Easy Geek question

Scott Seidman wrote:
Actually, computational life has been pretty stable. I do keep a
convenient list of everything I install though, just in case

Scott

Not replying to you specifically, Scott, but nobody has mentioned my current
favorite tool: BootIT-NG. Very inexpensive, excellent partition tool and
imager.
http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/

Imaging is the *only* way to go. I image to a spare drive nightly (two
systems) and burn an archival copy to DVD weekly. I also have an FTP robot
run nightly that moves all files touched since the last DVD image up to my
web server. Let's just say I've been burned by backup systems many times
over the past 35 years. About once a month (or so) I do a restore from one
of the DVD images to make sure the system is still working. It pays to have
piles of slightly outmoded systems around.
--
Stan Gula
http://gula.org/roffswaps

"Stan Gula" wrote in message
news:S95Zc.62$vx6.28@trndny05...
Not replying to you specifically, Scott, but nobody has mentioned my
current
favorite tool: BootIT-NG. Very inexpensive, excellent partition tool
and
imager.
http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/

Imaging is the *only* way to go. I image to a spare drive nightly (two
systems) and burn an archival copy to DVD weekly. I also have an FTP
robot
run nightly that moves all files touched since the last DVD image up to my
web server. Let's just say I've been burned by backup systems many times
over the past 35 years. About once a month (or so) I do a restore from
one
of the DVD images to make sure the system is still working. It pays to
have
piles of slightly outmoded systems around.

Wanna put that in English, Stan? In fact, can you put into Geekese what I am
looking for, too, while you're at it? What is 'imaging', an 'FTP robot' and
I don't really get what a 'partition' means in these contexts. Do I have to
do something special to my external HD to prepare it to recieve my backup
stuff?

For me, I'm imagining some program that makes a copy of my laptop files
(except the actual application programs; I have the installation disks
already) onto my external HD. When I open a document and make little
changes, it would also modify my archive (either in real time, or when I
shut down). Last year, when my motherboard caved in so badly that the bios
wouldn't even respond (can you say 'expensive paperweight'?), the laptop had
been giving me little hints for a few days, so the night before I lost it
all, I had burned a disk with all the 'my pictures' images, all my 'my
documents' files, and the 'my favorites' folder from explorer. I forefited
all my music files, as well as a bunch of stuff that was stored in places
where I did not remember. Everything else was either applications contained
in the system restore disks, or were accessories for which I had the
installation disks, so I didn't bother backing up those. (OF course, when I
reinstalled I got to spend a month resetting all my settings, finding all my
passwords and tuning Windoze again...what a pain THAT was!) That particular
backup was only two disks large (one for the pictures, one for everything
else), but now I have a ton more stuff (video files, etc), as well as some
music files that I don't want to lose, so it would take a lot more than 2
disks. Also, I don't think I could go through my system like before and
'harvest' things from their home locations like I did last time....I'm
pretty sure that there must be programs that already know where to look for
stuff to save.

Tell me what they call what it is I'm looking for, or a link to a tutorial.
From reading the responses here, I realize that there is more to it than I
suspected.

--riverman

riverman wrote:
Wanna put that in English, Stan?

My message was for the hardcore geeks, not you, but I'll explain a bit.

partition: a logical disk. This can be an entire physical disk, a slice of
a physical disk, or even spread over mutiple physical disks, Actually
there's a difference between a partition and a logical disk, but for this
conversation, logical disk is good enough. When you reference 'C:' in
Windows, you're referencing a partition on a physisal disk.

image: in this context I'm talking about, a compressed copy of a partition.
You can also take an image of a physical disk. The software I use creates
the image in multiple files of 4.5GB so I can burn them to DVD.

You can take an image of a partition, and restore it completely. For
example, if you had just a C: drive, you could restore your system in
minutes from an image.

The thing you're asking for, real time backup of touched files, I have no
experience with. I like to control stuff manually.

I'll assume you're running XP. There's a tool called robocopy in the XP
resource kit (along with lots of useful and potentially dangerous stuff)
that can do something like what you're trying to do, only manually. Here's
a link to the download page:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/d...displaylang=en

--
Stan Gula
http://gula.org/roffswaps

damn... pj does the same thing.... without computers.

jeff

Stan Gula wrote:


...my current
favorite tool: BootIT-NG. Very inexpensive, excellent partition tool and
imager.
http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/

Imaging is the *only* way to go. I image to a spare drive nightly (two
systems) and burn an archival copy to DVD weekly. I also have an FTP robot
run nightly that moves all files touched since the last DVD image up to my
web server. Let's just say I've been burned by backup systems many times
over the past 35 years. About once a month (or so) I do a restore from one
of the DVD images to make sure the system is still working. It pays to have
piles of slightly outmoded systems around.