Re: Back Up Entire Hard Drive
From: John John (audetweld_at_nbnet.nb.ca)
Date: 10/23/04
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Date: Sat, 23 Oct 2004 04:57:20 -0300
That is where I defer from others and hardly EVER recommend or suggest
"mirror" or "ghosting" software. Here is how I tell which, if any of
these you need.
1- You need mirroring software software if your minute by minute by
minute, if not second by second by second data is so critical that to
lose mere seconds may cause catastrophic loses. Cases where to use:
911 services, telcos, the launching of the space shuttle, operations
that process so many transactions that backups cannot be made because
the data changes faster than you can make backups, ie: Visa, Mastercard,
Interac, or a corporation that takes 86,400 orders a day. Mirroring
software is not invoked, it's always on. What does it do? It writes 2
copies of everything that you do, always all the time, instantly. It
mirrors your activities on another drive as it happens. Usually used
with hot swap hardware.
2- Ghosting software. Are you deploying 500 workstations at once? How
about 100? 50? Maybe 10? or 5? How about 2? You aren't deploying any
workstations? Then you don't need ghosting software. Period. Oh sure
if your desktop fails you can ghost your drive back to your pc or to
another pc. What pc? The same, or same make? Same CPU? Same hardware?
Same peripherals? Ghosting might work... or not... most likely not.
Unless of course you are ghosting the same pc, to the same pc. But
ghosting is not the best to use for that. Difficult to keep up to date
and use incrementally.
3- Backup software. The most prevalent, versatile and useful software
for those who don't need mirroring or ghosting software and used always
by those who use the aforementioned. It will completely restore a
completely broken OS and data files to the latest backup. On the same
pc it will do "bare metal" restores. On a new or different pc it will
"insert data" where you want it inserted or "restore" data to a new or
different pc. Not quite so with mirrors or ghosts. It is the easiest
to use "incrementally". You don't need to ghost when you have good back
up software, but the newer ghosting software does both... more or less.
Read your software documentation.
You say that in case you have a failure of sort you could open your case
and change the drives around and reboot the pc to windows 2000 as if
nothing happened. Then ghost your W2k installation onto your second
hard drive and test it, it should work. As to the rest well it's a
cumbersome undertaking. With good backup software AND good backup media
anyone can restore his or her pc to last state almost faster and more
reliably than you can switching the drives around.
It matters not as to have it bootable. In the case of good backup
software you can restore from DOS or a minimal Windows installation.
The backup software will restore everything as it last backed it up.
You MUST however with NTFS and NT based systems make sure that you make
backup recovery or emergency recovery disks. Without these disks there
is hardly if any but the most expensive software that can do restores.
The security (SAM) as well as other NTFS files are needed by the backup
software before it can restore.
What to use? Well how much do you want to pay and how critical is your
data? Ghost CAN do what you want. What do I use? Veritas software.
In a home or less demanding application try Stomp BackUp MyPc, the baby
brother (or sister) to Veritas, and works pretty damned well.
John
Mario wrote:
> OK then, I guess some folks didnt know what they were talking about.
> So a mirror it is. Can you recommend any software that might do this
> for me. Note however, I do not want a true mirror, in the sense
> everything I do, every moment, is mirrored. I would just like a daily
> mirror, or maybe even a weekly mirror. That is, it will update the
> mirror incrementally, but in the event of a catastrophe it can be
> bootable.
>
> Or maybe, if the above can not be achieved, as that is my first
> choice. Then I guess I can make the 2nd drive bootable, that is
> install XP, and maybe even ghost. That way in the event of a crash I
> can boot up, but I just do a restore. Is this doable, if so, how? Is
> it as simple as installing XP on the second drive? thanks for any
> help
>
> Mario
>
>
>
>
> John John <audetweld@nbnet.nb.ca> wrote in message news:<Ofmt2QEuEHA.3932@TK2MSFTNGP10.phx.gbl>...
>
>>You need to "mirror" the drive, not back it up. Back ups are packed in
>>backup files that only the backup software that made the files can
>>understand and restore. This is probably explained in details in your
>>software documentation. I don't know how the new Ghost software runs
>>but in days of old, in case of a catastrophic failure you could install
>>Ghost in DOS mode and completely restore the drive from the backup
>>files. It's called "Bare Metal Restore".
>>
>>John
>>
>>Mario wrote:
>>
>>>I just installed a second hid, and ghost 9.0. I, too, want to be able
>>>to do incremental backups of my hd to the 2nd hd, and in case of
>>>catastrophe switch cables and boot up from the 2nd hd.
>>>
>>>After reading up on the subject in groups, I thought I could do it. I
>>>installed everything and did a complete backup of my c: drive to the
>>>2nd hd. Ghost recognized two pieces of my c: drive, so I backed them
>>>up seperately.
>>>
>>>Now I should mention that if I look at the 2nd drive, all I see are
>>>two files, which are the backups created by Ghost. I didnt believe
>>>with 2 files I could just switch cables and backup. Well guess what,
>>>it didnt work. I switched the cables to the 2nd hd, and it gives me a
>>>blank screen and a 'boot failure'. Can anyone help me? I wanted to
>>>be able to switch cables, in the event of an emergency, boot up from
>>>the 2nd hd, and continue on as if nothing happened. But, of course,
>>>only to the point of the most recent backup. Is this possible?
>>>
>>>Thanks
>>>Mario
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>PA20Pilot <PA20Pilot@faa.gov> wrote in message news:<#1rZJgBrEHA.1152@TK2MSFTNGP11.phx.gbl>...
>>>
>>>
>>>>Hi Yor,
>>>>
>>>>........Of cousre downside to Imaging is the Time to recreate the
>>>>harddrive.
>>>>
>>>>That's right. As I understand it though, imaging is more like a
>>>>compressed version of your drive, or maybe just a file that needs to be
>>>>reinstalled to recreate your drive.
>>>>
>>>>Since I use Ghost cloning instead, I can switch the bios to boot from my
>>>>clone and be running again as fast as that. Or, I can switch the drives
>>>>jumpers and be running in less than 5 minutes using the clone drive.
>>>>Since it's a clone, I don't need to copy anything at all. It's really
>>>>more like having an exact duplicate of my drive.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>---==X={}=X==---
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>Jim Self
>>>>AVIATION ANIMATION, the internet's largest depository.
>>>>http://avanimation.avsupport.com
>>>>
>>>>Your only internet source for spiral staircase plans.
>>>>http://jself.com/stair/Stair.htm
>>>>
>>>>Experimental Aircraft Association (EAA)
>>>>Technical Counselor
- Next message: Oli Restorick [MVP]: "Re: W2k - SP5. When?"
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