Re: Setting up an external hard drive - partioning and sharing issues


"Enquiring Mind" <Enquiring.Mind@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:Olk4ZESsJHA.4648@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Hi,

I recently purchased an external hard drive with a view to storing back up
copies of the files on the 3 hard drives on my 2 computers, one computer
having 2 internal hard drives (1 FAT32, 1 NTFS), and the other 1 NTFS
internal hard drive. I would appreciate any guidance on how best to set up
the external hard drive for this purpose, whilst maintaining the security
attributes of the source files. My first thought was to create 5 separate
80 GB logical partitions on the external hard drive, and utilise 3 of
these as destinations for the back-up copies of the 3 source hard drives
on my computers. There are a few questions that I am uncertain about,
though:

1) Given that the external hard drive has a capacity of 500 GB, is there
anything to be gained by subdividing it into multiple partitions?

2) The external hard drive came preformatted as a single NTFS drive. When
I right click on it the Windows XP Disk Management window with a view to
creating new logical drives the context menu that pops up contains
"Delete partition ...", not "New logical drive". Does this mean that in
order to create the logical partitions that I require I must first delete
the existing partition, then create the logical partitions starting from
scratch?

2) I would like to make the back up copy of the folder "Documents and
Settings/User A" private to user A of computer C1, so that even though
it's on the external hard drive it can only be opened when the hard drive
is connected to computer C1 and the user logged in to computer C1 is user
A. However when calling up the Sharing property *** for any folder on
the external hard drive the "Make this folder private" check box is greyed
out. Does this mean that it's not possible to make a folder on an external
hard drive private to a specific user of a specific computer?

3) The files that I wish to back up include files encrypted using NTFS
file encryption. I have previously discovered that it's not possible to
transfer encrypted files between a private folder and a shared folder and
then back again without the files being decrypted along the way, and the
"Last Modified" timestamp being updated. Can this problem be avoided when
backing up files on a file by file basis?

Thanks for any guidance on these issues.

EM


"Enquiring Mind" <Enquiring.Mind@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:er4ZVrtsJHA.2148@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Twayne,

Thanks for the warning. I have finally got round to backing up my private
encryption key, but I had to search for instructions about how to do it on
the Internet, so bad are the Windows help files in this regard.

On close analysis it seems to me that the NTFS encryption facility is
somewhat flawed, because of the problems it throws up when backing up
files. Simple password protection of files and folders seems to me to be a
more flexible approach, because the password is computer-independent. An
even better approach would be if applications like MS office programs
allowed the user to set up file encryption as a document property, and did
the encryption/decryption whenever a file is saved or opened. Then files
could be backed up and copied without any concern for whether or not the
file is encrypted - this aspect only comes into play when someone tries to
read the file.

Regards,

EM


EM...
Since you've apparently come to some conclusion re the encryption process as
it relates to data contained on a (USB-connected) external HDD, I'll just
direct my comments to the first portion of your query relating to the
backing-up of the data on your internal HDDs and how this might affect the
partitioning of your USBEHD device. Again, just to be clear, I'm not
concerned here with any process involving "maintaining the security
attributes of the source files" so I'm not addressing that issue.

Might I suggest that you consider a disk-cloning or disk-imaging program to
maintain a comprehensive backup of *all* the data on each of your HDDs? By
"all" I mean the total contents of these drives, including the OS, all
programs & applications, all personal data - in short, *everything* that's
contained on your internal HDDs. In effect, for all practical purposes, a
precise copy of your drives. (I'll indicate my recommendation of such a
program by & by).

So, should you go that route...

1. You've indicated that you have two PCs, each containing a single physical
internal HDD. One of them is multi-partitioned with two partitions and the
second PC's HDD apparently contains a single partition. Obviously each of
those PCs contains an OS, or so I assume.

2. While you didn't indicate the size of these HDDs nor the amount of data
contained on these drives I assume from your contemplation of possibly
setting up your 500 GB USBEHD with (roughly) five 80 GB partitions and
proposing to use three of those partitions to contain the backups of the two
physical HDDs (the three partitions), that the *total* contents of each of
your internal HDDs is relatively modest.

