My slave drive.....

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Debaser

My slave drive.....

Post by Debaser »   0 likes

.....has been tick tocking for a month as well as freezing up.

Let me guess, its about to die!

I suppose I should be thankful its not my primary drive
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Phuzzy4242
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Re: My slave drive.....

Post by Phuzzy4242 »   0 likes

Debaser wrote:.....has been tick tocking for a month as well as freezing up.

Let me guess, its about to die!

I suppose I should be thankful its not my primary drive
Make a backup of that sucka NOW or the god of spinning things will take umbrage at your lack of belief and make it seize up when you're 10K from the end of an 8GB download.
Debaser

Re: My slave drive.....

Post by Debaser »   0 likes

Phuzzy4242 wrote:
Debaser wrote:.....has been tick tocking for a month as well as freezing up.

Let me guess, its about to die!

I suppose I should be thankful its not my primary drive
Make a backup of that sucka NOW or the god of spinning things will take umbrage at your lack of belief and make it seize up when you're 10K from the end of an 8GB download.
Believe it or not one thing I do do is keep my videos backed up.
I write down each and every movie title as they complete into notepad and then copy them in batches of 4 or 5 onto DVDR's.

I did once consider backing up my movies to an external HD but obviously that wouldn’t be so clever.
100’s & 100’s of DVDR's are far less likely to all fail at once compared to one single external HD!

So I will simply wait for the slave to die.

As for my primary drive everything except the OS partition is backed up to DVDR's as well.

Even now I have no understanding of backing up OS's!!.
I have Acronis True Image Home 10.0, but even after reading the instructions it appears you need some kind of degree in computing.

1. WTF is an image, and how is it different to an exact copy?
2. If an image is an exact copy, why isn’t it called a copy instead of image?
3. Is everything important really only in the OS partition?
4. Why can’t I just buy an external HD and copy/pasts my OS to it, then if my PC dies just plug the external HD into the PC and copy it back?

Apparently you also need some kind of boot disk.

If anyone understands backing up an OS and can explain it plain English that would be much appreciated!
Guest

Re: My slave drive.....

Post by Guest »   0 likes

Debaser, having a image copy of the OS on a external HDD or a big memory stick does work proper with Mac OS X.

It's simple and easy to choose during the boot sequence the wanted boot device with just keep pressing a distinct key.

At work we are mirroring some PC daily, so in the worst case we would just need to copy the mirror to a replaced HDD. This mirror consists of the OS and any installed software. Will have a look which software we are using for exactly and tell you on Monday then.
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Phuzzy4242
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Re: My slave drive.....

Post by Phuzzy4242 »   0 likes

Debaser wrote:
Phuzzy4242 wrote:
Debaser wrote:.....has been tick tocking for a month as well as freezing up.

Let me guess, its about to die!

I suppose I should be thankful its not my primary drive
Make a backup of that sucka NOW or the god of spinning things will take umbrage at your lack of belief and make it seize up when you're 10K from the end of an 8GB download.
Believe it or not one thing I do do is keep my videos backed up.
I write down each and every movie title as they complete into notepad and then copy them in batches of 4 or 5 onto DVDR's.

I did once consider backing up my movies to an external HD but obviously that wouldn’t be so clever.
100’s & 100’s of DVDR's are far less likely to all fail at once compared to one single external HD!

So I will simply wait for the slave to die.

As for my primary drive everything except the OS partition is backed up to DVDR's as well.

Even now I have no understanding of backing up OS's!!.
I have Acronis True Image Home 10.0, but even after reading the instructions it appears you need some kind of degree in computing.

1. WTF is an image, and how is it different to an exact copy?
2. If an image is an exact copy, why isn’t it called a copy instead of image?
3. Is everything important really only in the OS partition?
4. Why can’t I just buy an external HD and copy/pasts my OS to it, then if my PC dies just plug the external HD into the PC and copy it back?

Apparently you also need some kind of boot disk.

If anyone understands backing up an OS and can explain it plain English that would be much appreciated!
I haven't used Acronis but I've used Symantec Ghost since long before it was Symantec. I'll try to explain what an image is, but bear in mind this is much simplified and may bear no relation to reality. :)

An OS isn't just files stuck on a disk, it's all interlinked by the registry, file and folder permissions, and other things. You can't just copy from one disk to another because they wouldn't go in the exact same place on the new hard drive, the linkages and permissions wouldn't be there, and a lot of things rely on stuff being exactly where they expect it. A disk image is just that - it's a "snapshot" of a disk or a partition. You have to create the image while the OS is not running - otherwise things would be changing as the image is being created, and that's ungood. A backup, on the other hand, is made while the OS is running and uses a part of memory and spare parts of the hard disk to make a temporary copy of critical stuff like the registry that might change while the backup is being done.

You need a boot disk because otherwise you'd have to install the OS before you could run the program to restore the image OR a backup. In fact, a backup is mostly useless except for restoring non-OS programs and files unless it can create a bootable restore disk that has the necessary programs for restoring everything. Also, if you try to restore a program that is already running (like the OS), it will probably not let the file(s) be replaced from the backup.

