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'?"

Comments

Norton Ghost?

[strangel]

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.

NTI

[mechugena]

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.

Go to your local computer superstore...

[stienman]

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 is what you want

[sobiloff]

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.

Re:hard drives are cheap

[GigsVT]

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).

Low tech: scheduled batch, zip and CD-RW

[digitect]

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.)