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Now I start to have a considerable amount of programs and plugins on my computer.
If something happened ( virus, lightning struck, or other bad things),
it would be a great deal of work to bring it all back.
So, what is the best way to create a "safety backup" if disaster struck ?
Best regards
Tono
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I use a program called Acronis (it's available on the web) in conjunction with an external HDD.
Several options are available - I backup up my system (no music or photo files on the C: drive) so that if the C: drive crashes, it will take more time to buy a new drive than to re-install the OS and my software on the new drive.
For music and photo files, the same can be done, but I've been using the drag and drop (copy/paste) method, putting the backups on the external drive into folder with the same organization as the originals.
Glenn
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Tono,
As a recent victim of my own stupidity, an external hard drive would be the way to go. You can get a 750GB Seagate FreeAgent drive for well less than $200. You can also get automated backup software, such as Retrospect Professional. In fact, I have both. So, why didn't it help? Because, I was stupid and lazy. A while ago, I reformatted the computer, and I didn't reinstall Retrospect...I'll get around to it, I'll get around to it. Then, I cleared the drive, because there was no install of Retrospect, and I was going to need to do a complete new image anyway....
Then, I transferred all my docs and stuff to a new computer, running XP Pro and Win7. I deleted the files from the old computer, then installed Vista in place of Win7, which somehow screwed up my XP install, wiping that partition of most of my docs.
Etc., etc., etc.
In any accident, it usually involves a variety of steps, where if you didn't do one of them, it wouldn't have happened.
I could have used the Free Agent as an intermediary drive, I could have put the information on another partition of a different hard drive, I could have not wiped it from the original drive (do you like how I'm flogging myself publically???) and so forth and so on.
IF I had things set up the way I wanted to, Retrospect ($100 on top of the price of the drive) would automatically, every night, backed up the computer, and done so only with the changes from that day. I could have pulled the information, selectively, off the drive, and restored it back.
I would recommend finding an external drive, and a program that does automatic backups of your drives every day (the computer and drive need to be on during that period), because if you want to do them manually, you'll forget, or find some reason not to, and then when it happens to you, either by human error, or hardware failure, you won't have what you want.
Gary
I'm blessed watching God do what He does best. I've had a few rough years, and I'm still not back to where I want to be, but I'm on the way and things are looking far better now than what they were!
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Don't worry Gary, if you read my post in the other thread, I'm right there with you except it looks like I beat you in getting my data recovered. Good luck with yours. This is the website of the program my nephew used on my drive. It's a very professional looking site and they say it recovers partitions too . OnTrackDataRecovery Knowing what I felt like when suddenly my system wouldn't open my drive, you have my sincere sympathy. I'm doing the exact same thing you're about to and that is set up an automatic backup system just like what our IT guy at work uses. He uses Acronis because it does incremental backups which is the term for what you described when you said it knows to only back up the new stuff, not everything every time. I totally agree, if we're going to do this, it must be automatic because if it's not, we're going to forget and get nailed again. Bob
Biab/RB latest build, Win 11 Pro, Ryzen 5 5600 G, 512 Gig SSD, 16 Gigs Ram, Steinberg UR22 MkII, Roland Sonic Cell, Kurzweil PC3, Hammond SK1, Korg PA3XPro, Garritan JABB, Hypercanvas, Sampletank 3, more.
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Glenn, are you talking about True Image? (http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/products/trueimage/) Acronis makes quite a range of utilities. I have recently been looking into the subject of data safety, backup and recovery and my conclusions, in no particular order, are as follows... Arguments against disk imaging seem to go something like this, as far as I can tell: - it’s a good practice but you need to have a parallel and more frequent method of backing up your data files - when you come to restore, the system that crashed will be much evolved from the latest image backup you have. I make absolutely no comment on these arguments, but you can read them for yourself here: http://www.2brightsparks.com/tutorials/thebackupguide.html(scroll down to Disk Imaging) I have read plenty of good things about Syncback (and not only on the manufacturer’s own web site!), but time must be allowed for learning and mastering the programme (good tutorials/help files are provided). Other similar utilities - both free and commercial - are, of course, available. The primitive method of selecting what files you need to back up and saving them to a portable storage device has its merits: - easy (if time consuming) to do - preferable to no backup at all - made easier by the availability and falling prices of higher capacity devices and hard drives - can be made quicker by the use of compression tools which produce .zips, .rars or similar file types - there is clearly a problem with backing up to a second drive which is frequently or permanently connected to the system your backing up from. (think of fire, think of burglary…) - remote backup (i.e. using a web-based service such as Mozy, Carbonite or ElephantDrive) seems to me to be a sensible solution but, particularly with the smaller operators, you cannot be sure they will be there 4 or 5 years from now. - the key point in the whole story is perhaps whether you do it or not. Whatever the solution, it is going to take some thought, time and expense. The home and purely leisure user is quite obviously in a different situation from the home-based worker who would be foolish to have anything but a reliable, professional and automated solution. I really should stop here and make way for the professionals whose views on this thorny subject will be many times more illuminating than mine.
