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Simple Windows Backup to CD/DVD?
Meri051846 asks: "I am looking for a simple backup for my own use. Ideally, this backup would be able to span from one CD to the next for 'overflow'. Right now I am just using 'Easy CD Creator' and choosing what I want backed up and saving it so that I can backup most every day or so. One problem I am having is that my backup material is growing and won't fit on one CD. Also, when I add new items to 'My Documents', for example, I have to go into my program and make sure that new document will be included in the backup. (Even when I ask 'Easy CD Creator' to update the backup, the new items are not included. It just updates the old ones.) It usually isn't, so I have to manually add it to my 'backup program'. I hope I am making myself clear. Is there any backup program that will fullfil my wishes or am I dreaming of 'things to come'?"
Are you changing 700MB of data every day? If you aren't, just try to split stuff up more, and only back up what you happen to work on that day. Unless you are working with large chunks of a pretty big data set, across the entire data set, you should be able to keep going for quite a while just by splitting things up a bit.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
Are you using Win2K or WinXP? The backup program included in those versions of the OS, while somewhat clunky, is fairly full featured. You can do incremental backups and stuff like that, which should cut down on the amount of stuff you're burning every day.
The file that is generated by Windows Backup apparently isn't compressed, so you can zip it up and save a good bit of space. If that still won't fit on a CD, I'm not entirely sure what to do. Will something like WinZip span CDs the way you used to be able to span floppies with PKZip? I've honestly never had to deal with that particular problem before...
JRjr
As far as I know, doesn't Norton Ghost offer this functionality? I don't have it installed at the moment, but I think it has an option to backup to a CD/DVD.
Have you considered putting another hard disk in the computer and using RAID?
Have you considered putting another hard disk in the computer and putting daily GHOST images of your main data drive on it?
Have you considered sending daily GHOST images over the network to another computer?
The reason I ask is that backing up to optical media is a pain on such a large scale.
Mike
I'm surprised, seeing as how this is Slashdot, that nobody's mentioned a Linux solution...
It's possible to boot from a Linux CD and back up that way. You can make a disk image of your partition and back it up to multiple CD's. I think that it can even be done direct-to-CD. Mkcdrec might help you out, though I think it's targeted at Linux installations with additional partitions from other OSes, and might need a Linux distribution installed on the hard drive. Do a Google or Linux.org search for a data rescue distribution. I'm pretty sure I've heard of one or more distributions designed for affordable and easy backups of any OS.
A solution to the problem with music today
With most backup software you have to specify the files you want to back up, so adding new files means needing to tell your backup software they're important... Well, a trick that also works with most backup software is to keep all your files as subdirectories of one or more directories ('folders' in Windows lingo), and then specify those folders as what you want backed up. Then, when you start a new project, put it inside one of those directories, and you'll be covered.
DOS and I think NT, has an archive bit, when ever a file is modified the archive bit is set.
Backup programs should clear the archive bit.
Just select files with the archive bit set. Setup WinZIP to make 700 meg zip files of all the files on your HD with the archive bit set except the dir where you store your zip files and then burn the zip files.
Also what you may want to do to start your backups is burn a knoppix CD and use it to make an image of your hd with dd. Then when you loose your hd you restore the image, boot windows and restore your zip files.
Just remember to create new images after you increase your hard drive size. as the image is only good for the size of your current drive.
I have been using NTI Backup Now for the past few months with great succes. It pretty much does exactly what you're looking for.
Set up a Linux machine as a backup master with a large hard drive, they're cheaper than most tape drives or DVD drives nowadays. A script mounts Samba shares to each of the machines on the network in turn and zips up specific folders recursively in update mode (-ru) to a file on the backup server. Set up a cron job to execute this script at midnight or whatever.
//WindowsHost/c$ to /mnt/backup (or set up custom shares on all machines), and zip up the "/My Documents" folder plus any other ones you keep stuff in.
For example, you would set up this "spider" script to crawl all your Windows machines, mount
While very low-tech, this approach has the advantage that the backup archive is a plain zip file that you can browse and extract individual files from with tons of tools on just about any platform. Plus, after the initial archive creation (which takes a while for large directory structures), updates are very quick.
