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Question

storage solution needed

Feb 17, 2012 12:30AM PST

I just added a network storage device(iomega) to my home network. I wanted it to mirror everything on my hard drive because I have carbonite on it(the PC HD) any suggestions as to an inexpensive solution would be appreciated.

Discussion is locked

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Answer
Let me share what I use.
Feb 17, 2012 2:01AM PST

First, because network speed is too slow for sending an image of my hard drive over the network, I NEVER backup my laptop over the network (the entire drive image.)

Next I use CLONEZILLA to image my drive to a file on some USB HDD.

Next I use Goodsync and Syncback (both are similar and I have one on some laptops, the other on other laptops) to sync my files with other places.

And I use Dropbox for some work in progress and finally a few 32GB memory sticks to sync our family photos to.

The folk that try to centralize backup eventually learns why it should never be centralized.
Bob

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Data or system
Feb 26, 2012 6:14AM PST

The 'expensive' solution, for Windows anyway, is Acronis - it seems to be pretty bulletproof in that it will restore a Windows system volume plus the hidden recovery volumes to a foreign drive with a totally different partition layout and make it legally bootable.

An alternative to Clonezilla for imaging would be DriveImageXML. It is extremely lightweight but it shares the weird limitations of Windows Backup.

If you don't need to actually image the drive for system recovery, and just want to back up user data, then robocopy is absolutely the way to go. Gnarly but unbreakable. You already have it!

Another cheap alternative is to copy the drive bit for bit using Linux dd. In my experience Windows 7 will boot after dd transfer, but then claim, incorrectly, that it is an illegal copy.

Kudos to Carbonite. It's a bit of a resource hog on a large system but it gives you a backstop - until Boston gets hit by that tsunami. Nor will it restore a system partition to a bootable state afaik.

No backup solution is worth a damn without a recovery exercise.

OK this is getting way to geeky.

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(NT) Sounds cheap compared to sending the drive to data recovery?
Feb 26, 2012 6:21AM PST