives - one of 350 GB (slightly more than your laptop's 320 GB) and one of the remainder of the drive. Then when you attach the drive, Windows will see two new drives. Use the smaller one for automatic, incremental back-ups and use the larger one, as FOR suggests, to make copies of all your important files (documents, videos, pictures, email folders, etc.) on a regular basis. Incidentally, because of the way formatting works, the total usable space will not add up to 1TB, it will be slightly less.

I'm not fully up to speed on Windows partitioning these days, but here's a good link from a safe source (I Googled "partitioning an external hard drive"):

How to partition a hard drive | PCWorld

I also looked up Acronis and it looks like a suitable backup program for your needs. Not free, but then look at the cost as an insurance premium.

Finally, I should mention that I've had four hard disk failures in my computer career, and in every case, there were tell-tale signs before the final failure, i.e. corrupted files, bad reads and writes, corrupt sectors, etc. So the moral is any time a disk displays symptoms like these, it is time to back it up and replace it. :ok:

How can I repay you IFT and FOR, computer wizards.
I can come round and clean your windows????????? Whats the address again??

Just out of curiosity is their no 'Clone' possible of a WinTel machine? I use Carbon Copy Cliner daily to (incrementally) clone my iMac's HD. If I need to I can boot from the clone.

I also use Apple's Time Machine to back up hourly and I also copy my Documents, Music and Pictures folders nightly to a third external drive.

Ya, whatever, belts and braces but I'm fairly confident that I won't ever lose my files.

VT,
Thanks for the offer but LHR to YYC is 3800 nm. I think your travel expenses might be a tad high. ;)

Just let us know how you get on and if you need any help. I don't think I'm a wizard - just very experienced by learning the hard way!

ExXB,

Backing up and cloning, like many things in Windows, is complicated. The Mac is so much easier. My backup scheme is much like yours, except I use Super Duper.

To paraphrase a well known aviation saying:

There are those who have had a hard drive failure and those who will.

Yes, there is. Lots of software out there - free and paid-for - that will clone a disk.

The problem is that you can't simply drop the system disk from one computer into another and expect it to work without considerable intervention, unless the underlying hardware (motherboard, CPU, etc.) are nearly identical.

Providing that you can supply the drivers for the different hardware it is often possible to do this - provided you have plenty of time and a reasonable amount of know-how.

SD

Thank's guys. But I wasn't suggesting taking a HD out of one PC and putting into another - I was thinking about having a external HD connected to a PC that would be a clone of the drive on the PC. I do this with both my iMac and my wife's Macbook. A couple of years back when I was having 'kernel panics' (bad 3rd party memory chip) on my iMac it was great to be able to boot from a clone - giving me access to all my 'tools'. The stuff on the recovery partition of my HD has some tools, but not all of the ones that I use.

Got the back up gizmo in the post just now
cross fingers here we go!!!

VT,

Good luck. :ok:

Plugged in dead simple, good help programme.
managed to back up all docs and photos (theres loads of em)
Plus my flight simulator which is very big and the msg was only used a tiny bit of the destinations backup places memory got about 400gb spare after all that lot !!!!!!!!!
Thanks guys dead impressed !

VT,

Well done. The important thing now is to configure the backup program to do regular, incremental backups. Because only new or changed files will be backed up, it takes very little time. I set mine to run at 1am each day.

If you do this and you have a drive failure sometime in the future, in the worst case, your backup will only be one day out of date. Don't forget to copy some files from the backup, once in a while, just to make sure your backup drive is still working correctly.

Well done Victor Tango. It's nice when these challenges work out as we hope - and as they should :ok:.

Lets, hope you don't ever have to call on the backup or restore option. But it's good to know that they are there if needed.

Best wishes,

FOR

Yup - we should all do it more often

It is a Basic Law of the Universe that :-

1. If you backup you will never need it

2. The severity of the crash is in direct relationship to the importance of the data lost

Does anyone have a recommendation on which program to use on a Windows based system? Tried using Paragon, but didn’t find it that user friendly. Prior to that it was Norton 360!
Looking for one easy to use that does full as well as incremental backup, from which you can easily restore individual files as well as whole directories

Thanks,

SimWes,

I use a program called SyncBack from 2BrightSparks. It comes in 3 versions, Free, which is pretty basic; SE ($40), which does what you need; and Pro ($55) which has a lot of server functions.

