Backing Up

[Electroman]

Does anyone have any good tips on how to back stuff up and what to back up? I don't want to buy any new hardware or anything like that but I do have a CD-RW, DVD-RW & Spare PC with HDD.

I've never really backed up much, apart from saving two copies for important stuff and maybe dated backups too. The problem with that is that its always been on the same HDD which would seem rather silly if say the HDD crashed.

My PC that I use most has two HDD one ATA (80GB) & one S-ATA (160GB). My other (spare) PC has I think a 80GB ATA HDD which I guess I could backup things onto it but I would need to clean up all the stuff on there at the moment.

Anyone have any suggestions? Like do you think its worth me buying some DVD-RWs so I can't use them to backup onto? mind they are rather expensive arn't they? And does anyone know some good methods to back stuff up? Like I would want to backup my music I have on my PC and this doesn't change much (if at all). But I want to also backup stuff like any project files however some of these will chnage and other won't, is there any way to avoid me backing up files that haven't changed without manually checking each one?

I guess all I want to back up is my Music and my project files, suppose project files should include all kinds of things I'm working on including website stuff. As a guide on the sizes we are talking here I have approx 25GB worth of music (anybody who is wondering no I didn't download it) and my project folder is currently 0.5GB but I haven't took loads of the files off my spare PC yet so that will probably be looking at about 1.5GB after I get round to that.

Thanx

[ice_531]

Hi Electro ,

Well i have always backed up important stuff onto cd-r[s] i know you can change the format of the music and fit like hundreds of mp3s onto one 700mb cd-r. search google for that i guess

cd-r[s] arent expensive i think i bought a pack of like 30 for $5 ..

My hdd isnt that big ... one 80gig
hopefully this post was not completely useless like my posts in chitchat.



ice

[Pc_Madness]

Networks make for the best backup.

[Electroman]

Posted by ice_531
Hi Electro ,

Well i have always backed up important stuff onto cd-r[s] i know you can change the format of the music and fit like hundreds of mp3s onto one 700mb cd-r. search google for that i guess

cd-r[s] arent expensive i think i bought a pack of like 30 for $5 ..

My hdd isnt that big ... one 80gig
hopefully this post was not completely useless like my posts in chitchat.



ice

Humm, I wouldn't think its a good idea to use CD-Rs? Maybe CD-RWs, just cos if the data changes then at least with a RW I can reuse it. But apart from that don't you think it would be better to use DVDs seen as though I have the writer? I don't have a clue or the prices though I just know they are rather alot. As for the music thign you said, were you suggesting I convert them into mp3 or into another format? They are already in mp3 format and if I was to put them onto CD-Rs then we are talking 37 CDs to hold my 25GB, thats an awful lot, anyone know the capacity of DVD-RWs?

Posted by Pc_Madness
Networks make for the best backup.

So your suggesting I sort out my other PC and make some space. I guess I can have plenty of space available if I sort it out.

BTW my PCs are already networked if you didn't assume so anyway .

[Pc_Madness]

Yep. I've been meaning to write a little program that backs up my stuff to my other computer.

[ice_531]

heh. i have both cd-r[s] and rw[s]. err as for the mp3s...

I forget the format but theres a format you can convert to that takes up ALOT less space.. i used it on one cd-r and i was able to fit 200+ mp3's on 1 disc. (700mb space)

ill see if i can find info bout it

[dsheller]

DVD-RW's should be roughly 4.7 GB, unless its dual layer in which case its around 8.5 GB. What I usually do is send all my crap over to a spare CPU through network, but since you have a DVD righter that would seem smarter... as for media,

25 pack for 45 bucks at bestbuy.com, so not sure what it costs you boys across the Atlantic ... as for burning speed it can only burn up to 2.4x though, so maybe put your music on DVD-/+ R's and your changeable data on DVD-/+RW

[visualAd]

If you use Linux you have some nice powerful backup tools available for free.

Here's what I do. I have done a couple of trial restores and it has worked. But I've never had to do it for real yet.

• I store all my documents music and other data files on a separate partition on a separate computer.
• I have made this partition a shared network directory and have re-mapped the "My Documents" folders to point to this shared drive.
• Every three days a script runs on the machine which bundles all the files into an archive, compresses them and chops them into 700Mb pieces. It stores these 700MB pieces on a another partition on the same computer.
• Every two weeks - I burn the 700Mb files to CD-RW and take them to my Gran's house.

That may be a little OTT - but I have lost my college work far too many times thanks to Windows.

As I say I use Linux which makes all this free. I dread to think how much the software would cost to do that on Windows.

[Electroman]

Posted by visualAd
If you use Linux you have some nice powerful backup tools available for free.

Here's what I do. I have done a couple of trial restores and it has worked. But I've never had to do it for real yet.

• I store all my documents music and other data files on a separate partition on a separate computer.
• I have made this partition a shared network directory and have re-mapped the "My Documents" folders to point to this shared drive.
• Every three days a script runs on the machine which bundles all the files into an archive, compresses them and chops them into 700Mb pieces. It stores these 700MB pieces on a another partition on the same computer.
• Every two weeks - I burn the 700Mb files to CD-RW and take them to my Gran's house.

That may be a little OTT - but I have lost my college work far too many times thanks to Windows.

As I say I use Linux which makes all this free. I dread to think how much the software would cost to do that on Windows.

So doesn't that get a bit messy? I mean like surely like that your archiving files that haven't changed? and I would guess thats using up alot of space for files you already have a copy of. Or does it dosome kind of check to see if the fiels changed?

[visualAd]

Originally posted by Electroman
So doesn't that get a bit messy? I mean like surely like that your archiving files that haven't changed? and I would guess thats using up alot of space for files you already have a copy of. Or does it dosome kind of check to see if the fiels changed?

I have an ingenious solution to that. I just overwrite the old backups with the new ones.

[Electroman]

Posted by visualAd
I have an ingenious solution to that. I just overwrite the old backups with the new ones.

Ar good point . Mind it still means when you burn the CDs you could be burning CDs that are going to be overwritten with exactly the same data they already held?

I guess I will use a solution similar to yours, without the grandma thing. I'lll back up my Music seperate and I will no dought only be doing that once as its not chnaged in the last 3-4 months so I dought it'll soon.
As for the other stuff that I think I'll do liek you have, chuck the whole lot on some CD-RWs (Think I'll use DVD-RWs or DVD-Rs for my music though) saying that I might use DVD-RWs for my project stuff, saves my having lots of CDs around.

[Ideas Man]

I'd use the other computer and make a scheduled task to run the Windows backup to backup your files during the day or something, the XP version uses shadow copy so it backs up while you are using them. I do it and it works great. You could always just put it on your other HDD as well, although i'd put it on it's own partition, reduces the risk of fragmentation and easier to find .