Mirror the backup to two different drives if you're paranoid. Two 120GB drives run less than $200 and provide quite a bit of home-level data safety. Get a couple of hard drive sleds so you can swap the drives out at any moment, and you're set.
Perhaps you mean RAID 1? RAID 0 is disk striping--it will improve disk performance at the cost of data integrity. If either disk fails with RAID 0 then the data on both drives likely will be lost. RAID 1 (and RAID 5, if you buy an expensive enough RAID controller) specifies redundant storage so that a failure on one drive can be recovered.
--Be human.
Yup. That's what I mean. My bad. I personally prefer raid 10 with scsi, and raid 1 with IDE. You can get raid5 controllers pretty cheap on ebay. The 3 channel AMI ultragt 436 runs about 100-150 bucks and absoluteliy smokes for scsi. I think what you meant by redundant storage with Raid5 was the "floating parity disk" and having some hotspares set up. If you are going to go all out, I'm a big fan of raid 50 over raid 5. It's significantly faster at only a slight loss of drive space and fits neaty between raid 5 and 10 regarding reliability. Raid 10 is definitely the way to go if you are super paranoid and can afford it.
For every annoying gentoo user, are three even more annoying anti-gentoo crybabies. Take Yosh from #Gimp for example.
I needed the exact same thing for my office server backups (~2-3GB) onto a DVD drive. I couldn't find anything online that fit the bill, but I recently browsed the computer store (CompUsa in this case) and got a $70 package which does exactly what you want, including compression and all the usual backup/restore facilities you want to be used to. I have it set up with 5 DVD-RWs, one for each weekday, and I do a full backup to each since there's no need for speed or the hassle of incremental or differential backups.
Unfortunately for you, I don't recall the name of the package I'm using. Probably something like "BackupMyPC" or something like that. It had the two features I needed: Backup of network drives (some backup programs limit you so they can charge more for the 'professional' version) and backup directly to DVD - in this case a DVD+/-R/RW Firewire/USB2.0 (firewire worked, USB 2.0 didn't)
There were two different packages (same cost) that did what I needed. This one is an adaptation of, IIRC, Veritas backup software, so I chose it based on that.
Anyway, they exist. If you need to know the particular package I'm using, post a reply here to remind me, and I'll post it as a reply to this message in a day or two.
Nevermind, here it is.
-Adam
First of all, don't use EZ CD Creator, it's crap. Get a copy of Nero Burning ROM. It is by far the best CD-burning application ever.
Next. Buy a hard drive. Create a FAT32 partition spanning the entire disk. I reccomend getting a high capacity low speed Seagate drive. SCSI if possible. Copy all of your files you want backed up, but don't change often onto this disk. Then take the disk out of your computer, put it in a Sea-Shield and lock it in a fire safe (which you should have anyway).
All of your changing files, documents that you are working on now, burn them to CD using Nero. Nero will make this very easy.
Now, let's say your hard disk crashes. Get a new disc. Install a clean windows on it. XP has the feature that lets you re-import all your settings really easily. Then just copy all the files from the drive and the latest cd back over.
If you can manage to keep the cd stuff to 1 disc you can use a CDRW instead of CDRs to save $$$. The chances of a hard drive that is unused crashing are so astronomically small, don't worry about it.
The GeekNights podcast is going strong. Listen!
What I meant be redundant storage is that the data is stored redundantly. That doesn't necessarily mean 100% redundancy (as with RAID 1). It merely meant that if data was lost on one drive then the data could be repaired. The parity disk provides redundancy by storing parity across bits on all the other drives. Then, if 1 disk fails, the data on it can be recovered by comparing the parity of the remaining drives with that on the parity disk. If they match, the lost bit is a '0', otherwise it is a '1'. In this way, the parity disk provides redundancy for the rest of the drives.
--Be human.
This one works great Second Copy We use it for the windows users here at work. We backup their data however they configure it to our netapps...its only $30/per.
Dantz Retrospect Professional is less than $90 and will do everything you're looking for. Namely, it will allow you to backup to CD-R and will span your backups across multiple media if necessary. It keeps a catalog on your local hard drive of what files it has backed-up to which media, relieving you of having to manually specify which files have changed. (You can re-create this catalog if your HD dies by just feeding Retrospect all the media from the backup set, BTW.)
