Slashdot Mirror
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.
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.
Ghost is a pain in the ass. Personally I a knoppix cd customized with a private key, a little menu system that automates these two commands:
dd if=/dev/ | ssh backups@backup.server | gzip > ~/--
and
ssh backups@backup.server cat ~/-- | dd of=/dev/
Note ssh already compresses so putting the gzip on the side of the client is a double whammy for the CPU, however if you have multiple boxes it may be more effective to do it that way.
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
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.
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...
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