Backup strategy

[smurkin]

Well, 2 days ago I had a brown trouser experience....

My PSU blew...leaving me wondering if my mobo (A-bit KG-7) was fried...problem is I have a RAID 0 HD. As the mobo is probably irreplacable coz its old, I found myself staring at the prospect my most recent un-backed-up mapping project (probably 200 hrs + work) was toast. I have a ghost backup of the os & critical software...but not this project.

Fortunately, it was just the psu that melted & there is no apparent collateral damage.

So Backup...

My OS, exes & data run off a RAID 0 twin 120 (240) Gb array. I have 2x 40 Gb HD's spare & unused....is there a way I can use them (perhaps highly compressed) to mirror or backup my stuff? Alternatively, is there a backup strategy that will focus on eg "My documents" or specific folders.


Thanks

SG

 

[Xavier]

You've plenty of options here, the simplest might be to just use the task scheduler to run a batch file which specifies folders and trees of folders you want backed up, and point the destination as one of your spare drives. You can also use the Microsoft Backup agent to back files and folders into a compressed file.

Alternatively, if you've a LAN then consider moving copies of the files or backups onto another PC, that way if a PSU does go nuts, it won't matter if it takes out all the drives in your chassis as another machine will have an exact copy of yer data.

Xav

 

[RandomBastard]

ill sell you a KG7-R if yours breaks

 

[Shovel]

As Xav says, the simplest route is using a scheduled task and (assuming XP/2000 here) the command line tool XCOPY will do the work for you. Just specify the root folder you want, tell it to include subfolders, tell it to exclude things like "thumbs.db" to save a little space, and then set a switch to only copy files newer than the originals.

Compression wise, depending on needs you could just format the backup destination to NTFS and enable NTFS compression, which will at least squish things a little, again with no effort whatsoever. If you want to do any more than that then it get's slightly complicated, since you start needing an awful lot of working space. Therefore we'll ignore that

This suggested script is untested (it's bed time.. 9am lecture), but should work. Try it with an additional /L switch, to check that it's going to copy the files you expect it to. /L is like a --pretend switch, just reports what it's going to do without actually doing it.

xcopy C:\Maps\ H:\Backup\Maps\ /D /EXCLUDE:thumbs.db /E /H /K

Quick guide:
/D is the date switch. By default this causes only files newer than the destination to be copied.
/EXCLUDE: excludes the specified file (add more with a +filename+filename format).
/E Copies the entire directory tree, and any empty directories
/H copies sytem files
/K maintains file attributes.

You'd then duplicate that command for all the directory trees you want backing up

 

[smurkin]

ill sell you a KG7-R if yours breaks

:worthy: I wish I'd known that while I was crapping my scuds


Thanks fellers....I am exploring all of that...sadly, I dont think xp home has backup agent, or at least I can't find it...but that command line, Shovel, as soon as I get this spare drive unraided & formatted, I'll give that a go.


Thanks again.