Retrospect does a full backup once, and then incremental backups from then on. This means that your incrementals happen very quickly, and your backup set will only grow as quickly as you create/change files on your computer. Retrospect also will backup the registry, so you can restore the entire system if necessary.
Lastly, Retrospect has a built-in scheduler that makes it easy to schedule nightly, unattended backups. Once you're getting a snapshot of your HD every night, you can go back to any point in time and recover a file as it existed on that particular date. Truly powerful stuff, and far, far beyond what NT Backup is capable of.
Oh, and there's a free 30-day trial version you can download from Dantz' website. Its fully-functional, and when you buy a full license you can just enter the new license key into the trial install to make it permenant. That way you don't have to re-install or copy your scripts and configurations from the trial install to the full install.
RAID isn't a backup. It isn't meant to take the place of a backup. Backups let you restore files as they existed at some point in time in the past.
rm -rf, worms, trojans, etc.. RAID does nothing for these.
Use rsync-incremental, or rdiff-backup for backing up your unix-like systems to other disks. Both are excellent backup solutions (use them in addition to RAID for full protection).
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
Kinda. If you are talking about raid 4 then you have an actual physical parity disk. With raid 5 there is no actual "parity disk" per sey. That's where idea of a "floating parity disk" came from. All the disks share the parity. There are advantages to raid 4 performance wise, but there are serious issues with overall data integrity if the unspeakable happens. Other than netapp, I don't know of anyone using raid 4 on purpose anymore.
For every annoying gentoo user, are three even more annoying anti-gentoo crybabies. Take Yosh from #Gimp for example.
The RAID solution only works in cases of hardware failure.
In my experience the vast majority of data recovery requirement has been due to user error. With a RAID setup, whilst you have data redundancy, it cannot substitute for backups in cases of accidental deletion and overwrite.
The use of a hard disk(s) as a backup medium, however, has been for me the cheapest and fastest method. Take the backup drives out of the system when you are not actively backing up data.
If you were (as someone already suggested) to use dd under linux to record a complete image of your live partitions to a backup drive, you can instantly be back up in the case of a hardware failure, and then buy a new backup drive as soon as possible.
:)
rsync is exactly what I use at the enterprise level. We use rsync to keep the data mirrored on another machine "waiting in the wings" so to speak in case something bad happens. To be more specific, we have a main machine that is only on a private address. All changes are triple checked on it. The data then propogates out to slaves with round robin dns. We run a DLT stacker on the main machine. I keep forgetting that most people don't run *NIX on their workstations at home. I really don't worry too much about worms, trojans, etc. RAID is more than enough data integrity for me. Worst case scenerio, I lose both my drives when lighting strikes my box or a meteor hits it. Then I have something new to bitch about. Then I start over. Yanno, it might not be a bad idea to start burning some of my crap on cd's thinking about it.
For every annoying gentoo user, are three even more annoying anti-gentoo crybabies. Take Yosh from #Gimp for example.
Yes. This is a wonderful reason not to use RAID as a backup solution.
This also makes me wonder why anyone hasn't implemented a VAX-like versioning filesystem for Linux (maybe they have and I'm not aware of them). The idea is that when a file is saved, only the changes are saved (sort of like with CVS or something). This way any specific version of a file can be recovered. Combine this with RAID and I think you might have a fairly compelling backup solution.
Since high density tapes now cost more per GB than cheap hard drives, it seems like the backup industry would capitalize on this and start making hard-drive backup systems that provide full on-line access to backups. I know ADSM can be configured in such a manner, but I'd prefer a solution more suitable for home usage.
--Be human.
I used a relatively simple MS-DOS batch file for just this purpose for years. All you need are 24 CD-RW (for one year's worth of backups), Zip (WinZIP's command line is what I used), a CD drive that can be accessed as a drive letter (Drive Letter Access (DLA) or some other proprietary name), and basic command line ability.
Have the batch compress each folder into a temp file by the same name (in \windows\temp or something) and then copy each to CD-RW. Use Window's scheduler (all have it, I use Win95a) to run the batch every night and rotate CD-RWs for each day of the week ("child"). Each Friday, rotate one of four separate CD-RW's ("father", a child grows up), and the first Friday of every month, retire one permenantly ("grandfather", a father stops working).
