Backup, Manual vs. Program

[doitmyself]

At work I manually backup my data files, bookmarks, and email (entire thunderbird profile) to an external hard drive that I store in another building. Once a week, it takes about 10 minutes.

My co worker tends to be my IT person because my computer knowledge is minimal. He is old school and is apprehensive about today's back up software..... simple = better.

The reviews I have studied bring up a few brands consistently at the top, namely Genei, Acronis, DT, Nova, etc..
http://data-backup-software-review.toptenreviews.com/ is similar to other review sites....yes, I takes these sites with caution...i.e. how do these "nerds" judge ease of use for the computer illiterate?

My question (to argue with my coworker):

1. What challenges/drawbacks are there to manual backup vs. a program when disaster strikes?

2. Do these programs deliver as advertised (ease of recovery?)

I'm not interested in online backup at this time. My computer storage/use is basic and minimal....few pictures, no music.

Thanks for any opinions!

 

[Donald]

First anything that needs to be done manually will not get done as often as it should. So one should use a program with a schedule feature.

Second are you going to identify the files to be backed up or back up everything. If you are going to identify the files or folders you will not get it right, especially a year from now when you have installed more stuff.

Third, what is your strategy if the hard drive goes south? Do you reinstall Windows, then all the applications then copy back the data you backed up?

I have been using Norton Ghost (cheap on Ebay). Ghost typically makes a full backup of your PC say once a month, and then incremental backups maybe 2-3X a week.

If your hard drive goes south, then you get a new one and boot from the Ghost CD, then recovery the system from your latest backup. You can also recovery files or folders. Also you could say, everything worked fine till today, then nothing worked. In that case you recover back a day or so. Ghost can and does recovery the entire operating system, all software applications and the registry if you want it to. You will not have to install Windows, then all your software, then your data. Time to recover is a little over 1 hour.

In addition my external hard drive is an enclosure with two hard drives in it set to RAID 1. With RAID 1 anything written to drive 0 will be immediately mirrored to drive 2 (done by the enclosure not by Windows). I can loose either of the hard drives and hot plug in a new one and it will rebuild the new one on the fly. It was not very expensive. Mine connects via a USB cable or an eSATA cable.

 

[Quest]

databackup software?

Since I have a NAS on my network, I use Allwaysync infrequently and it never cost me a dime.

Frequent Allway Sync user pays 20USD for 1 license to use.

Q.

 

[Virtuoso]

I try to shy away from backup "software", but I can totally see the appeal.

Windows (not sure what versions, Vista and 7 for sure) comes with a little command-line program called "robocopy" that is rather robust and configurable.

I backup my computer to two different sets of directories:

One is an active copy..it mirrors all the folders that I copy. If something is updated, deleted, it mirrors it.

The other is a cumulative folder..nothing is deleted. So if I figure out I need something that used to be there... it will be there.

Downside to the latter is it takes up a lot of space. But you can always back that up to an optical drive and start over..


All of this is in a neat little batch file, that runs once a day around noon..straight to a external drive. If the house ever catches fire, the family and that harddrive are the only things we're worried about heh

 

[Donald]

I still think people need to understand why they are backing up.

1) Hard drive crash
2) accidental erasing important files
3) copies of static files like photos and music

Think about what happens if your hard drive crash. You need to obtain a new hard drive. Obtain a CD to rebuild your PC as it was built in factory. Hopefully have a CDs for all applications and install them all. Then copy your backup data into the various directories.

Consider all that and you will know why I use Ghost. Also I will be storing photos on my external hard drive that is RAID 1. With a RAID 1 setup you do not need to backup anything with software.

The RAID enclosures typically use eSATA connectivity which is many times faster than USB or Firewire or NAS.

 

[Virtuoso]

I think I understand perfectly well why I back up.. I've been doing it long enough (I used to back up to floppy's!)

I do it the way I do because I don't want to use someone's bloated backup program for it. I understand the simplicity of having a shadowcopy of your OS/Programs/Etc.. But all I really have to do is re-install Win7 and a few programs, and then reverse my batch file to copy everything right back over to where it was before.

It's really a lot easier than it's made out to be. I also like knowing I'm starting over from a fresh, clean slate.

But hey, use what works

 

[tmorris1]

Originally Posted By: Virtuoso
I think I understand perfectly well why I back up.. I've been doing it long enough (I used to back up to floppy's!)

I do it the way I do because I don't want to use someone's bloated backup program for it. I understand the simplicity of having a shadowcopy of your OS/Programs/Etc.. But all I really have to do is re-install Win7 and a few programs, and then reverse my batch file to copy everything right back over to where it was before.

It's really a lot easier than it's made out to be. I also like knowing I'm starting over from a fresh, clean slate.

But hey, use what works

A disk image is a fresh clean slate as long as that is how you made the image.

 

[Donald]

Originally Posted By: Virtuoso
I think I understand perfectly well why I back up.. I've been doing it long enough (I used to back up to floppy's!)

