Indestructable Posted October 23, 2005 CID Share Posted October 23, 2005 Hey All..I know that people are always talking about bacing up their pc's, well, now I need some advice. I know how to back up all the documents, etc..(Email DBX's, Addy book, the entire my Documents folder, stuff on the desktop, favorites folder..anything I missed?) but I would also like to back up some programs. Say I have something like 100 to 150 seperate programs on my damn pc. I'm gonna do a windows reload to fix all the errors. Last night, I did a soft reload, but that srill left a few problems unresolved. I'm gonna do a full. Soo, how do you guys go about backing up your pc's? I neverr back up mine, so don't flame me, please. There's some smart security related dudes here, so please give me the best knowledge ya got! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tonyswhirl Posted October 23, 2005 CID Share Posted October 23, 2005 Use gmail or yahoo mail - you never have to worry about losing all your saved or sent mail - plus you can save names and addresses. I store some software + bookmarks on yahoo - yahoo has a thing called my web which lets you store urls etc. You can get a USB disk for other stuff. Gmail offers 2.5 gb for free and climbing. If you set your folders up right it makes life easy. Over the years I have tried various backup restore methods and have come to the conclusion that if you can keep all your mail and bookmarks on yahoo and have access from anywhere in the world, then the pc can destroy itself and you are just stuck with a reinstall. I aslo use configsafe which puts your system back where it was after you have problems. It makes Windows system restore look like junk. It is very reliable and fast and cost about 30 dollars I think. WELL WORTH THE MONEY http://www.imaginelan.com/configsafe/buy.html Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cak46 Posted October 23, 2005 CID Share Posted October 23, 2005 I use Norton Ghost which comes with Norton systemworks professional. It will back up your whole hard drive to cd roms (or dvd now, I suppose). You can do this either partition by partition, or the whole drive (all partitions) at once. I bought a second hard drive and use that for my backup with Ghost. Pretty slick! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Indestructable Posted October 23, 2005 Author CID Share Posted October 23, 2005 Well, the email is my mothers...lol...she's not gonna change it. I personally use Gmail, it rocks. I was thinking of setting up a Gmail Drive thingy, but then I thought, nah. I just threw everything onto my media drive (HP). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
netmasta Posted October 24, 2005 CID Share Posted October 24, 2005 I know what you mean. I hate when I move (get) a new computer, and have to install all my programs again. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
monsnet2k8 Posted October 25, 2005 CID Share Posted October 25, 2005 Paragon Disk Manager 6.0 Pro does it all' 1 wiped my drive clean with Paragon Disk Manager 6.0 (it also wipes free space) 2 Formatted my computer' with Paragon Disk Manager 6.0 Pro 3 installed programs and window updates 4 Scanned for virus infections and spyware and adware in safe mode with Kaspersky Anti Virus Personal Pro and Ad Aware Personal Pro' 5 run CCleaner and Registry mechanic 6 Defragmented drives with Diskeeper 9.0 Pro 7 Backed up drive' Made an exact image of C drive (6.5 GB's) with Paragon Disk Manager 6.0 Pro in 7 minutes. (saved on second HD and on DVD) Now everytime i have any type of problem all i have to do is restore the saved back up image of my C: Drive and presto its back as i want it' if i do this a few months after back up' all i have to do is update outdated programs and its all good. Btw its Bootable and way better than Symantecs Partition Magic and Ghost 2003 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Indestructable Posted October 25, 2005 Author CID Share Posted October 25, 2005 I'll check it out man...how much is it...I don't have much money...lol.. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
junkieXL Posted October 26, 2005 CID Share Posted October 26, 2005 we have used this HP StorageWorks DAT-72 SCSI external tape drive for a couple years & its the best (lots of $$$ though Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
resopalrabotnick Posted October 26, 2005 CID Share Posted October 26, 2005 nicest backup solution i've seen, wait, it's not a backup solution, it prevents you from having to do backups is a network attached storage system with 8 250 gig ide drives in a raid 5. actually only 7 drives are active, number 8 is in there in case one of the 7 fails so the system can recreate the failed drive on number 8, then you swap the failed drive out and that then becomes the standby. the loss in performance while the failed drive is recreated from the other drives in the array was measured by a computer mag as about 15 percent. so even while it's recovering from a drive failure the thing is still bloody fast. and the 7 drives in raid level 5 give it about 1150 gig capacity. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Indestructable Posted October 27, 2005 Author CID Share Posted October 27, 2005 ouch, i've seen those tape backup machines b4, $950? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
