Backup Advice?

Backup Advice?

by Tim Allen -
Number of replies: 3

Hi moodlers,

Two weeks ago I turned on my WinXP notebook and it wouldn't boot. surprise It stopped at a DOS screen with this error message:

Windows XP could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt: \WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\CONFIG\SYSTEM

I have no idea what caused this - my Norton Anti Virus keeps my sytem virus free and I had not done anything major or unusual like reinstalling an operating system etc. 

I couldn't use any of the recovery tools like system restore, recovery console or safe-mode.  Furthermore, because I had an OEM system my installation CD would only reinstall the original system - deleting everything first! 

I ended up having to take my computer to a store specializing in data recovery - because I foolishly hadn't backed-up my hard disk.  It cost me a fortune to get my data (including students' grades etc.) saved.  angry  black eye 

Now I want to backup my data regularly, and I am wondering if there are any pointers as to a good way to do this.  What about good open-source or other software that does this job well?  And hardware?

I don't want this disaster to happen again. dead Any tips or advice will be very much appreciated.

TIA,  Tim.  smile

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In reply to Tim Allen

Re: Backup Advice?

by Martin Dougiamas -
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You could get another disk in the same machine, or some space on the network and use the standard "Backup" program that comes with Windows to copy files there regularly.
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In reply to Martin Dougiamas

Re: Backup Advice?

by Eric Swanson -

Since you're on a laptop a second drive might not be possible so get an external USB hard drive and keep copies of everything there or network the laptop to a desktop maching and make backups of important stuff regularily. How often you back up is directly correlated to how valuable (timewise usually) the data is. If you backup once a week you are losing up to a week of changes, same goes for monthly. This is why many places do a nightly backup so the most that would be lost is one days changes.

I've used Powerquest Driveimage (~$70 us) and been happy with that although the new version is much different at first glance. Windows backup will work and I've heard good things about Ghost.

I have mirror images(backups) of several versions of Win2k, Win98se and Winxp split among many 30GB Fat32 partitions on 8 or so drives. If one get's scrambled I just swap in the latest backup and am up and running instantly. I keep important data on separate mirrored drives away from the OS. (Mirrored usually means Western Digitals Partition  Copy (which conviently defrags Fat32 on copying and not RAID which would enable any virus to corrupt the RAID drive).

It's sad that clients usually learn the importance of backing up data the hard way having to sometimes recreate years worth of data.

my .02

Eric

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In reply to Tim Allen

Re: Backup Advice?

by Herbert Keijers -
You could use Ghost (Symantec Product) to make an image of your system partition.
It's not open-source ... , comes with Norton SystemWorks.
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