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Backups to CD-R?
Lumpish Scholar asks: "Backups are important, so we should tell our friends and family to buy a bunch of CD-Rs and...what? The operating system most of them are stuck with comes with backup software, but 'Windows Backup Does Not Back Up to CD-R, CD-RW, or DVD-R Devices (this behavior is by design). I've looked in the obvious places, but nothing comes across as better than adequate. There's got to be something that can do full or incremental backups (which in part means keeping track of what's already been backed up), that can back up files bigger than a single CD-R, and that's relatively fast and easy. What have you used to solve this problem, for yourself or others, for Windows or for better operating systems?"
Although I've never used it before, Nero BackItUp appears to do what you're looking for. I've bought Ahead's software many times before, and their quality is fairly good. There's a trial version, too.
Norton Ghost is what I use for multi-disk CD-R backups.
I've used http://www.handybackup.com/ for several clients and have been very pleased with the results thus far. It allows you to backup to cd-r, network, or ftp and allows the backup to be scheduled in a wide variety of ways.
That would work fine if people didn't have 10GB+ "My Music" subfolders. :-D
Even for 650MB of data or less, the WinXP burning wizard SUCKS, because it has to cache every file that it's going to copy to CD. On a one-disk, one-partition system, this is both absurd and slow. It then does what seems like more duplication during the "adding data to the CD image" phase.
I'm no fan of Ahead/Nero's CD burning or backup software, but using either, you can have the first (or only) disk of your backup set burned long before the Windows CD writing wizard has finished setting itself up.
Roxio's software, on which the Windows wizard is actually based, is no better than XP's built-in stuff.
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quis fimum scribit?
Although we use it to backup files to a networked PC,not to CDR, we have been very happy with Second Copy.
It's affordable at $29.95 for one user, with bulk pricing for multiuser environments.
It's easy to use, will backup or synchronize files or directories, and works well over a network. And yes, it will back up to CDR. Right now we use it to backup and or sync five systems. Run it once daily and Bob's Yer Uncle.
Three Squirrels
I normally use Retrospect Express for desktop backups.
Burns to CDR, fast, super-easy to use, and has some excellent scheduling features.
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In my windows boxes, I use a freeware program called DFIncBackup. Does full, incremental, etc... to any media (including network shares, DVD, CDR, etc...). You can also indicate file extensions to backup, or ignore, split large archives, backup to zip file, create templates, etc... Probably one of the best in freeware (and shareware and pay). I've had to restore only once, and it worked flawlessly.
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Microsoft got flak for including a web browser while at the same time threatening OEMs to pull out of lucrative contracts if they continued to install a competing browser, Netscape, that at the time more people wanted. If Microsoft had simply installed IE and let OEMs do as they please, IE might have won on merit alone. We won't know, though, because Microsoft jerked around OEMs and by extension most customers. That's hardly the way to get a lot of sympathy from free marketers or geeks who already question the ethics/lawfulness of Microsoft's past business decisions. It is a great way to get flak, though.
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The principle behind it is that it backs up entire partitions so that they can be reconstituted bit-for-bit as they were when the backup was made. Since version 7, there has been an option to do incremental backups. The compression ratio is wonderful. I have a 2GB partition with Windows XP and all the Windows programs that I use, and the image file that TrueImage makes of it fits on a 700MB CD! What's more, you can burn a recovery CD that boots directly (TrueImage is based on Linux) and has full backup/restore functionality. Oh, and in Windows you can "mount" the backed-up partition images so that they appear as a read-only drive with its own letter--in case you just need to recover a couple of files from a backup and not the whole thing. Really, I don't know what they'll do for 8.0, because I think 7.0 is just about the perfect backup program, and it's so easy that even a lazy guy like me has developed good habits about backups.
You need another HDD or a fileserver (with network).
;) ).
//fileserver/backup /mnt/test
/dev/hdc /mnt/test (if have another hdd).