I find SE easy to use. It has a wizard mode and allows you to set up filters to include or exclude directories or file types.

There is a free 30 day trial of both SE and Pro on their website - nothing to lose by trying it out.

Messy

I've been on a jolly nice 10 day holiday somewhere nice and warm .... :cool:

Back now (although much reduced until I've cleared the loads that piled on my desk)

As I'm not sure what's needed here, I'll summarise a few gems in a nutshell until someone cares to fill me in :

(1) Three copies of anything remotely important you don't want to loose. That's three copies IN ADDITION to your live copy.... NOT two plus live !

(2) Said copies should be on three separate devices, ideally from different manufacturers, and ideally a mix of media (e.g. two HD, one blu-ray). If you want to take things one step further, look into media rotation strategies such as Hanoi or GFS. And no, RAID does NOT count as a backup copy.

(3) For anything really, really, really, really important keep one up-to-date backup copy off-site somewhere safe. And when I say off-site, I mean geographically distant off-site ... not your garden shed, not your garage, not your neighbour's cupboard.... I mean somewhere that takes at least 30 minutes to drive to when there's no traffic ! Remember you should be encrypting your off-site backups anyway... so you can always put a copy in the post to somewhere far far away. :cool:

(4) Repeat after me.... an untested backup is not a backup.... don't forget to do your test restores guys !

(5) Don't backup anything you can re-install.... so don't waste your time backing up or cloning your operating system or your software for example ... you can (and SHOULD) re-install those clean from scratch. Another reason not to waste your time cloning is your backups will complete A LOT quicker...especially if you use diff backups.

Mixture

You mention test restore something I would like to do to make sure the expense of buying the Samsung item and restoring actually works.

My concern is when you restore are the files overwritten ?
Are the files duplicated, which would be unacceptable ?

Look forward to your reply before I attempt it.
Cheers :ok:

Most half-decent backup software should give you the option to either restore to original location or restore to specified location.

You would inherently be restoring a copy of the file, so yes there would be duplication.

But the part I didn't make clear was that if you're running a test restore then all you need to do is to pick a small handful of files of various sizes of various ages from various "random" depths on your system and test restore those.

Although your backup software may well have a "verify after backup" function, its only as good as the data being backed up.

I've seen situations where dodgy controller chips start silently randomly corrupting data on disk, the backup process then backs up these corrupted files, the built-in verification passes because the file checksums match (i.e. the backup software blindly backed up the corrupted file). These situations have been on very expensive business-critical systems... so when you're talking about home computers, with cheaper components, then the risk of corruption increases exponentially.

The only way to avoid falling into such a trap is to insert a human performing test restores into the process. Leaving it all to various automated processes will only lead to confirmation bias.

VT,

My simple-minded way of testing a backup is to choose a few files on my hard drive and rename them, with an appropriate suffix. Here's an example for one file:

Rename 'test.doc' to 'test1.doc'.

Use your backup software to recover the backed-up copy of 'test.doc'. As mixture pointed out, you can usually choose the location for the recovered file. In this case, restore to the original location.

Compare the contents of the recovered 'test.doc' with the renamed original 'test1.doc'. You can either do this by opening both files with the appropriate software package or have the computer compare the two files.

In the case of a '.doc' file, Microsoft Word has an option to compare two files and report on any differences. I expect there are free Windows programs available which do file comparisons.

The technically correct answer, both in terms of reliability (i.e. helping avoid human errors & omissions) would be to get the computer to calculate cryptographic hash of "original" and "backup" versions and compare the hashes either with Mk1 eyeball or text diff.

There are innumerable free pieces of software that can calculate hashes (and indeed OS X, Linux, and versions of Windows with Powershell) can calculate hashes on the command line with built-in tools with no need for third-party software.

For critical sample files, of course, the human could (and should) take a quick peek at the restored version .... but for most instances, you can trust crypto hashes.

(just make sure you choose a decent hash so you avoid collision risks, SHA1 minimum but preferably one of the longer SHAs)

Thanks for your helpful answers chaps.