I actually clean off the temp zip files each night and re-write them in entirety. There are more complex, only-changed-since-last-backup, archive bit methods, but I like this simple-minded organization and being able to have immediate access to any previous day within 7, any previous week within 4, and any previous month indefinitely. Plus the Zip files in temp are redundant with the CD, meaning every file exists three places at any time. Also, media is not re-used too often in this scheme (it retires when "old"), and there aren't multi-media dependencies which can botch the entire system if a single tape goes bad.
Of course, this was up to a few months ago when my drive crashed, I completely bailed to Linux, and re-wrote the whole thing as a Bash script. I also now have more content than will fit on a disk bzipped, but it's essentially the same process except that I have odd/even day staggering and only half the redundancy. But at least I always know what's on any given disk and know how to go back to any given time to find backups if needed. (The BackupExec our NT servers use at work, OTOH, is abysmal in reliability, setup and actually trying to restore a file in less than an hour. Probably theoretically more sound, but darned if I can see that it has more *practical* application.)
There is no need to use a SlashDot sig for SEO...
One option would be to download the Windows version of CDRTools (http://www.fokus.gmd.de/research/cc/glone/employe es/joerg.schilling/private/cdrecord.html) and do some programming in the scripting language of your choice (be it VBScript, Perl, Python, JavaScript, Windows batch files, or whatever...) to perform your backups. Once you get past the learning curve of Mkisofs you will find it infinitely more flexible than any GUI based CD burning program.
It does all you require...writes from network drives, writes to cd's via Roxio's DirectCD, and the price is right. :)
But, investing in a DVD-RW is the way to go when your cd's get full. http://www.mlin.net/RapidBackup.shtml
On August 4, I sent this message to Nero technical support:
To: Nero (Ahead Software) Technical Support (techsupport@nero.com)
Subject: Does Nero have the Roxio flaw?
Does Nero 6 Ultra Edition burn to DVD all the files in a directory that is included in a compilation, or just the files that were there when the compilation was made?
Roxio Easy CD Creator saves only the files that were in the original compilation, even though more files may have been added to the folder. This is, in my opinion, a big problem, since it means that a new compilation must be made every time for folders in which files are frequently added.
I got back a generic, useless answer:
Dear valued Customer,
Thank you for your email.
Nero is a powerful program it will backup all files.
If you have any further questions please do not hestitate to contact us.
best regards
Ismael
US Ahead Support Team
RAID level numbers above 5 are arbitrary designations chosen by different manufacturers to define their own (non-standard) RAID implementations. :) if you want anyone to understand what you mean by "RAID 10" or "RAID 50".
This is not to say there's anything wrong with them but please either describe the actual setup or give the manufacturer's name (and preferably a link to their own description
Thanks!
Comments about Dantz Retrospect:
Retrospect has encryption built in. This is valuable, since you can take the CDs and put them anywhere for safe-keeping, like at work if they are a home backup. However, the encryption was the CPU intensive DES. Is this still true?
Retrospect had a weird, annoying interface that was a combination of a bad design and an incomplete port from the original Mac platform. Is this still true?
Retrospect also leaves 30 megabyte files on your hard drive that are necessary if you want to look for a file in the backup. Is that still true?
Retrospect was so primitive in some ways that I stopped using it. Dantz did a small upgrade and asked something like $100 for the new version. Dantz is apparently a company that has been sold to people with little technical background. Is that true?
There should have been one more requirement listed in the Slashdot story: Encryption. If your backups are encrypted, then you can leave them anywhere.
Has anybody tried building cdrecord, tar and zsh/bash/sh for Windows? If so, it is pretty easy to write a good backup script (or I'll post mine if anybody's interested).
Actually, I've never heard of raid 10 being anything other than a bunch of raid 1 pairs with a raid 0 striped across them. I've also never heard of a raid 50 being anything other than a bunch of raid 5's with a raid 0 striped across them. Raid 10's are very common for news and mailservers. Perhaps we just run in different circles? I'm betting a lot of people knew exactly what I was talking about.
For every annoying gentoo user, are three even more annoying anti-gentoo crybabies. Take Yosh from #Gimp for example.
Install this from ArcoIde.comand install a second hard drive. This will mirror your system on two drives and will automatically switch over to the secondary drive.