I do it the way I do because I don't want to use someone's bloated backup program for it. I understand the simplicity of having a shadowcopy of your OS/Programs/Etc.. But all I really have to do is re-install Win7 and a few programs, and then reverse my batch file to copy everything right back over to where it was before.

It's really a lot easier than it's made out to be. I also like knowing I'm starting over from a fresh, clean slate.

But hey, use what works

The problem there is you need to update your batch file when you install new programs. The company I work for has a migration program to go from old laptop to new and there are files all over the place (some hidden) that almost no one knows are important.

The strategy in the mainframe arena (I have been in that arena since 1976) is to backup everything and restore what you want. If one tries to save backup disk space by backing up what they think is important, they will always miss things.

My new 2 TB raw internal hard drives were $99.95 each.

But I also agree what ever works.

 

[Virtuoso]

I agree with the above posts! Not trying to stirr a pot, just saying how I do it has worked great for us

We always save our data (the important stuffs) to the same places, so there's no need to update the files. It pretty much copies all Windows user data folders plus the Desktop.

With data storage soooo cheap these days, perhaps shadow copying your entire install is the way to go.

 

[SrDriver]

I use Paragon Backup & Recovery A free program with some great features like a fast complete backup and restore, differential backups, individual file restore, cyclic backup, hard drive cloning, data compression and a lot more. It will backup Linux partitions too.

Link to web site.

Another free option that has appeal is the free for non-commerical use Gene-soft Timeline program.

Link to web site.

32 & 64-bit versions available. Simple setup and backup to external USB device, or another machine on your LAN.

You can configure which types of files get backed up. I just clicked the "Next" button, and used the default setting.

To restore a file just browse to the backup drive and navigate it with Windows Explorer. Also you can right-click the Genie Timeline icon on the system tray and use the built in facility to look for the files you want.

Make sure you download the "Free" version from the download page not the "Home" or "Pro" versions.

It is a good idea keeping a copy of your important files at a remote location in case of a fire, etc.

This saved us one time!

 

[doitmyself]

Originally Posted By: Virtuoso
I agree with the above posts! Not trying to stirr a pot, just saying how I do it has worked great for us

We always save our data (the important stuffs) to the same places, so there's no need to update the files. It pretty much copies all Windows user data folders plus the Desktop.

With data storage soooo cheap these days, perhaps shadow copying your entire install is the way to go.


Pot stirring is what I seek! And, it is the argument between Virtuoso and Donald that I am exploring. Simple manual data only vs. the "bloated" off the shelf programs.

There are dozens of backup programs available and it is difficult (for me) to trust the review sites.

I've heard about Paragon several times. Would use at a educational institution single station be "commercial"?

Please keep the comments coming. I especially like to hear about real world experience with these programs. A guy just told me that his very old Norton Ghost backups didn't work/restore on some newer machinces due to version problems (a potential problem my co-worker cites).

 

[Virtuoso]

One benefit to the way I back up, is if you upgrade to a new version of Windows, or want to move to a different machine, all you have to do is format, and copy your data over, since the OS and programs are not involved.


Not that this happens all that often.

 

[doitmyself]

Well, I'm not sold on the backup programs......yet.

One computer geek in our department said he had been doing complete system backups with Norton Ghost for many years, but when he finally tried to use it to move stuff to a new computer, it didn't work. He bought something else and made it work, but I don't remember the whole story.

A Novastore highest reviewed program has a major glitch in their current version. It can't do differential or incremental backups. At their user forum, people are complaining of the months it is taking to resolve this glitch, which is a main part of their program. Again, how much faith can one put in these review sites?

I will continue to do manual backups of my irreplaceable data for now and let the chips fall if catastrophe happens.

Oh, one more thing....Novastore says its disaster recovery program is hardware dependent and only works on the original hardware????? What happens if your hardware is burned up in a fire????

 

[saberz]

I don't use backup software. I don't care for a full image backup, nor incremental backups. I had used it in the past and it worked fine at first(Veritas, Acronis) and it eventually started making "blank" backups.

I use a manual backup method. Mostly use my external to backup music, docs etc. I can format on a whim anytime and be back up and running in 20 minutes or so because my Windows 7 images always have the latest drivers and packages I want ready to go(thanks nlite!)

 

[JohnGeek]

Manual backup [censored] me off. As anything manual. You spend 520 min every year for manual backups, that's too long! Use some user-friendly software, as you are not expert. And don't rely on any imaging software - those expensive programs are not so stable. I think for you it should be convenient to use something like Handy Backup (http://www.handybackup.net). It just copies files, and that's why it is effective.

 

[NJC]

I am using rsync over SSH to a Ubuntu file server tucked away in the crawl space. But I haven't got it automated (cron) yet.

 

[TooManyWheels]

Originally Posted By: Anies
... my Windows 7 images always have the latest drivers and packages I want ready to go(thanks nlite!)


Is that nlite or vlite?