Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Backups to CD-R?

Posted by Cliff on from the anything-but-tape dept.

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?"

5 of 106 comments (clear)

  1. Nero BackItUp by It's+People! · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

  2. Use Norton Ghost by scupper · · Score: 4, Informative

    Norton Ghost is what I use for multi-disk CD-R backups.

    1. Re:Use Norton Ghost by dgmartin98 · · Score: 5, Informative

      Incremental backups with RAR are easy. Use the command line version of RAR with:
      -ao Add files with Archive attribute set
      -ac Clear Archive attribute after compression or extraction

      In fact, here's the contents of my "incremental" batch file:

      rar a -agYYYY-MM-DD -u -ao -ac -as -ep2 -m2 -os -ow -r -ri3 -rr2p -ds -x@IgnoreList_Docs.txt D:\Backups\Weekly\Files_Docs_.rar @BackupList_Docs.txt

      I run that once a week, PGP-encrypt the file, burn to CD or DVD, and store off-site. I include an ignore list, and a list of files to backup.

      For a "full" backup, I use a batch file with this in it (same as above without the -ao):

      rar a -agYYYY-MM-DD -u -ac -as -ep2 -m2 -os -ow -r -ri3 -rr2p -ds -x@IgnoreList_Docs.txt D:\Backups\Weekly\Files_Docs_.rar @BackupList_Docs.txt

      If your directories to backup are large, you can use the option -v[k|b|f|m|M] to pick the volume size.

      --
      FPGA, Wireless, ASIC, Verilog, VHDL, HW, 10yr exp, Team Lead, Ottawa (More? Email above. slashdotusername=dgmartin98 )
  3. Backup to CD-R under Windows by lil_nohreaga · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

  4. I use knoppix and dd by TheLink · · Score: 4, Informative

    You need another HDD or a fileserver (with network).

    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 //fileserver/backup /mnt/test

    or mount /dev/hdc /mnt/test (if have another hdd).

    mkdir /mnt/test/20041010

    dd if=/dev/hda bs=131072 | lzop -c | split -b 650m - /mnt/test/20041010/machinename-hda-lzo-

    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 /mnt/test/20041010/machinename-hda-lzo-* | lzop -d > /dev/hda

    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.

    --