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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?"

3 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. 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.

  3. 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 )