Backing up my computer

[Man In Black]

Needing a new hard drive, I thought 80GB would last forever, then I started installing games, downloading music and movies, and now I'm deleting stuff to make room for new stuff, which is inconvienent, and until I get my DVD drive, I won't have a way to back up and delete stuff from my computer I don't use very often.

Anyway, I also need a new HD because I'll absolutely go beserk if my hard drive goes bad, which they inevitably do. Im wondering, when I get my new HD, probably this Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 320GB (http://www.newegg.com/product/product.asp?item=N82E16822148140) drive, what I do. Should I partition the drive, so I have a 80 or so GB partition to back my main drive up to periodically, and then use the rest for the My Documents folder, and whatever else I decide to do. When it comes to backing the main drive up, do you need some utility? And in the event of drive failure, I'd just boot from the partition I'm using to back it up, correct?

[stevel]

No, you can't boot from the backup partition.

The best way overall is to use a disk imaging program that offers incremental backups. My favorite is Acronis TrueImage, Norton Save and Restore is the primary competitor. You set up a backup schedule with a target to (ideally) another drive, and then if you need to, you can boot a recovery CD and restore the partition or even individual files. These programs also tend to provide "I bought a new disk so copy the old one" features.

[Man In Black]

Doesn't Acronis have horrible uninstall issues? ie, leaving behind all kinds of mess?

[Michael]

A big thumbs up from me for Acronis... As for residual files. You can create a boot CD from a different machine and create an image without installing it at all. ;)

[Man In Black]

A big thumbs up from me for Acronis... As for residual files. You can create a boot CD from a different machine and create an image without installing it at all. ;)

Heh, except I don't have another machine with a cd-burner. ;)

[Michael]

Heh, except I don't have another machine with a cd-burner. ;)


Got a USB Thumbdrive?;)

[geko29]

Really the most solid solution agains hard drive failure (but not OS corruption) for home use is RAID 1. For example, my home system boots from a pair of WD 120GB SEs in a RAID 0 (striping, no redundancy) because I can always reinstall XP and all my apps should a drive ever fail. This also makes for a nice fast scratch disc for unpacking downloads, burning CDs, etc. However, the "Documents and Settings" folder and anything even REMOTELY important is on my D: drive, which is a pair of mirrored Seagate 300GB SATA drives. If one were to ever fail, I'd just get a little popup message on the system tray, and everything would keep operating normally. Then I'd just have to buy another drive, throw it in, and the mirror would rebuild itself.

If you're building a new system, it should be pretty easy to get a mobo with built in RAID 0/1. Mine was $90 4 years ago, so all but the most stripped-down ones should have them now. Then the only economic hurdle is getting a pair of identical drives. If you absolutely can't afford it, here's what I'd do:

Make the 320 your boot drive, but only use about 220GB of it. The remaining 80 (they always lie about the size) you can software mirror with your existing 80. Just launch disk administrator (in computer management), convert both disks to dynamic, then select the 80GB and the free space on the 320, right click and choose "create mirror set". Then install all your apps to the boot drive, and store all your data on the mirror set.

The beauty of mirroring is you NEVER have to do backups if you don't want to (I'm too lazy to, even though I have personally experienced the consequences of such). If you lose a drive, you just need to replace it before you lose the OTHER drive. As I said before, it doesn't protect against OS corruption, but who cares? You already have Windows and all your apps backed up (on the original media), so it's not like you lose anything in that event.

[Man In Black]

I don't think my computer can be set up for RAID.

In any event, I can always back up my documents and stuff. What I HATE having to do, is reinstall Windows, get everything set up and configured just the way I like it, installing and configuring my bazillion programs and such. Its a major PITA.

[stevel]

I've never had uninstall issues with Acronis.

RAID is fine protection against hardware failure, but it does bupkis about file structure or data corruption and will happily mirror that corruption onto the other disk(s). With a backup solution, you can roll back to a previous time or recover individual files.