# Making backups



## crjdriver (Jan 2, 2001)

Many of you who post here regularly see me refer to making an image backup. I am going to go into a little more detail of what this entails AND the many benefits that come with having an image backup.

With the price of hard drives so cheap now and the fact that Macrium gives away a free version of their backup software Macrium Free version, there is no excuse for not backing up your system. In addition, newegg currently is selling Acronis True Image home for all of $39. Note they often reduce the price when Acronis releases a new version [price reduction on the older version]
If you have either a WD or Seagate hard drive, you can download the FREE version of acronis from the respective site.

When you did your last clean install, how long did it take you to have the system up and running with drivers installed, latest service pack installed, and windows activated? A reasonable time is 1~2hr depending on the speed of the system. How would you like to do this in 5~10 min? Well with an image of a clean install, that is all it takes.

Here is what you do.
1 Install the operating system.
2 Update to latest service pack. For win2k sp4, xp sp3, and vista sp1. Win7 sp1. No sp for win 8 or 10 however I would update to the latest product update. 
3 Install chipset/motherboard drivers.
4 Install sound, nic drivers as necessary.
5 Install video driver

If all is well, go ahead and activate windows. Once done, install either Macrium or Acronis software. Make an image of the system as it is now with all drivers and activation. Store this image on your second hard drive, external hard drive, network, NAS, etc. I generally use the name "Clean install" for this image.

Once done with the above, when you need a "Clean" install, you simply boot with your recovery CD that both apps have you make. Restore the image. You now have a clean install in all of 5~10min depending on the speed of your system.

There are many more uses for image backup software. Make an image of your system on a regular basis. I use the date for the image file name so it is easy to tell which image you are restoring. I like to make at least one or two images per week. If you have a hard drive fail, you just install a new drive and boot with your recovery CD. Restore the latest image and you are back to where you were when the image was made. No loss of time, data, etc.

Are you going to try out a new operating system such as windows 10, Linux, Free BSD, etc? Well no problem. Just make an image of your system before you start. If you do not like whatever it is you install, just restore the image and have your system back to the way it was before you started. As you can see, there are many uses for imaging software.

A final word on which app to choose. I like both Macrium and Acronis. If simple image backups are what you are going to do, then go with Macrium. If you run a server, raid drives, or need to clone disks, then go with Acronis True Image. Acronis has more features and does more however it is not free. Another option is clonezilla. While clonezilla is not the easiest thing to use, it is FREE and it has never failed to restore an image for me.

Remember all hard drives fail. It is only a question of when your drive is going to fail. Do you want to lose important data, mp3s, videos, etc?


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## midders (Jan 1, 1970)

Excellent advice and well worth the small amount of time it takes to implement.

In addition to the above, I use a small (10Gb) partition to install windows on and then install any large apps to the second partion (D:\Program files 2\...). The resulting image files with Ghost using fast compression will fit on a single DVDR, and if you make the DVDR bootable and chuck the Ghost.exe on there as well you have an instant product recovery disk.

Sláinte

midders


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## jnathan (Jun 29, 2008)

Good Thread, My Samsung 80 GB is making sound inside, says "File record segment is unreadable" . I am deeply sad not to have kept full backup of that drive. Anyone with any suggestion , how to recover the data?


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## Compiler (Oct 11, 2006)

Ah Ghost... back in the Win95~98 days and before Norton/Symantec screwed it up... was a dream! It fit on a floppy disk at 600~1000k.

I'll give this program a try.


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## paragon101 (Jun 5, 2009)

Yesterday, I had to restore an image that I made using Paragon Drive Backup 9.0 Express. The restore was flawless. However, today when I tried to make a new backup; it didn't want to back up. It hangs. It sees the drive as Basic Drive Partition 0 Drive 0.

Any suggestions?


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## Elvandil (Aug 1, 2003)

midders said:


> Excellent advice and well worth the small amount of time it takes to implement.
> 
> In addition to the above, I use a small (10Gb) partition to install windows on and then install any large apps to the second partion (D:\Program files 2\...). The resulting image files with Ghost using fast compression will fit on a single DVDR, and if you make the DVDR bootable and chuck the Ghost.exe on there as well you have an instant product recovery disk.
> 
> ...


"Bootable" into what? If you want to run any app, or ghost.exe, then you have to have an operating system. How would you put the operating system on the CD and which one would it be?

But, this thread is a "sticky", posted here for informational purposes and not for problem-solving. People with problems, please start your own threads in the appropriate subforum.


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## Compiler (Oct 11, 2006)

Use a bootable CD-ROM disc, especially with a Win95/95 or a USB key. Anything to get a command prompt.


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## Elvandil (Aug 1, 2003)

Compiler said:


> Use a bootable CD-ROM disc, especially with a Win95/95 or a USB key. Anything to get a command prompt.


A CD-ROM, or anything else for that matter, has to contain an operating system in order to boot. That is what "boot" means--to start the operating system.

Then, once an operating system has been booted, you can run programs that are made to run on that particular operating system, but not just any program that exists.


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## midders (Jan 1, 1970)

Elvandil said:


> "Bootable" into what?


I use the Win 98 SE boot image; it includes the excellent generic Oak CD/DVD rom driver.

Sláinte

midders


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## Compiler (Oct 11, 2006)

Back before the death of Floppy drives, I always had a Win98boot floppy handy, since some computers couldn't boot from a CD-ROM drive (like notebooks back then). Before NTFS, the WinCD boot CD was a life saver. But I'd also configure clients PCs with a hidden Win98 DIR. I used to take a problematic Win98 system (including my own) and without a disc or floppy - wipe out Win98, and do a clean install. Trick: use Win98's "boot to DOS mode" - and I always stored a copy of the fdisk to use on another partition. From DOS, delete all files or re-format C:, then re-install the OS off the HD... so much faster than CD.