I'm not clear why you would be thinking of creating *five* partitions on the
USBEHD. You have other plans for the remaining two partitions? Perhaps to
hold data "on the fly"?

3. Anyway, assuming I'm not too far off the mark on this, why not consider
the following as a possible backup strategy using the Casper 5 disk cloning
program - (my comments re the Casper program follow below)?...

4. Using the XP Disk Management snap-in you could create three partitions on
your 500 GB USBEHD. The remainder (if any) of the disk space on that
external drive would be unpartitioned/unformatted at that point. You would
size each of those three partitions to whatever size you desired; they need
not mirror the size of the partitions on your source HDDs. The only proviso,
of course, is that each partition be at least sufficient in size to contain
the contents of the data you will be cloning from each of the source drives'
partitions.

5. Re your source drive "PC #1" - the one containing two partitions - you
would clone the contents of each partition to the first two partitions on
the USBEHD.

Note that the disk-cloning process will clone the file systems of the
partition(s) along with their contents, be those file systems FAT32- or
NTFS-formatted. So it is immaterial what file system was established during
the original creation of the partitions on the USBEHD. A clone is a clone is
a clone!

6. Re "PC #2" - the one containing a single partition - you would similarly
clone the contents of that HDD to the third partition you had created on the
USBEHD.

7. When you again decide to back up your two systems so as to continue to
maintain reasonably up-to-date backups of both systems, you would simply
repeat the process. And so on & so on...

8. The upshot of all this is that through the use of *routinely* using a
disk-cloning program in the manner described above, you would be maintaining
precise copies of your internal HDDs. So that if & when the day comes when
you find your internal HDD has become defective or if the drive has become
dysfunctional for any reason, you have the wherewithal to restore your
system to a bootable, functional state easily & relatively quickly by
cloning the contents of the data residing on your USBEHD back to your
internal HDD(s).

5. The program I personally recommend for most PC users to accomplish all
this is the Casper 5 disk-cloning program. (It does *not* have disk-imaging
capability).

We've been using the Casper program for a number of years and have found it
an extraordinarily effective program in establishing & maintaining a
comprehensive backup system through its disk-cloning capability. It has a
straightforward design and is extremely simple to use; there's virtually no
"learning-curve" involved.

But its major advantage and what sets it apart from other
disk-cloning/disk-imaging programs (in our experience) is its speed of
creating these comprehensive backups (clones) when the program is used on a
*frequent* basis - say, at least once a week in most cases, even daily or
every two or three days. Obviously the amount of time the program will take
to complete the disk or partition-cloning operation will depend on a number
of factors including the amount of data being cloned and even
more-importantly in most cases, the frequency of the cloning operations.
It's hard, if not impossible, to provide precise figures in this regard, but
assuming about 50 GB of data per HDD (partition) was being cloned and using
the program perhaps twice a week for comprehensive backups (following the
initial disk-cloning operation), I'd venture to say the disk (partition)
cloning operation would take under five (5) minutes per HDD.

Casper accomplishes this through what it labels its "SmartClone" capability.
It has the unique ability (at least *unique* in our experience) to determine
what changes have been made to the system since the previous disk-cloning
operation so that it "incrementally" can take only those changes into
account during the current disk-cloning operation. This dramatically speeds
up the backup cloning operation so that the user has a strong incentive to
use the program on a frequent basis, knowing that the disk (partition)
cloning operation will take a short period of time in most cases.

If, on the other hand, a user is not especially interested in maintaining
current backups of his/her system and plans to use a disk-cloning (or
disk-imaging) program on a relatively infrequent basis - say, not much more
than once a month for example - then the Casper program will probably hold
no special interest for that type of user. Under those circumstances pretty
much any disk-cloning or disk-imaging program will suffice or perhaps a
different type of backup program would be more appropriate.

Anyway, give this disk-cloning or disk-imaging process some thought in your
situation. There's an enormous amount of information on the net re these
programs and you may wish to do a Google search on such. Many of these
programs have demo or trial versions available. Casper, for example, has a
trial version available at...
http://www.fssdev.com. It's somewhat crippled but should give you an idea as
to whether it holds any interest for you.
Anna


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