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General discussion

Best backup solution/methods for seamless operations?

by antica Aug 23, 2005 1:16PM PDT

Hi

I'm running a home office and recently my wife's PC hdd had crashed and it made me remember my keep-postponing plan to come up with a backup-restore solution for my home office.

We have 2 laptops in a home LAN, each about 60Gb each. I'm planning to get one of those network hdd (like the iomega 160Gb network hdd) which allows you to access it via a wireless lan, as the backup and storage place for both of my laptops.

Basically, what I'm looking for, when my laptop or my wife's laptop hdd crash, is to be able to do the following, for minimum impact to my home office,

i) While the crashed laptop is in the service center, I'll still be able to use a backup older laptop/desktop to access my backup'ed docs in the network hdd.

ii) When my repaired laptop comes back, to be able to do a restore of the old hdd image onto the repaired hdd, copy over the latest docs and start work on the repaired laptop right away.

In other words, I'm looking for a backup solution that can do the following,

1) backup changed files in specified folders (eg. my docs folder, my projects folder, source codes folder, html files etc) every X mins/hrs (configurable) to the network drive without me asking it to do it (auto service running in the background without impacting system performance).

2) do a manual disk image of both laptop's hdd onto the network hdd and restore the image from the network hdd without having to reinstall the OS in the new hdd or repaired hdd.

I think CNET highly recommended Acronis True Image over Norton Ghost for (2) but can it do (1) as well?

Also, will it be able to do the following,

a) I know Acronis does incremental backups but when my laptop is sent for repairs and I'm using my backup pc/desktop/laptop, can I access my backup'ed latest docs from my network hdd right away (i.e. no need for any Acronis software to restore the docs, docs are backup'ed in their original format)?

b) if I buy a new bigger hdd to replace the crash hdd, will the restore of the image take over the whole hdd or just the needed space (eg. my old hdd is 60Gb and the total used space is 50Gb. My new hdd is 80Gb. After restoring the image, will I "lose" the extra new 20Gb?)

c) assuming my crashed hdd is 60Gb and used space is 25Gb. My old laptop has a hdd space of 40Gb. Will I be able to use my recovery CD and restore the image onto this smaller hdd?

d) and finally, if the service center is not able to recover my old hdd and uses a new hdd (same format) and only install the OS on this new hdd (with no other programs), when I get back my laptop, will I be able to use the Acronis recovery CD to overwrite this new OS and restore everything from the image on the network hdd, then copy over the latest backup'ed docs folders, and start work rightaway?

Thanks.

Discussion is locked

4 Posts
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I've never seen such a thing.
by r. proffitt Forum moderator Aug 23, 2005 1:41PM PDT

No one has offered all that.

And I been going to Comdex for decades and even more.

Happy hunting.

Bob

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How about 2 separate "solutions" then?
by antica Aug 24, 2005 1:22AM PDT

Hi Bob

I don't mind if I need to buy 2 software to achieve it, one to backup my whole hdd (disk image) and another one to do timed incremental backup of specified docs folders.

I guess I will go for Acronis True Image for the disk image.

Any recommendations for the timed incremental backups?

(the backups should be accessible even without the backup software, since I want to be able to access the backup'ed docs from my older standby pc, which will probably NOT contain the backup software, while waiting for my laptop to be repaired).

Thanks.

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Recommendation for incremental backup.
by Kees Bakker Aug 24, 2005 1:47AM PDT

A batch file with xcopy /m /s on the needed folders. Destination might be a network drive, or a separate folder on your hard disk which you can burn to cd-rw/dvd-rw with your burning program. Clear the incremental backup folder if you do a full backup.

xcopy is a standard Windows (DOS) program. With this switches is copies all files with archive bit set (i.e. modified) from a folder (including it's subfolders), then resets the archive bit. So you'll get an incremental backup in the target folder.

Something like:
net use f: myshare
xcopy "c:\My documents\*.*" "f:\incbackup\my documents" /s /m
xcopy "c:\My music\*.*" "f:\incbackup\my music
/s /m
net use f: /delete

Check the exact syntax with net /? or net use /? and xcopy /? in a command window.

This is how I do it, anyway.

Kees

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(NT) (NT) Yup. That's it.
by r. proffitt Forum moderator Aug 24, 2005 1:48AM PDT
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