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You have a computer backup plan.. but does it work?

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MilesAhead:
Unfortunately I have HP systems and they aren't all that friendly how they set up the HD.  At the moment I have external USB drives and a USB docking station for storing backup images.  I looked at some of the drive racks on newegg and I'm definitely in favor of tools-free R&R.  I'm wondering though, since HP insists on putting the standard HD inside this internal cage that's pretty inaccessible, if it's possible to install the HD rack using the unoccupied optical drive bay?

On another board the guy who talked me into getting the docking station says he just plugs in a drive every so often and dupes his current system onto it.  If he gets a failure just R&R the drive(he assembles his own systems so I assume he either has a rack or a setup that's very easy to get at the HDs.)

So for us unfortunate off-the-shelf customers, is there salvation?  :)

afa physical drive failure, I've been relying on the fact that the PCs I buy aren't super high performance, so they become obsolete before the hw malfunctions.  Unfortunately I don't have room to line them up in a network along a big work bench as I'd like to.

btw-afa image backup and restore to a physically ok HD that's just had the boot info or partition info hosed, my recommendation, if you are going to use the image backup method to a compressed file as Macrium Reflect type of deal, if at all possible download the fully functional trial, make a backup image and try to do the restore using the boot/rescue CD.  Chances are if the driver for your disk controller is not on the rescue CD, when you enter the program you'll notice it right away.  One example is Paragon Drive Backup. I booted the rescue CD, but when I entered the restore program, my video went screwy and I had to hard boot.  I was able to restore using "compatibility mode" but an hour restore job took me 9 hours.  I basically had to just let the thing run all night. This program worked fine on my machine with the vanilla Sata controller, but with HP's new AMD Raid, it couldn't see the HD except in super slow motion mode.


Don't assume because it says "raid support" or whatever in the ad copy that it will work with your controller.  In this case I downloaded the Macrium Reflect Trial, went through the entire image creation and restore and it worked flawlessly, so I bought it.  btw the new free version has the updated Linux Restore CD so that may be worth a look if you are lazy like me an buy your PCs to run OOTB. :)

Stoic Joker:
Let me add another more subtle tip, do not shoot yourself in the face by doing very frequent backups that always erase your last backup.

You might *think* you are doing a good thing by making very frequent backups, but if you are always overwriting your previous backup with the new one, what you are really doing is asking for trouble.-mouser (October 22, 2009, 12:32 PM)
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This has got to be the single most critical point (that people keep missing...) mentioned so far. I've seen that plan go sideways more than once.

mouser:
I'm wondering though, since HP insists on putting the standard HD inside this internal cage that's pretty inaccessible, if it's possible to install the HD rack using the unoccupied optical drive bay?
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as long as a cable will reach, the optical drive bays are the exact 5.25" size you need for a drive rack.  give it a try.

Paul Keith:
When making entire disk images I'd also recommend putting an md5sum of the image in a text file along with it. If the drive on which you wrote the image has some kind of malfunction, before restoring you could check the md5sum and see if it matches the one previously saved when the image was created-Gothi[c] (October 22, 2009, 09:46 AM)
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How do you obtain the md5sum of backup disk images? Is this an Acronis exclusive feature?

MilesAhead:
You can use any software that does an md5 checksum. I have one here:
http://www.favessoft.com/crc.html

Many file managers like FreeCommander have them built in.  I designed mine to allocate a large file buffer depending on the amount of physical ram in the system.  It can process like a 9 GB iso file without choking.

You can get portable ones I'm sure from places like Softpedia.  Mine is called FileCRC32 and it does either a CRC32 or MD5 checksum.  You can use it on the file right after you make the backup, if your backup program creates a single file.  It's not designed for computing a checksum for a folder.  I wrote it to check downloads.  It has a shell extension but I believe it will still work if you just copy the .exe file without the install.  If it cannot register the shell extension you may get an error msgbox, but it should still work. I just looked at the source and unless you select the radio button to enable the shell extension I don't think it checks for it.

There are plenty of them out there. My main emphasis on this one was processing large files, so it may not be that bad for checking those 20 GB files that Macrium Reflect makes. :)

Hmmmmm, I'm doing one now from 20 GB Macrium image file.  Looks like it will go through ok, but if you have a 64 bit OS you might want to try for one with 64 bit assembly algorithm.  Mine is 32 bit Delphi with 32 bit asm code and a few years old.

It's pretty dependable if not the fastest. :)

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