Software for backing up data

[Rakesh]

Thanks Mark for sharing the information.

[Mike Whitten CAD/CAM Contractors]

Acronis TI works very well.

 

I schedule it to make a full backup once a week, overwriting it everytime. I also schedule another task to do an incremental backup in a separate directory once a day. Both of these are written to a dedicated internal backup drive. I also do off-site backups every 3-5 weeks using external drives.

 

I am a contractor, so most of my work is emailed as a deliverable. If I lost everything due to a theft or fire, it still wouldn't be that bad.

 

Mike

[Mark V.]

One other note (sorry I should have mentioned this sooner)is that it will reformat your external drive upon initial set up. So you actually need to back up what's on it before you start. What I did is move my mcam files back on the C-drive (if you have room) and then Install software.

[Rakesh]

Mark: So when I install the software in my Pc, it reformat according to that Pc hardrive and also clone that pc hardrive data. If I am installing the software in two computer than do I have to go for two separate external hardrives ?

[Mark V.]

Yes it formats the external just like your hard-drive and clones it.

 

Yeah you do need a seperate external drive for each computor.

[Rakesh]

Mark: Ever was You in the situation to boot from this external drive and put again all the data in the Pc?

[Mark V.]

Yes one of the computors in the office kept getting "the blue screen of death" on startup. So what we did at that point is change the boot sequence to look for the usb external drive before the main hard drive. It booted fine then did a restore. Then switched the boot sequence back to the main hard drive before the usb drive. It was just like nothing ever happened after that.

[Rakesh]

Mark: You was able to change the start up sequence so your processor must be working allright. So what was the problem in computer, your hard drive or the windows

[Mark Clark from QTE Manufacturing]

I use Synctoy from Microsoft it's free.

 

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?familyid=C26EFA36-98E0-4EE9-A7C5-98D0592D8C52&displaylang=en

[Mark V.]

Mark: You was able to change the start up sequence so your processor must be working allright. So what was the problem in computer, your hard drive or the windows

 

 

 

Sorry I cant remember exactly what the error was. Just that a blue screen popped up and said something was missing. Thats all it would do.

[Glenn Bouman]

I use Total Commander, it does a side by side file listing of what is going to be updated and it works great for text files as you can do a file compare.

 

http://www.ghisler.com/screenshots/en/

[CNCCookbook]

Whatever method you use to backup, be sure to test restoration on a semi-frequent basis. IT guys will tell you lots of horror stories of backing up and then discovering when they really needed it, they couldn't restore.

 

This was a problem for Mozy some years ago (I'm sure they've fixed it!) and I wrote about it:

 

http://smoothspan.wordpress.com/2007/09/23/congratulations-mozy-guys-youre-rich-now-where-the-is-my-data/

 

These days I use a Seagate Black Armor NAS to backup our computers, and then I back up the NAS to Amazon S3.

 

Having lost a hard disk, found the backup defective, and having sent the hard disk to a clean room to be recovered (they got back everything of value for $$$, but it was impressive), you can't be too careful with your data!

 

Cheers,

 

BW

www.cnccookbook.com

 

 

PS The Black Armor is so compact, I have thought it would be cool to bury it in a capsule away from the house with just a power and Ethernet connection. A little waterproof container, a little ventilation, and it would be your own little data vault! LOL

[neurosis]

Damn.. all of these fancy back up programs... I still just use xcopy.

 

Has anyone heard of delta copy? I use Rsync (freebsd) on my home network. this is a windows gui version of the same made specifically for windows. Its open source.

[Greg Williams]

I am with him ^^^^ Xcopy and robocopy

[Don Trust]

We use Winzip here.

 

With the latest versions, you can setup a job to run with one click. Choose what you want backed up and setup the job so the backup is stored generically. IOW, any zip program can retrieve info from the backup. I got tired of special backup formats that change everytime a company updates their software.

 

I then take the backup archive and copy it to whereever I want. External hard drives that are kept in a fireproof safe at work, and another that is at my house. I do NOT trust 'the cloud' except for non critical information.

 

I know that someday, somewhere I will probably lose some information, but using this approach for the last twenty years I have survived all of murphy's attempts at screwing me over.