/mnt/test/20041010
/mnt/test/20041010/machinename-hda-lzo-
/mnt/test/20041010/machinename-hda-lzo-* | lzop -d > /dev/hda
Assuming you want to backup first ata hdd on target system.
Boot Knoppix on system to be backed up-
Use:
knoppix 2 noswap
or
knoppix noswap
(latter if you have enough ram + cpu and you still want to browse the web etc whilst backing up
Then mount the drive/share you want to put the backups to.
e.g. mount -t smbfs -o username=blah
or mount
mkdir
dd if=/dev/hda bs=131072 | lzop -c | split -b 650m -
This creates files that are 650MB in size. You can burn these to CD-Rs. I prefer to leave a bit of unused space at the CD-R's edge (some seem to peel off there).
Note: that there are reports that dd in linux in some cases doesn't copy the last byte.
Also you may have to manually turn on DMA access on the HDD using hdparm, for speed.
To restore you do a similar thing - boot knoppix.
then mount the restore drive/fileserver (readonly if paranoid).
Then:
cat
I'm not 100% sure of the command-line parameters. But that's the general principle. I have successfully backed up and restored a number of images this way.
I use lzop because it is faster than gzip - with lzop I can get an average of 30MB/sec with an Athlon 2000XP - not far from max HDD transfer rate, for not much worse compression ratio. gzip is 2 to 3 times slower. Unfortunately lzop seems to be giving me an error in Knoppix 3.6 when I try to decompress. I'm mainly using Knoppix 3.3 though.
Don't forget: CD-Rs can be flaky backup media. Assuming a 40GB HDD compresses to 15-20GB, you'll need about 25 CD-Rs. If any of these don't work you can't restore successfully. So you may need to double the number for redundancy. That is a lot of trouble.
I actually suggest buying a few spare big HDDs and backup to them.
Per GB they're not much more expensive than CD-Rs.
100-200GB drives are about twice the price per GB compared to CD-Rs, and probably less flaky, problematic and troublesome for long term storage (plus take up less space than 150-300 CD-Rs). Just don't drop them and keep them in a safe dry + cool place (packed with dehumidifiers), e.g. data-grade fireproof safe. Buy multiple different brands of HDDs if you're paranoid.
I use a secure disk program (Bestcrypt, for Windows and Linux) to create mountable, secured virtual drives. I make each disk just under the limit for the burnable media, I bought a DVD burner, and given the limits of the DVD format the largest single file is 3.99 GB. I have two main virtual disks I use, one I mount every time I use the system (for desktop, email, favorites, etc.), the other is for things I use far less often (photos, archived projects, etc.). And every week (at least) I burn the main disk to DVD (less often for the other disk). Before I had a DVD drive I did the same thing with containers that were only 650MB).
I use a separate backup script to backup all the non-unique data (programs, system, etc.) to another hard drive.
(I've had a laptop stolen from my house years ago by burglars who broke in, and with the personal files, banking info, etc. that one keeps on their PC these days, security can't be ignored.) quincy
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Then I back the full up to CD-R on Sunday using another script, which also runs as a cron job (you just have to remember to load the CD before you go home for the weekend!):
Good Luck! Andy
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http://www.partimage.org
It'll backup across a network or to pretty much whatever you want. Also you can make a boot disk and use it to back up a non-Linux OS.
Honestly I can't stress how much I value my external harddrive. I have a laptop, and beyond addition storage, I use the HD for a good deal of backups.
Sure it's more expensive than CD-Rs, but you get a ton more storage, and a heck of a lot faster (not to mention the added space if you want it), and you can get some great deals (I got an enclosure and 120GB for $90) on USB2 or firewire external drives from http://www.pricewatch.com/ (just be sure you are buying the combo and not just an enclosure).
With this kind of space and speed, you can zip or rar files and folders and copy them over. More importantly, you can easily image a drive using one of the utilities already mentioned, and not have to worry nearly as much about fitting it onto 700 or 650 MB.
And with HDs going for about $1 a GB I would also suggest not quickly running to CD, perhaps just by a second internal drive.