It's 2006 and Backups For Home User Still Tricky?

CranberryKing asks: "What is it about backups that always seems so difficult? I am trying to do a simple backup on my home XP system/s (about 30GB of files) that will write to my DVD burner. I don't want compression (most of it is MP3s, which don't compress well). I want a routine to simply write my selection to the DVD writer and spread it across however many discs are required (rather than me manually approximating and copying to each disc). I want the files on the disc readable from any system, so no proprietary backup wrapper or DAT files, please. My last attempt was using a free program that looked good called Simply Safe Backup, but it created two coasters before crashing with an unknown error. If I can just get a full backup to work smoothly, then I'll worry about scheduling, incremental, and encryption. This seems like a very common scenario for home & small offices. Is there an elegant, reliable & cheap (free) solution to this?"

Comments

You knew it was coming

[TLouden]

My Linux systems all backup to each other and external media with no trouble. Perhaps the problem is that you're using XP. Sorry, but it's a nice little reality that *nix systems are easier to backup despite a less frequent need to use backups.

typical...

[know1]

nobody here has any clue so far what to tell you, so instead keeping schtum they offer solutions that don't include using the dvd burner....i just don't really trust hard drives as a backup medium myself (i'm sure many people here will tell you why i'm wrong) simply because a dvd/cd you can leave it in the case for three years and if it hasn't been used then it will work fine first time. external hard drives that have more than one backup will degrade over time, and it will go eventually without warning (maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but...you get it) leaving you up shit creek. to be honest i think you are just going to have to back them up manually my friend. smart alecky as i am i don't know of any solutions either. it is early on during the thread though, so good luck.
and please everyone, don't tell him to use linux (no flames please, i'm on debian now as we speak) i'm sure he's heard it many times if he's been here a while. anyway as i said, good luck

split and cat and how external drive can suck.

[twitter]

Quick and Dirty:

• use find to make a big tar file with what you want.
• use split to get it into DVD sized pieces.
• burn each with k3b, label the result and put it in a CD book.
• on restore, cat file 1 file 2 file 3 file N > name.tar
• untar your archive.

You could probably perform the above from a Knopix CD and an external hard drive. K3b might even have multi-disk support but I have not looked for it.

Yes, I know you could just use the external hard drive to store the data. A fire wire drive is the easiest and fastest way to make a back up. Plug it in and use grsync. Sounds great, but it's not always the best idea.

Sometimes you have more data than you have hard drive or better use for the drive.

If you are paranoid, you need write once media. Any live and writable drive is going to get hosed if your little XP computer is 0wnzered by some dirt bag who wants to erase everything you have. In that case, you can say good bye to all the data on your network when they keylog your passwords, and on your external drive as soon as you plug it in. A nice touch would be a fake dialog for you that shows their progress in wiping your drive as if it were restoring.

Re: Maxtor OneTouch External Hard Drive

[StandardDeviant]

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