I will give it a go when I've had a good kip/breakfast etc:ok:

Well I tried.

Problem is its all set up for back-up.
I made a new folder on the desk top labeled 'test backup'.
In the programme there seems to be no provision for restoring.
Tried going to Start/computer and then double click on drive E;.
Still no joy, so I gave up and am reporting in. Cap in hand !

mix - only the pros (like you) or the paranoid old-timers like me have the time and dedication to do proper tried-and-tested multiple on and off-site backup like that.

For Windows the best advice I can give to home users is to get a couple of 3TB external drives and put them (well separated) in a steel cabinet with a bit of fiberglass insulation. Preferably in another room (drill a hole in the wall).

Disk 1 is for standard Windows Backups (and System Image) weekly

Disk 2 is for Totally Essential Files (money and whatnot) that need to be copied every day/hour if they have changed. Best to put them in the same TEF Folder (you can still use subfolders) - XXCopy - XXCOPY, A Versatile File Management Utility --- Boldly Extended Xcopy is free, works very reliably and will verify after copy. Command-line only - RTFM.

Mirrorfolder costs a bit of money - MirrorFolder: A real-time folder synchronization and backup software - but is rock solid.

Dropbox is another alternative if you have the bandwidth (we don't)

This is NOT the system that I use but at least it is a good simple start.

(fyi I have a NAS at home and at work that can talk to each other + on and off-site NAS backup drives for both + ReadyNAS Vault + Dropbox)

Don't forget good-old fc

Mac

:\

PS: Despite your scepticism I think bit-rot is as much (and possibly more) a problem than total data loss. I had to retrieve a very old DOS executable from my archives the other day and it was corrupted (as was a backup copy). Eventually repaired with a disk editor after much swearing, but I think that ZFS, with its emphasis on data integrity is the way to go. I know that right now it still needs a bit of fiddling with parameters to get right, but it is the way to go.)

:suspect:

Bit-rot is an under appreciated problem, which is why I spoke of the importance of tested your backups and hinted at the fact that I had seen a bad case of bit-rot in production caused by a dodgy RAID card which the rotten files were then propagated onto the backups. Not a pretty sight and not one I would wish to see again.

ZFS can be cool if you do it right.

But its not a form of backup. Just like RAID is not a form of backup.

ZFS? That's a very odd way of spelling ReFS :}

My personal backup strategy was tested last year when a leaky boiler dripped onto my home server, frying the power supply, and ruining a USB HDD that was sitting on top :sad: Luckily a change of PSU fixed the server and all the disks inside are fine, but the USB HDD was toast.
At that point I was technically down to two copies of my data: one cached on my laptop (actually incomplete as it has a small SSD so not everything is cached), and one on the other backup HDD. Bit too close for comfort...

VT,

What backup program are you using. Did it come with your disk?

ReFS is just a cheap clone of ZFS, isn't it?

Certainly a good thing to have in future versions of Windows, but not something I'd trust until it's been as well proven as ZFS has. If Sun hadn't made the ZFS license Linux-incompatible, I suspect it would be one of the most widely used filesystems in the world by now.

india four two
That's the point.......the programme on the Samsung is for back-up and doesnt seem to accommodate a restore window/programme/option.

So I go to windows restore programme and cant even read the Samsung in drive E: its there , tells me how much is used and max space available. I want to itemise a few files to test restore to desktop file I called test restore.

Microsoft restore can only read its own backup files. As do most back up progs

VT,

As Avtrician pointed out, you cannot open a backup with a program other than the one that created the backup.

However, it seems highly unlikely that a backup program would not have a "restore" option. Please post the filename of the backup program that you are running and also the specs of the drive you have, plus any other information that you think might be useful.

See my PM.

I have a Samsung laptop with W7 and the HDD failed. I had been backing up with Samsung's proprietry mirror and backup software every couple of weeks to an external 1tb drive.. No problem, I can restore. No way, the rotten software wanted the original drive's hidden partition to work. I have restored most of the lost data from other ways but did lose some recent docs and emails. Lesson? Don't trust any of it. Find the most seemingly paranoid poster in the above posts and do what they suggest. I managed to get something back from the u/s HDD as well, by buying a £6 caddy and looking at it from the new installation.