But with XP, not so simple... but XP doesn't need to be re-installed as much as Win9x.


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## new tech guy (Mar 27, 2006)

Compiler said:


> Use a bootable CD-ROM disc, especially with a Win95/95 or a USB key. Anything to get a command prompt.


Ahh that post reminded me of the old win95 boot floppy i have sitting in the basement, great little boot disc should you need to run somthing. Used it in the past to update a system bios as the program needed execution from a dos prompt.


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## Elvandil (Aug 1, 2003)

Yes, the old floppy drives still have some uses, and I plan to have one on all my machines for the forseeable future. There are so many good tools that I have still on floppy, including the entire Paragon Partitioning Suite 6 that runs completely from floppy and even includes a defargmenter for NTFS.


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## midders (Jan 1, 1970)

Elvandil said:


> Yes, the old floppy drives still have some uses, and I plan to have one on all my machines for the forseeable future.


Why bother hanging on to old technology? Floppy disks are so unreliable that looking at them wrong can cause the data to be corrupted. You can get blank CDRs for less than 8p a go and a CDROM drive costs less than a floppy drive, these days. It's just as bootable and easy to use as a floppy, so I can't see any valid reason for installing a floppy drive in a new system.

Sláinte

midders


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## Compiler (Oct 11, 2006)

I stop putting floppy drives in my PCs about 2000. But I always have 1-2 floppy drives with a cable wrapped around them handy for when its needed. Like setting up a RAID, or an older computer. Thats where XP shows is stupidity is when it ONLY accept drivers from a floppy drive (RAID, SATA, SCSI, etc) - when it SHOULD know how to accept a USB flash drive from at least SP1. Considering that the BIOS can boot from a flash drive!


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## midders (Jan 1, 1970)

Compiler said:


> Like setting up a RAID, or an older computer. Thats where XP shows is stupidity is when it ONLY accept drivers from a floppy drive (RAID, SATA, SCSI, etc) - when it SHOULD know how to accept a USB flash drive from at least SP1. Considering that the BIOS can boot from a flash drive!


You're right; it should know better, but you can always slipstream the drivers onto the install disk prior to installing; if you use nLite, you don't even have to know how it works!

Sláinte

midders


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## ozziebeanie (Jun 24, 2009)

I have two disc's per computer, I put an operating system on both, then install ghost, (yeah I have two other programs that do back ups buy why change when it has done it great since I got the program around 2002).

Then on the bigger drive I continue to install all the programs I want, and change all the settings to how I want them make sure all the service packs are on and all updates, when I have it exactly how I like it (this is when you FIRST make an image on a new computer) I install the second drive, then close down and I boot to the second drive (which only has operating system on it and Ghost) and then make my image.

Then I take the drive off the computer, as a second drive is always running in the background, I regularly make a copy and always keep the at least two images saved, and make sure the computer is clean before I made either image.

No boot disc required if the hard drive craps out, get another drive, connect the second drive and boot to it and lay image on new drive. or if like me in the past, you have picked up a nasty in your computer that wont let you do anything then shut down add other disc on boot to second drive and lay another image on infected drive.

Because I do this, I turn off system restore as it does use resources, not that it really matters on my computer, as it does not really affect the speed but it can do on slower models like you would find in government departments. 

Beanie


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## Compiler (Oct 11, 2006)

Macrium Free version, after using it on a few computers.... works extremely well, very easy to use. The price is excellent for home users... $0. Its not full-blown of course, but its does a great job. Even GHOST would only backup whole partitions.

It took about 5 mins to make a 14GB partition into a 10GB backup file.


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## midders (Jan 1, 1970)

Slightly off-topic, but still on the theme of backups, I've just started using http://www.adrive.com to store important data offsite. They offer 50gb free which is more than enough for most user docs etc. and if you compress and encrypt your data with 7zip (AES-256) using a strong password (KeePass generates excellent ones) then it's as secure as you're going to get.

Sláinte

midders


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## Compiler (Oct 11, 2006)

In the days of 10~15 megapixel consumer cameras (Folks, 4~5mp is more than enough for 5x8), 50GB over the internet is not usable for heavy users. But there are many people who can use that since they only have 1~2GB of data.


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## [email protected] (Jun 20, 2009)

If I set up an external HD to store some files (mp3 & PS), with a second partition for writing back-up images. Should it be formatted?
In the past I've used drives for storage with out doing any partitioning or formatting.


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## Compiler (Oct 11, 2006)

If a drive isn't formatted, it cannot store any data.

You can save an image file anywhere it'll fit.
You should create the partitions before using the external drive to store data.


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## udhai1 (Aug 14, 2009)

well you can try copying all of The Sims 3 files and burn them to a CD. But you wouldn't be able to play the burned disk because it doesnt have the flash/simulation in the files. Those files are probably scattered or placed somewhere in your hardrive(s) and named differently. So i dont really think you can play Sims 3 on a burned disk or any other disks. Just the Sims 3 disk only

__________________________
naruto games
ds lite nintendo


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## Compiler (Oct 11, 2006)

Why backups are important.

I found out a whole folder was missing, maybe accidentally deleted - don't know. But 8GB of data / 3000+ files which I needed for a work project... was gone. It could have disappeared 6 months ago for all I know.

I wasn't worried about it too much as I had a copy on an external (not attached) storage.

Backup drives shouldn't be constantly attached to your computer. Do your back ups and disconnect.

If I didn't have those files, I would have lost everything... forever.

With todays digital cameras and camcorders which makes life very easy - YOU must have an external backup... or you can easily lose everything for any number of reasons.

A $100 backup drive (1TB) can be bought anywhere.


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