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In search of ideal backup utility

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mouser:
I just wanted to add a comment here..

I never worry about backing up program settings or registry, etc.

For me I worry about 2 things (as i described in my old backup guide):

First, i make sure my personal documents are backed up, OFTEN.  This includes any real writing i may do or programming, etc.  It's anything that i hold near and dear to my heart that would make me cry if i lost it.  It does not include things like program settings which would suck to have to reconfigure but wouldn't be the end of the world.

Second, i make a full system drive image regularly (but not as often as i backup my documents).  This is in case my entire system crashes, i lose a hard drive to a hardware fault, or in case something else infects my PC.

If something catastrophic happens, my solution would be to reinstall from a stable drive image, reseting the entire hard drive to a known good state.  I do not trust the idea of "partially restoring" the system by running windows built in system restore, or trying to restore a saved registry... it all seems to fragile and error prone to me.

The backup of my documents are meant to provide a good history for me of all my personal work so i can always restore a recent version of these files at any time, including after a drive image restore.  And to let me find an older version if i mess up something.

In short, i recommend not relying on anything fancy -- better to do a full drive image on a regular (monthly?) basis, and be prepared to go back to that state if something goes badly wrong with your pc.  And combine that with a daily/weekly backup of your own personal documents which are most important to you, using whatever program can do that quickly (and keep versioned backups so you can find older versions).

Darwin:
Nicely stated, mouser  :Thmbsup: This is exactly what I do as well (though I probably got the inspiration from your backup guide  ;D).

cmpm:
yeah, I keep pictures screenshots documents activation codes and downloads mainly.
That's what I sync. And when syncing to another computer, those files are available for use immediately on the other computer/s.

Well here's a shot of what I keep.

tslim:
mouser,

I have been using Ghost imaging to backup for years.
But nowadays, newer HDD's capasity is growing much faster than their speed ...
Everything is becoming bigger and bigger and it takes longer and longer to clone a full disk.
I think is time to resort to RAID 1 or RAID 1+0 if hardware budget is not tight.
New mobo bios nowadays is normally RAID ready and HDD is becoming cheaper and cheaper...

Dormouse:
One thing I would say from your list of things to backup is that some of them are really for Archiving rather than (or as well as) Backup.-Dormouse (August 24, 2008, 06:12 AM)
--- End quote ---
Not "some", but only "one" of them that is the first item. -tslim (August 24, 2008, 09:08 AM)
--- End quote ---

Sorry, I meant your list of stuff to backup. When I was talking about archiving, I meant the photos etc. By archiving, I meant that it is stuff that you want to keep safe permanently, with limited changes but more frequent additions.

I keep archived stuff in a number of ways (various HDDs, DVD-RAMs in multiple locations, on the net) depending on what it is and how much I would miss it if the house burned down.

I keep backups on HDDs and some stuff on the net; mostly it is for timesaving and convenience and I probably wouldn't be worrying too much about that if the house had burned down. Family photos; created stuff etc.

Not really worried at all about reinstating my system. I redo that from scratch every few years anyway.

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