-- Andy
MOD PARENT UP!!!
The parent post describes a serious backup scheme, and shows how complicated it is to do it right.
I agree about BackupExec. I've had enormous troubles with Veritas products (formerly Seagate). Two years of arguing with Veritas technical support brought no sufficient answers. (But, my information is now old, since I've had nothing to do with Veritas recently.)
One necessity the parent post did not mention: Encryption. Backups need to be encrypted. They need to be stored in a physically separate location, and such a location may not be completely secure.
I tried to recover files off CDR's I burned 5 years ago and realized that CDR's don't last forever. Turns out that they fade really quickly, and if you bought a bad batch - the entire set may be corrupted in a few years.
There's lots of research on what happens to CDR's after several years, unfortunately they haven't been around that long (in mass use).
After my latest catastrophe, I've switched to backing to a portable HD, AND making 2 annual backups to CDR (using DIFFERENT brands of CDR). Hopefully Kodak or one of the big boys is working on a true archival quality cdr - till then, DIVERSIFY to save some grief!
The new WinZip 9.0 beta has AES encryption, that is being added in the best possible way:
AES Encryption Information
AES Coding Tips for Developers
There are many new features to this upgrade. Upgrades are free to registered users.
WinZip has a spanning option: "-&[w] Span to multiple removable disks. Use the optional w suffix to wipe out all files on the removable disk." However, I've never used it, and I don't think it writes directly to DVDs or CDs. There is no way to have WinZip span to multiple zip files of specified length, apparently.
(1) Fire.
For this you need backup, and offsite backup at that.
I learned this almost twenty yars ago when I wa a young'un. Had a CPA drive up to the shop's doorstep one early April morning with a natsy, smelly back box in the back seat of his Mecedes. It was his company's minicomputer, which had been damaged in a fire during late tax season. He had backed it up religiously, but had stored the backups on top of the computer unfortunately.
(2) Screw-ups
A raid doesn't keep you from deleting or worse, overwriting your files.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
I was going to post my commented and documented scripts, but the slashdot lameness filters think I am a moron for not having enough characters per line, after taking the time to remove lines with lots of "#" that delimited sections of code.
Fuck you all: no scripts for you!
(I am certainly not posting a link to my machine, I would like to keep my bandwidth, thank you very much)
While I support encryption in a lot of applications, this is not one of them. When you need your data back, the last thing you need to worry about is where you wrote down the password. Because of course, the drive that contained that batch file that was doing the encryption is now destroyed.
Go to the bike store and get a big lock. Make sure the spindle hole of a CD will fit over the locking bar. Then simply impale your backup set on the lock. Physically securing a key is something we're all trained at doing.
Of course, you could just write your encryption key down in a safe place and secure that physically, but sometimes a big hunk of metal is easier.
Yes, that is certainly one interpretation. However, another interpretation is that the support person did not understand the question. I need a useful answer to my question, which would be one not open to interpretation.
Would you post your script?
I didn't know RAR has an output file size argument. Zip needs that.
You mentioned "Drive letter access" packet-writing schemes. I've had problems with Roxio's DLA version crashing Windows XP, literally causing Windows XP to re-boot without warning.
In addition to the recommendations already made, I've been very pleased with Stomp's BackUp MyPC. Unlike products like True Image and Ghost, you can do selective file/folder backups. Unlike the Windows Backup utility, writeable optical storage is supported. And unlike some of its competitors, it writes this optical storage at fastest-possible speed. Doesn't agressively compress WAV files though. See yesterday's entry at:
d io compression.htm
http://www.reed-electronics.com/ednmag/media/au
However, another interpretation is that the support person did not understand the question.
Perhaps because "Ismael" works in an outsourced support desk in, I dunno, maybe India, or Pakistan, or Israel, and English is not "Ismael's" native tongue?
OK: Nero probably isn't big enough to outsource; hell, maybe it's an Israeli operation to begin with, but you get the idea...
I use XCOPY to backup my favorite folders every couple of hours. I put one backup on each of the three drives in the system, and I keep reminding myself to also make copies to a remote drive. There's an option to only copy files with the archive bit, so the copy goes very very fast, and you can schedule it to run every hour or so as you'll receive no perceptable performance impact. Then I ZIP up a snapshot of the backup directory once a month.
