Radified Community Forums - Ghost for OS--What for Data?

bcbcbc

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Ghost for OS--What for Data?
Dec 27^th, 2005 at 12:37pm

I remain confused about best practice for backup. I have a stand-alone system running XP Home SP2 on a Celeron D 2.66Mhz Prescott/768MB RAM. I have 3 HDDs.

Drive O/250GB Partitions G: 25 GB/17GB free--Boot OS & Programs; Partition H: 25GB(all free); Partition I: 200GB/115 free-- Documents/Music/Photos.

Drive 1/120G Partitions C: 20GB--OS/Programs Image; Partition D: 100GB Data backup of I: I will soon replace this HDD with a 250GB.

Drive 2/120GB USB 2.0--no partitions. Second copy of docs/music/photo files

I've been using Ghost 2003 for several years. During that time I only had one occasion where I had to restore. That was the OS, which had some corrupted files. The restore worked perfectly. At that time I just had 2 @ 120GB drives with no partitions. It was simple but time consuming to image one drive to the other.

When I added the larger HDD I made the partitions so I could Ghost just the OS/Programs partition separately from the data. My thought was that I would then find some backup software for the data with an incremental/differential feature, which is lacking in Ghost 2003.

I'm trying to make this process simple & fast. I'd rather use just one software that would do both the OS image and the incremental data backup but not at the expense of reliability. Is there such a thing?

Or am I better off with Ghost 2003 for the OS image and something like Cobian for the data? My strategy here would be to do a weekly image of the OS/Programs (now only about 8GB) with Ghost, then do an incremental for data with Cobian. Of course the first backup with Cobian would be full.

Sorry this is so long. Thanks...

bc

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Rad

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Re: Ghost for OS--What for Data?
Reply #1 - Dec 27^th, 2005 at 1:32pm

3 hard drives and plenty of space means you have a lot to work with.

normally we use an imaging app such as ghost to back-up out o/s & programs, which are all contained on the same partition (12-30 GB), and DVDs to back up other data, such as MP3s, digital photos, downloads, etc.

redundancy is the key to good back-ups, so if you could back-up with BOTH Ghost 2003 and Ghost 9/10, you'd be better off.

Ghost 2003 will run off a floppy diskette or a bootable CD (see NightOwl's guide for creating bootable CDs)

I am leery of the idea of incremental back-ups and recovery points. Perhaps wrongly.

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Poncho

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	Re: Ghost for OS--What for Data? Reply #2 - Dec 27^th, 2005 at 1:36pm You could also back up non-system files with a simple drag and drop to any non-system drive. Ghost is needed because Windows won't let you copy many in-use o/s files.
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ckcc

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Re: Ghost for OS--What for Data?
Reply #3 - Dec 27^th, 2005 at 8:40pm

I use Scond Copy 2000 for my data. Ghost for my O/S.

http://www.centered.com/

From the website "It makes a backup of your data files to another directory, disk or computer across the network. It then monitors the source files and keeps the backup updated with new or changed files. It runs in the background with no user interaction. So, once it is set up you always have a backup of your data somewhere else."

Cobian looks to be similar.

I love it. I'm able to keep an automated up-to-date exact copy of my data drive on a USB HD. Then I just image my O/S partition with ghost every couple of weeks or before major changes. I also make periodic backups of data to DVD's as an extra measure of security.

You have your drives set up great. Now just try Cobian or Second Copy. I'm sure one will work for you.

If anything can go wrong, it already did, and you just now noticed it.

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Rad

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	Re: Ghost for OS--What for Data? Reply #4 - Dec 28^th, 2005 at 1:05am Looks impressive (downloading now): http://www.educ.umu.se/~cobian/cobianbackup.htm Free? Why did you pick Second Copy, especially when it co$ts $30? http://www.centered.com/pricing.html
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ckcc

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	Re: Ghost for OS--What for Data? Reply #5 - Dec 28^th, 2005 at 7:02am "Why did you pick Second Copy, especially when it co$ts $30?" It was the first one I found, around 2000-2001, I only recently discovered Cobian. Let me know how well it works. I may test it out myself to see if it will match SC. I like to stick with stuff that works.
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huntnyc

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	Re: Ghost for OS--What for Data? Reply #6 - Dec 28^th, 2005 at 1:45pm I would recommend SyncBackSE that I think allows you to place it on up to 5 computers with your purchase. Very good and I am a former user of Second Copy. http://www.2brightsparks.com/ Gary
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Christer

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	Re: Ghost for OS--What for Data? Reply #7 - Dec 28^th, 2005 at 2:31pm I have used Karen's Replicator for a couple of years. I run the jobs manually and not scheduled since my backup HDD sits either powered off in the mobile rack or in a drawer during normal use. Like ckcc, it was the first freeware I found and have not tried anything else. Christer
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Dan Goodell

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Re: Ghost for OS--What for Data?
Reply #8 - Dec 28^th, 2005 at 10:53pm

ckcc wrote:

"I like to stick with stuff that works."

Well, that takes all the fun out of it, doesn't it?? Grin

Seriously, though, I'm of the same mind. Back in the DOS days I developed my own batch file centered around pkzip that let me backup files into ordinary zipfiles, based on a text list of files (wildcards allowed) I wanted included. I modified that for lfn support when Win95 came out, and to this day it continues to serve me perfectly, even on XP. I haven't found any reason to switch to something more "modern". Working with ordinary zipfiles is too darn convenient for me to give up.

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Rad

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	Re: Ghost for OS--What for Data? Reply #9 - Dec 28^th, 2005 at 11:33pm Re: " Well, that takes all the fun out of it, doesn't it?? " That got a chuckle out of me.
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