|
Posted by Dave Martindale on March 11, 2008, 1:50 am
Please log in for more thread options
>My laptop has all my financials, taxes, and business stuff,
>along with photos, docs, email, music, videos, etc
>SO - with a 30, 60, or 120MB laptop disk -
>how and what can we use to back these up in a reasonable amount of time ?
>Heck - it takes an hour just to perform a complete disk virus scan.
Here's what I do:
1. I have a directory named C:\NoBackup, which gets all kinds of stuff
that I don't want to be part of the backup set - typically stuff that
can be recreated if necessary. That includes video captures (I still
have the original camera tapes), ripped audio (I still have the original
CDs), digital camera images (they're backed up separately manually).
2. In XP's Backup utility, I have added exclusions for C:\NoBackup plus
a couple pieces of software in Program Files that are too large to be
worth backing up (MS Streets&Trips, MS Flight Simulator, other games).
So when I backup C:, these things don't get backed up. Backup
automatically excludes the swap file, hibernation file, etc.
3. Several times a week, my main desktop machine wakes up at 6 AM and
does a backup of C: and "system state" onto a second drive in the same
machine. This happens while I'm still asleep.
4. A few times a week, at my leisure, I run SyncToy to synchronize the
local disk backup folder with one on the house file server (a Linksys
NSLU2 and USB disk). This is slow because it's copying data across the
Ethernet and the NSLU2 is no speed demon, but it runs in the background
happily.
5. Once a week, I use SyncToy (again) to synchronize one of these backup
folders to a 160 MB 2.5 inch external hard drive. This drive is tiny,
and spends almost all its time at work.
My wife's PC does something similar, except that the backup goes
directly to the home fileserver.
So, if the main drive in my PC (or my wife's) dies, I have backups of
the important files in 3 other places (though some are a week or two
old). If my PC power supply dies and wipes out both internal drives, I
still have a recent backup on an external disk with its own power
supply, plus the copy at work. And if the whole house burns down,
taking both the PCs and fileserver, I *still* have one copy on the disk
at work.
Perhaps this is overkill, but it's mostly automated and not a lot of
work. I don't really *need* the copy on the local disk, but that speeds
up copying to the 160 MB pocket-sized drive when I bring it home.
Dave
|
|
Posted by C.Joseph S. Drayton on March 11, 2008, 9:38 am
Please log in for more thread options
P.Schuman wrote:
>with laptop disk capacity getting bigger and bigger,
>wonder how folks are backing up their critical laptop information ?
>
>I have Acronis loaded from when I installed a new disk...
>but have not used it for creating backup images.
>
>My laptop has all my financials, taxes, and business stuff,
>along with photos, docs, email, music, videos, etc
>
>SO - with a 30, 60, or 120MB laptop disk -
>how and what can we use to back these up in a reasonable amount of
>time ? Heck - it takes an hour just to perform a complete disk virus
>scan.
To my mind, there are 3 types of backups;
1) System backup -- This type of backup does a backup of my system
partition (note that I do keep OS/Apps on a separate partition from my
data). I do this backup once a week at night when I am not on the
computer.
2) Data backup -- This type of backup is of my entire data partition
and is done to an external USB drive. At least one of my external USB
drives is kept off site so that in the event of fire/theft I don't lose
too much data.
3) Real-time backup -- for this I use SecondCopy to make sure that my
work data files are backed up to a second internal partition. This is
especially important for me since my work source code files tend to be
on my system drive and I would hate to lose hours of work due to a
system crash.
There are of course applications that will allow you to do incremental
backups which will of course speed up the backup process.
I think though that you need to decide the types and levels of backup
that you will use for your backup strategy before you can determine
what tools will do the job best.
--
Sincerely,
C.Joseph Drayton, Ph.D. AS&T
CSD Computer Services
Web site: http://csdcs.tlerma.com/
E-mail: csdcs@tlerma.com
|
| Similar Threads | Posted | | How to Backup HDD | May 9, 2006, 1:51 am |
| Dell HDD backup | November 22, 2005, 9:49 am |
| Laptop backup strategy | May 24, 2005, 2:35 pm |
| USB backup for notebooks without network | August 31, 2006, 11:55 pm |
| Backup/Restore of Outlook Files | July 3, 2005, 10:42 am |
| A laptop backup plan using cygwin (gnu) tar and R/W CDs? | December 3, 2005, 6:04 pm |
| OT: Can I examine entries in backup of W98 Registry? | July 2, 2006, 11:03 am |
| HOWTO: backup Factory Restore Image (from secret partition) | July 8, 2008, 4:53 am |
| Backup/Image SSHD on eeePC 701 to a Bootable Flash Drive | September 19, 2008, 11:04 am |
| help for laptop's choice low price (13") | October 20, 2008, 2:27 am |
|
XML Sitemap