Zipping up the entire directory every day (or every couple of hours) just wastes disk space (do you really need a snapshot of every day?). Winzip also has the option to only add newer files to the zip, but it won't be as quick as an XCOPY, so you can't run it while you're using your computer without taking a performance hit.
Don't forget to backup your EMAIL!
There's an abandoned project called SnapFS that worked as an extension of the ext3 filesystem, but it seems long dead. There's more mention of it here as well.
Hmmm...doing some Googling, I found this page that may have a useable download, but it's in alpha form.
It also looks like you can use LVM to create snapshots as well. I'll have to look at that more myself.
Trolls lurk everywhere. Mod them down.
No biz / financial ties to NovaStor, just a satisfied customer.
DDB
Life is like surrealism: if you have to have it explained to you, you can't afford it.
I'm pretty sure that shortly you will be able to download a superb and secure backup program from the GNU source servers.
I use a program I found called "Handy Backup" It's only $30, and can backup to a local directory, an FTP, or to a CD-R(W), either copying straight data/folders, or ZIPping the files/folders to take up less space -- Backup events can be scheduled for certain times, or even when you log on/log off your workstation.
It's a pretty slick program, and I recommend it, having used it for the past year and a half on my own server.
Not All Who Wander Are Lost
.. at http://www.discsafe.com/discsafe.html . I have used it a few times and works fine.
if you can get a command line version of cdrecord or equiv for windows, and cygwin tar, say: it's quite simple to do a full backup to multiple cd's.
Run tar outputting to a fifo and set it to start a new "tape" (man tar) at around 700Mb, and cdrecord the fifo.
Dunno how this works for incremental backups, and I've only done this under linux, so YMMV.
Why don't you do something about your mental illness? Also, why should someone buy something to find out how it works?
In this case, the tech support person clearly understands English, but is probably racing through as many questions as possible, trying to give the appearance of actually answering them. He is probably paid by the question, so there is no value in giving quality.
Cdrecord has the most poorly organized web site I can remember seeing. Is there good documentation available somewhere?
Also, the link is to the alpha version, it appears. Where is the latest stable binary?
The ideal would be backup software that is more intelligent than Easy CD Creator... but still has an option to write your 8000 files as 8000 files and not as one file.
BTW, in my experience blue CDRs fade rapidly but silver ones are OK.
- RAID = to prevent downtime / data loss due to hardware malfunctioning. I'm looking at you Maxtor!
- Good Backup Plan = to prevent users and/or flaky OS/App from ruining data.
I rsync the 'important' stuff on my FreeBSD box to another friend's box, and he does the same. Instead of mounting my windows drive through Samba, I just burn a CD whenever my spidey sense tells me I'm due for a meltdown. I've lost a lot of data on my Windows machines over the last 10 yearsAcronis.com is a great solution I use it.
Based on http://www.dragonflybsd.org/Goals/packages.cgi it appears that something like a versioned file system is in the works for DragonFly BSD.
With 160GB HD's available for US$100 the space isn't much of an issue. Also Unison is pretty clever about how it updates the files (rsync) so bandwidth use is reasonable enough even for home use.
FWIW For a server I use the free e-smith Red Hat-based distribution which is trivially managed from a web browser. It has a custom Unison rpm available for really simple synchronization setup.
The second suggestion is my other solution; an external drive. A cheapie USB2/Firewire case can be picked up for US$40 and any IDE drive popped into it. Again instant reasonably high-speed storage. One can even compress the files to it for more savings, use PGPdisk, encrypted NTFS, etc.
However if you're wedded to using CR/Rs or CD/RWs check out the free Burn to the Brim. While not specifically a backup application (no compression) it does pack the files best for CDs, can sort on many criteria including mp3 tags, and can generate ISO images.
Finally if you really do want a full backup strategy then I suggest Dantz's Restrospect package. Under US$100, very easy to use, cross-platform, long track record and does all that you'd want of it. Good product at a good price with good support.
I don't read ACs: If a post isn't worth so much as a nom de plume to its author then I wont bother either.
mod +1 ironically funny
Have you considered putting another hard disk in the computer and using RAID?
No! RAID is not a substitute for backups! The only thing RAID protects against is disk failure. Even assuming that RAID works perfectly, which it doesn't, how many other ways are there to lose data?
