Re: Creating a boot CD

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"Patrick Keenan" <test@xxxxxxxx> wrote in message
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"Lex" <Lex@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
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Thanks very much for your comments - I've just been to see Acronis.

I thought this was what I was looking for, i.e. imaging.

I think the solution is an external hard-drive for backing up everything
Plus a piece of software to help with the copying. But I still think that
I
need to create a boot disc, as you say on a DVD disc, because that is
what
I'll need to get things going again if it all goes down. An external
back-up
hard-drive won't get things going again, it only serves as a place to
store
data.

Keep in mind that hard disks do fail. One thing you want to avoid is
relying on only one backup.


Indeed, you should have two. A backup isn't a backup unless it's backed up.


Do you think that making this type of disc is an simple process?

Yes, it's very easy. Imaging programs use this as a basic restore
feature. It's a checkbox and OK, and it does it.


And what does verifying mean?

It means being sure that the backup worked, that the backed-up data is
valid and matches the original. With non-image backups, you restore
data to another location and compare it to the original. With imaging,
you mount the image (which assigns the image a drive letter), and then
compare the mounted files with the originals. Or, just try opening
files from the mounted image.


Also, of importance is to try to restore the image to a gash disk just to
make sure it works. Images have been known to have whole folder contents
missing or be non restorable due to file permission problems. Always making
the image and restoring from the system on the bootable CD overcomes these
problems.



.

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