monsnet2k8 Posted October 27, 2005 CID Share Posted October 27, 2005 it must be nice!! . Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
netmasta Posted October 28, 2005 CID Share Posted October 28, 2005 I wouldn't want to use tape. It'd be to slow. Not to mention FF and Rew'ing. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shug7272 Posted October 28, 2005 CID Share Posted October 28, 2005 I use Norton Ghost which comes with Norton systemworks professional. It will back up your whole hard drive to cd roms (or dvd now, I suppose). You can do this either partition by partition, or the whole drive (all partitions) at once. I bought a second hard drive and use that for my backup with Ghost. Pretty slick! So when you use this Ghost program ( I have never used it but been interested) does it just basically save a image of your hard drive and then you boot the cd/dvd and restore the image or what? How does it work? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
monsnet2k8 Posted October 28, 2005 CID Share Posted October 28, 2005 So when you use this Ghost program ( I have never used it but been interested) does it just basically save a image of your hard drive and then you boot the cd/dvd and restore the image or what? How does it work? I used to use ghost but its too slow for my taste' i still have back ups on ghost for emergency purposes incase Paragon Hard Disk Manager fails on me' But to answer your question It makes an exact duplicate of your drive to be restored when needed' it brings back your computer exactly as you want it' oh by the way there's a little problem at times and you might have to re activate not re install some of your software at times when you format or wipe your drive' nothing major.... I cant take screenshots but I'll post instructions soon.. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cak46 Posted October 28, 2005 CID Share Posted October 28, 2005 So when you use this Ghost program ( I have never used it but been interested) does it just basically save a image of your hard drive and then you boot the cd/dvd and restore the image or what? How does it work? Yes but there are a number of ways you can do the imaging. It copies everthing on the drive and/or partition you select for ghosting. There are a number of options available for how you save the data. You can create an image of each partition or the whole physical drive (all partitions) at once. The "clone" of a partition can be stored as an image file on another partition, physical disk, or cd-roms. If you clone the whole drive you need to store the image file on another physical disk or cd-roms (You can't create an image file on the same partition, (or disk in the case of a full drive copy), that you are backing up). You also have the option of creating a duplicate of your old drive to a new drive. Very handy if you are replacing your hard drive, or as I do, use it to back the whole drive up. I just find it easier to disconnect/reconnect another hard drive when I want to Ghost my hard drive and use a Ghost boot disk for this. If my drive dies, I just throw the old one out and put the clone in its place. For cd-roms, the older version I use asks if you want to make the first cd-rom bootable. You can use a boot floppy created through the Windows Ghost programs to boot the computer too. I have used it with Win2000 Pro, but not with XP, but assume Norton has updated it to properly clone/image XP drives/partitions as well. I use it at work when I need multiple machines set up with the same configuration. (This Ghosting I do is between machines on the network with Ghost Boot Peer to Peer Disks, instead of removing the HD's and installing them into the donor machine to do the cloning). For NTFS systems (at least win2000), there is another program that comes with Ghost to create and write a new sid for each "clone" of the original. GhostWalker is the program. This is vital if the computers are going to be networked since the SID is used in Domain membership for the machine, etc.. Restoration can be done either by booting with the floppy or the bootable cd-rom created while ghosting to cd-roms. The newer versions has an interface to run Ghost through Windows directly, but I've never used this interface. Hope this helps! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shug7272 Posted October 28, 2005 CID Share Posted October 28, 2005 Thanks fellas... Appreciate it cak. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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