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There are plenty of back-up software applications out there, and I've tried a lot of them.
After some which have failed to restore my computer after a crash I took someone else's advice and got Norton Ghost (no relation to me or Norton Music). I back up to an external USB drive daily.
The nice thing about Ghost is that it creates an "image" of your hard drive, and when you restore it, it restores it in exactly the same way you left it when you backed it up.
I assign two back ups. The first one is incremental which means it only records the changes in the back up and I do this every night. It takes about 5 minutes. I also assign 3 "restore" points to that backup so that I can go back 3 days - very helpful if you get a virus, as you might not know it until you reboot your computer.
The second one is a total disk image which overwrites the data on the disk. I only do this about once a month as it takes more than an hour to complete. I have 2 "restore" points on this one, and actually back it up to a different external USB drive from the incremental backup.
I also do the incremental backup before I do any of the following: install a new program, defragment my hard drive, run my registry cleaner, or make any other major changes.
It has saved my butt more than once. Since I've been using Ghost, I've lost 2 hard drives on 2 computers (one on each), I've installed a new drive myself (I'm not technically inclined but it is simply a matter of taking screws out, unplugging the old, and plugging in the new), and restored the image from my backup disk. It's worked perfectly.
Ghost also has a "rescue" disk that allows you to boot your computer from your CD drive so if your hard drive is completely useless or if you install that new, blank hard drive you can boot with the CD and then run the restore software.
Having Ghost and 2 back-up hard drives has made my main music/business computer "fail-save".
I highly recommend it.
Insights and incites by Notes
Bob "Notes" Norton  Norton Music
https://www.nortonmusic.com
100% MIDI Super-Styles recorded by live, pro, studio musicians for a live groove
& Fake Disks for MIDI and/or RealTracks
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With huge hard drives being relatively inexpensive now, I put an internal drive into an external drive case and clone the C drive to it periodically. That came in real handy when my laptop drive died died last year. All I had to do was pull the dead drive out and replace it with the clone that had been done in the last week and I was back in business. I prefer eSata setups because the data transfers more quickly than USB.
I do a clone about once a month but also do scheduled automatic backup of changes to data about 3 times a week. I have different backup programs on the 7 computers that my wife and I have. I've found that while Norton runs fine on several computers, it doesn't run at all on the others. Same is true with Acronis True Image. Runs great on 3 of the computers, crashes like a demolition derby car on the others. My newest VISTA 84 bit gateway chocked on everything but True Image and that included the built in Microsoft formatting and backup stuff. At least in my experience, these programs don't run equally well on every computer.
Keith
2026 Audiophile Windows 11 RYZEN THREADRIPPER 3960X 4.5GHZ 128 GB RAM 2 Nvidia RTX 3090s, Vegas,Acid,SoundForge,Izotope Production,Melodyne Studio,SONAR,3 Raven Mtis
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This thread starts to be really interesting since it looks like there is so many ways to make a "safety backup"
It also looks like they all have they all ( like ewerything in life) have good and bad sides.
So before this thread is ended we will maybe come to a conclusion to the question:
What would be the safest. easiest and cheapest way ( for an amatour) to make a "safety backup" of your software?
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I learned a long time ago to keep my Os separate from my data files. Even MS hints at this by providing each user with the "My Documents" folder. However, I go one step further and keep all of my data files on a separate partition from the Os (Win Xp). I back up my data files daily, and usually more often when I'm working and saving critical files to disk. For this purpose, I use the freeware WMatch (http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,1790135,00.asp) because it compares and shows me differnces between my data files on my working drive1 data file partition and the files on the back up partition of drive2. The files I back up are fully usable and can be copied back to drive1 if necessary by hand or with WMatch.
Now backing the Os is handled differently. Using Ghost, I back up the primary partition with Xp Os less often, and then only when I've installed new software that I really want to keep and I know everything is working correctly. Currently I have only 5 images on my back up drive2 image partition. They date back to the day I prrchased the Pc, but I really only need my last two images. This month when I have to install tax software, I'll use that last image to restore my Pc to it's previous pretax condition. I may need the previous image because the last image has Cubase LE and Proteus VX software and I'm still trying to see if I can find a use for those products. If I can't then I'll drop back to the previous image.