I'm a big fan of image programs like Ghost because in my line of work I often have to set up 50 or more PCs at a time. I get one PC 100% installed and updated, along with software, then create an image. To set up the next 49 PCs, I just put that image on each one. (It's actually more complicated because I create a PXE image that can be used on any brand or model of PC or laptop, but you get the idea). I do the same for my home computer - if it gets toasted for some reason or I install a new hard drive, I can have it back in operation in 15 minutes, except for updates and upgrades from the time the original image was made.
Debaser wrote:3. Is everything important really only in the OS partition?
That depends. If you reinstall the OS from scratch, you also have to reinstall all the programs too because the OS has no idea where they are. A restored image will know where programs were installed up to the time the image was created - if you uninstalled programs since then, you'll have to tweak things after you restore an image so the OS doesn't think those programs are still there. If you installed new ones since then, you have to install them again. It doesn't matter where data by itself is stored. If you're making backups anyway, back up everything.

One other thing - unless you use the PXE (pre-execution environment) method of creating an image, that image will only work on the computer it was created on. In other words, if you buy a new computer, the image from the old one probably won't work. This is because the new computer has different hardware, and if you put the image from the old computer on it, all the new computer's hardware will be looking at the old computer's drivers and will probably crap itself. Unfortunately, the average public can't easily get the PXE creators - its a Microsoft thing.

Does any of this shed some light? Sorry for being so long-winded.
Debaser

Re: My slave drive.....

Post by Debaser »   0 likes

Thanks so much for the detailed explanations!
Now my head is spinning lol!!

My OS was reinstalled on a new partition about one year ago.
I also use the same partition to store all downloaded programs (not yet installed programs).

Here is a list of the folder names on that partition:

DELL
Documents and Settings
Downloads (not yet installed programs)
My Documents
Program Files
WINDOWS
lvcoinst.log

That is everything.
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emuler
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Re: My slave drive.....

Post by emuler »   0 likes

Hmm.. I remember talking you through the process of backing up using Acronis True Image quite a while ago. :think Guess it didn't stick! :icon_surrender :icon_rolleyes

It is not a good idea to have anything irreplaceable on the system partition (C drive). If/when your computer becomes unusable, 99 times out of 100 it will be just the C drive that will be affected. The quickest and easiest way to get running again is to reinstall Windows formatting C drive in the process. This is known in geekspeak as a clean install. That means you lose everything that was on the C drive, but everything on the other partitions will still be there just like before. So move the stuff in your downloads folder to a safer place, like DVDrs or another partition.

Do also keep a backup of your favourite websites/bookmarks. If you are like me and have trouble remembering usernames and passwords, save these in a text file or something and keep in a secure place (emailing the list to yourself is a handy way of doing this).
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starfish21
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Re: My slave drive.....

Post by starfish21 »   0 likes

another point of interest is the time taken and system resources used when scanning and defragmenting.
most scanners will scan the system drive by default,if you store only the system files on that partition
then routine maintenance is much simpler and quicker.
plonkah
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Re: My slave drive.....

Post by plonkah »   0 likes

Hi DB

That software is very easy to use, AND you have the advantage of being able to make scheduled incremental backups, or on-demand. The key thing is that you need to have enough disk space to make the image in the first place, and to continue to do incrementals (backs up only changes since last full backup). My advice as follows :-

1. IF you have plenty of target disk space, use the option to backup sector by sector your full disk.

2. You can then make either differential OR incremental backs.

This way, you will always have up-to date backups, AND, if everything goes tu on your HD, or your OS is corrupted, you just blast the image back on, and in (depending on your hardware) about a couple of hours, your entire disk is restored to how it was at your last backup (if you do incrementals, it will ask you to put in your last FULL backup, then the most recent incremental, if you do differentials, it will ask you for the last FULL backup, then EACH of the differentials you have made in order oldest to most recent). To be honest, I would do INCREMENTALS.

There. Hope that is clear now (probably as mud).
Debaser

Re: My slave drive.....

Post by Debaser »   0 likes

Yes you helped me with this before emuler, and with great patience on your part.

In the end I think I pretended to understand fully due to not wanting to come across as a complete thicky. I’m way past that now lol

You did manage to get me as far as creating a back-up of my OS onto my slave HD, as well as creating a rescue disk, but I was never 100% confident I had done it properly, and had no idea how to test that I had done it properly.

Anyway backing up my OS to the slave drive obviously wasn’t my greatest idea as that drive isn’t far from death now.

I do like the idea of sector by sector backup’s plonkah.

To be honest I can’t help thinking that my whole PC might be on its way out now.

I religiously run anti-spyware / anti-adaware / antivirus programs, as well occasionally defragging and controlling what programs load at start-up.
Basically I always try to look after my investments.

Lately whatever I do the PC has become much slower and some strange errors occur such as image files duplicating themselves multiple times when all I do is highlight them in order to relocate them.

The PC is only four years old, but maybe that’s old by today’s standards.

Perhaps I should just use it to death and see if I can afford something new in a few months time.
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