- Accidental deletion. Ever needed to get a file off backup because of your mistake?
- Accidental overwrite. "Crap, I lost my original!"
- Malicious attack. Better hope your antivirus is up to date.
- Catastrophe. Fire, flood, power surge... or just shoving the machine off the desk onto the floor.
- Corruption. Your RAM goes flaky and munges your file, which you blissfully save to disk. Thanks to RAID, you have reliable access to your bad data.
Backups go to removable media. Period. And for anything even remotely important, like financial records, you keep one offsite.
--
Dum de dum.
Freedom is not the license to do what we like, it is the power to do what we ought.
Retrospect Express, which has apparently been discontinued, supported SimpleCrypt, which is designed to be fast. Retrospect Professional adds support for DES, which may slowdown backups. It depends on your CPU speed and the speed of your backup device.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
I think that anything but government certified encryption is suspect. Often "simple" encryption schemes have been found to be very, very weak. Only serious professionals can design good encryption schemes.
It all depends on what type of threat that you are worried about. SimpleCrypt will protect against low-level threats. DES will protect against mid-level threats. For high-level threats, you are screwed unless you deal with serious physical security and compromising emanations. If someone really wants your data, they can steal/seize your computer, install a key logger, bug the keyboard, etc.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
Hey, BrokenHalo, thanks for the info. I suppose you mean:
CD-Writing HOWTO and
Linux MP3 CD Burning mini-HOWTO and
CD-Writing HOWTO: Troubleshooting
Yes, I can RTFM, but it is a big time-saver to read the best documentation immediately, and not have to search for it.
And while we're on the topic of compression, by far the best compression ratio crown under Windows belongs not to RAR, not to bzip2, but to a tiny simple archiver called 7-zip. Compression is slow, but it's worth it.
I was intending to thank you, not hassle you. However, I wasn't sure I had the right links. Thanks for the help.
This isn't how the VMS filesystem works. It actually creates an entirely new copy of the file, incrementing the version number. As you may imagine this often takes up lots of disk space, so the PURGE command exists to clear away all versions except the latest. Purged versions of a file are not recoverable unless you've backed them up conventionally.
The CVS-type system that runs on VMS, CMS, does store succeeding generations as changes over the previous one, and in that case all generations back to the first are recoverable at any time. But no one in their right mind would use it for a filesystem.
And the brethren went away edified.
Just to add to this for anyone else about to give this a go. There is a four gig limit on your backup volume when using fat32, so adjust your directory selection accordingly.
Buckets,
pompomtom
"There's an exception to every rule. Except for some rules"
The PURGE command caught my eye - basically, the Novell Netware file system works in a similar manner - when a file is deleted or overwritten, it isn't lost; instead Netware keeps it around (unless disk space is needed) and it can be recovered via SALVAGE. PURGE will remove deleted files from the system.
The nice thing is, as many versions of the file as you have disk space are kept, until/unless you run out of disk space or explicitly purge them.
I remember there was a project bringing the NWFS to Linux a while back; I believe it's inactive now, but having the salvage/purge system would be nice to have in Linux (especially on a Samba server). So would the Netware in-place disk compression (inactive files are compressed, decompressed on access).
I know it's not answering the original question, which appears to be asking for a windows solution, but I've been pondering a backup script for a while. ... chunknn > original.tarball.tgz
.tgz file be padded with zeros to a multiple of 2048 bytes without mucking them up?
Something that will make a big tarball, split it into CD sized chunks (700Mb?) and write each chunk to a cd with cdrecord.
It doesn't have to be an iso, any chunk of data which is a multiple of 2048 bytes can be burned to a CD.
You can restore it by "dd if=/dev/scd0 of=chunk01 bs=2048"
then the second cd with "dd if=/dev/scd0 of=chunk02 bs=2048" etc..
then cat chunk01 chunk02
and restore.
Okay, so details need to worked out, but this could be scripted, no?
Also, can a
I mean, do you really need a filesystem on the CD if it's just one tarball?
I suppose if you want to retreive individual files you'd want a filesystem, but there are probably cases where it might not matter.
Just a thought.
Yuri
You make the mistake of thinking you can educate the fundamental stupidity out of people. You can't.