Finally, I keep my Os images and my data files backed up to an 2.5 external Usb drive in separate partitions.
Hopefully there are some thoughts in this post you will find useful.
jb
JBlatz
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Quote:
What would be the safest. easiest and cheapest way ( for an amatour) to make a "safety backup" of your software?
I'm sorry, there is no answer to that question. Most of us have the extra 50 or 100 bucks necessary to buy whatever we think will help us out. We just need someone to tell us what is the "best" one and we'll all go and buy it. You're dealing with PC's that have an almost infinite number of configurations between processors, memory, hard drives and last but certainly not least, the software and how it all works together. All you can do is pick one and start doing it and don't forget to let us all know how it's working for you. We all want to know what is the best.
Bob
Biab/RB latest build, Win 11 Pro, Ryzen 5 5600 G, 512 Gig SSD, 16 Gigs Ram, Steinberg UR22 MkII, Roland Sonic Cell, Kurzweil PC3, Hammond SK1, Korg PA3XPro, Garritan JABB, Hypercanvas, Sampletank 3, more.
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IMHO the main things you need to consider are: - Make sure you back up to a separate drive (USB, Firewire, etc.)
- Make sure your back up creates a disk "image"
- Make sure your back up includes the OS as well as your data
- Make sure you back up frequently
- Make sure you back up before you make any major changes to your hard drive, that includes those monthly Microsoft Updates, installing any new program, defragging your disk, cleaning your registry, etc.
Insights and incites by Notes
Bob "Notes" Norton Norton Music
https://www.nortonmusic.com
100% MIDI Super-Styles recorded by live, pro, studio musicians for a live groove
& Fake Disks for MIDI and/or RealTracks
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I use Acronis True Image to create fully system images of my first drive (which is configured to dual boot both Windows XP and Windows Vista). True Image can back up data files, too. The cool part is that you can "mount" the backup file as a drive letter, which then allows you to work with the files in a Windows Explorer screen. While True Image will let you create an image file from within Windows, sometimes it craps out because Windows does something under the hood while it's backing itself up. When I use True Image, I always use the separate boot disk to run the program (it loads a small Linux kernel), so nothing in Windows is running when I create the image. I also set the option to verify the backup. Using this method has always produced a copy that I can use to restore (which has always been successful to me).
Make sure that whatever imaging product you use (and there are some free ones out there, as well), that you test the restore function. Your backup image is only as good as it's ability to restore. I've heard too many people say that they did their backups religiously, only to find out that the backup files were unreadable when they needed them.
I usually just set Acronis right before I go to bed; that way, when I wake up, the backup is done and I just reboot my computer and start working again.
I also use WinZip, but with the command line interface, as part of a batch file. That gives me full control over what individual files and folders I want to back up and exclude the ones I don't want to back up. I save both the system images and the Winzip backups to an external USB drive, but I also make sure that none of my backup files are larger than 4.7GB (Acronis True Image allows you to split the files as you backup and WinZip allows you to split files also); that way, every so often, I write everything out to DVD discs. Sure, it takes time; however, I've also got two identical DVD-R's on my PC, so I can actually do two at the same time. In the end, it's a good insurance policy.
John Laptop-HP Omen I7 Win11Pro 32GB 12TB SSD Desktop-ASUS-I7 Win10Pro 32GB 12TB SATA BB2026/UMC204HD&404HD/Casios/Cakewalk/Reaper/Studio One/Notion/Dorico/Noteworthy/NI/Halion/IK http://www.sus4chord.com (under rehosting/construction)
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Quote:
Glenn, are you talking about True Image?
(http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/products/trueimage/)
Acronis makes quite a range of utilities.
Sorry to be so long getting back, but I was away for a few days.
Yes, I use Acronins True Image.
http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/products/trueimage/
I've never had a failure (touch wood), but the reason I use it is because a good friend of mine does, and when his HDD crapped out last year, what took all the time to get going again was driving to the shop, buying a new HDD, and installing it. From then on, it was easy with Acronis True Image.
That was good enough for me (the friend is more computer savvy than I).
Glenn
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Free Open Source Imaging Software This looks interesting. Does anybody recognize any of the programs listed? Don S. *****Edit***** The IRestorer link brings up a porn gateway.
Last edited by Curmudgeon; 03/07/09 09:47 AM.
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What John Ford said is essential enough to bear repeating. Make sure your restore function works. Test it before you have a failure.
Notes
Bob "Notes" Norton Norton Music
https://www.nortonmusic.com
100% MIDI Super-Styles recorded by live, pro, studio musicians for a live groove
& Fake Disks for MIDI and/or RealTracks
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