Do any of you make a backup of your hard drive?

[hesnotthemessiah]

I have been thinking about the need to make backups of my hard drives on my PCs. I have 97,356 files in my VST plugins folder on one of my PCs - which might give you some idea of the amouint of plugins I have installed on my PCs. I don't want to get into a debate about the need for this many plugins (I know I have gone a bit overboard ) .

I want to create an exact copy of my hard drive on another internal hard drive so that, in the event of a hard disk failure, I can just reboot, and use this back hard drive instead. I know there would still be some tasks required such as the need to reauthorise some plugins because of using a new hard drive.

Someone has advised me about creating a "Dynamic Drive" but I am not sure this would be suitable for audio. I have been advised that this would allow you to "sync" an adiditonal internal hard drive to your current hard drive, so creating a constantly updated backup copy. Can't find any info on the web though - which seems rather strange.

But before I even think about creating a "Dynamic Drive" I would need to create an exact copy of my hard drive. I was advised - by the same person as before, about "mirroring" but this only seems possible with Windows XP Pro (not Home that I am using).

Can anyone recommed anything to me? What do you use to backup your hard drives?

[garyb]

acronis does work well..

[hesnotthemessiah]

Thanks for the info. Acronis looks ideal. I use one PC - my main DAW - which has Service Pack 1 installed, so I need to check if Acronis can be used with this (their site advises Service Pack 2 is required). I might have to update to SP2.

[hesnotthemessiah]

Tried Acronis true image demo. Tried Clone mode. Took 5 days to reach 40% progress cloning my 120GB drive. So gave up. Tried the backup method. Backing up was OK but restore seemed to be going at the same pace as the clone mode, so gave up after about an hour of restoring (with 1% progress!). Cloning/backup from one internal hard drive to another.

Still using Windows XP Service Pack One as I am unable to download the Sevice Pack 2 update. The Acronis site doesn't mention any problems with SP1.

Contacted Acronis Support via email for help. Not expecting much, if any, help back from them (going by what I have read from other users). If anyone has got any idea as to what the problem could be, please let me know. Just bought Tweak PC's disk backup and am awaiting the download link.

[emphazer]

omg, 5 days?
i need 5-7min for 20gb with high compression.
im system administrator and i use acronis @ companies and at home.
in my eyes its definetly the best one.
and i tried really a lot...

i would never use cloning to backup a harddrive because you will clone each sector of a harddrive this will take long time.
i do it like this:
i create a secure zone on another harddrive and make incremental system backups.
the cool point is you cant accidently delete the backup and if you run the incremental system backup
you will save a lot of disc space because it always copies just the changed files.
normally you dont need to back up complete system all the time.
its absolutly enough to do a backup folder schedule of the important folders!

for all who has really valuable data
i recommend a small NAS storage from buffalo for example.
its an easy and safe way to keep your files save of network.

[emphazer]

ah, for all poor guys who also need backups
try the microsoft SyncToy v2.0 tool to copy data.
its pretty powerfull because its a modified GUI version of the win2003 server tool called robocopy.
you can sync 2way, sync 1way, copy, move etc etc between folders and computers.

and its for free

SyncToy link


SyncToy 2.0 White Paper (364KB): SyncToyWhitePaper2_0.pdf

[Neil B]

I have external hard drives that I use.
Basically, all the important stuff is backed up as a one-of and then as and when required after that.
For instance, I have a complete backup of the Scope software, with all the additional devices etc.
If I add a new device or 2, a new project or some presets, then I back these up.

I have a copy of my VST folders in the same way.

Every week I backup the track folders that I've been working on.

Of course, if you have to rebuild, all the software goes on as normal and then it's quite easy to put back the additional data from tracks, scope devices, vsts and so on. Of course, there will be some re-authorisation involved too.

Works for me and only takes about half hour per week, if that.

[valis]

omg, 5 days?
i need 5-7min for 20gb with high compression.
im system administrator and i use acronis @ companies and at home.
in my eyes its definetly the best one.
and i tried really a lot...

i would never use cloning to backup a harddrive because you will clone each sector of a harddrive this will take long time.

Agreed, cloning is unnecessary to simply backup a partition of a drive or multiple partitions (volumes). You can restore a backup of any partition (including your boot/OS volume) without any issues. You may find if the drive failed and was replaced, that upon restoring windows and other apps that use a 'system fingerprint' in their DRM methods will complain about needing to call home for activation/registration again, but that's it.

Acronis is the simplest to use and has mostly replaced Ghost for people who want simple imaging software for backup/restore.

DriveImage XML is a 'free' alternative when used for personal use that offers fewer compression & configuration options, but is otherwise speedy and easy to use if you're not afraid of delving outside of a 'Wizard'.

[hesnotthemessiah]

Thanks for all your help I have now tried about 5 different cloning tools and all have failed whilst cloning from my old internal hard drive to a new internal hard drive, coming back with various errors that were mostly impossible for me to understand. Basically, I think it boils down to me having one bad sector on my hard drive. I think I should see this is a chance to install a new, larger, hard drive, copy across what I can, delete what I don't need and reinstall where required (which is quite a bit!! ). I have definately learnt my lesson though, always make adequate backups. Cloning appeals to me more as, though it takes longer, you know that, should your hard drive fail, you only need to install the cloned hard drive and you are back up and running again(hopefully! ).

[pollux]

Hi,

I use symantec ghost which creates and maintains (yes, incrementally) images from the disk.

The best thing is that you can treat them either as disk images for cloning / restoring a disk, or as per-file backups, so that you can restore even a single file (say scope.rgy for example )

I run at least two backups, one to a spare internal drive for quick stuff, and another one to an external HD that I keep warm and safe.. you can even backup to DVD for archiving purposes...

[pranza]

my vote for acronis
use default (medium) compression level, it should be fast like this. takes a couple of hours for 160 gig over usb 2.0

if u have problems with hard drive, try checking it with mhdd - low level hard disk testing program

[Liquid Len]

I take a different approach to data backup, this may or may not be useful. I find that if you're not careful, Windows blurs the line between configuration and program (and between configuration and data). So any data I care about backing up has to be identified and known by me, in case windows gets corrupted and it has to be reinstalled. I use Norton Ghost and it works fine for me. I always have at least 3 partitions, if not more, from multiple hard drives, I have the operating system and programs on the designated boot drive, which I generally leave as C:. All actual data (theoretically) is put on the other drives, so if the boot drive gets messed up, I can just restore it from the drive image file. I like having all my data demarcated, I don't trust file backup programs to know where my data is.

When I set up a computer, I get the OS installed clean, install the 22,000 Windows updates and patches, adjust things a bit, then use Norton Ghost to make an image of the boot partition onto another partition (Windows XP is between 2 and 3 gigs when compressed.) Then install your cards & software, and make another image. For a multiboot system (if you need one) set up the multiboot on the first drive and image the whole drive to the second drive.