RE: Windows XP Backup on a CD -- PCTECH

> -----Original Message-----
> From: pctech-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx / Peter Vidal
> Sent: Friday, July 16, 2004 2:45 PM
>
> "I am currently looking at a shareware program called IMAGE that
> an be found at www.BootItNG.com, it can write a compressed image
> of your hard drive to CD-ROM and, I believe, DVD. "
>
> That is a great idea!  I have Norton Professional and I think
> they have something like that but I have not explore it at all.
> What I need to do is to have my "MY DOCUMENTS" folder backed up
> nicely.  I have all my data, including stuff and applications I
> have bought over the Internet, besides my website.  Currently is
> taking me 7 CDs to save everything from MY DOCUMENTS.
>
> Will this "IMAGE" or "GHOST" tool help me to achieve this also?
> Will all fit in one CD?  Multiple? In case I have to format my HD,
> I can use this image and be back in business as of the backup date?
>
> Peter Vidal

Apparently, I need to investigate my Norton SystemWorks package a little
better; I think it has Ghost on it, but I only recently got a CD burner so I
may have forgotten or missed what Ghost is used for.

In general, think of the image-type backups as a SAVSTG on the AS/400.
Think of the non-image-type backups that run from Windows as a Save menu
option 21, with the exception that while you should be able to use a Save-21
backup to completely restore (except for spoolfiles and dataqueue entries)
and have a operational system, restoring a Windows backup requires other
steps (someone mentioned re-installing Windows before restoring such a
backup, and I would add that you'd have to apply all of the patches issued
since the Windows CD you are restoring from, not that Windows doesn't have
that many <gdr>).

The drawback with most image-type backups is that you can't restore
individual files from them.  That is the part that really drew me to look at
BootItNG's Image app.

Getting back to your statement about the 7 CDs it takes now, and the
subsequent questions, my answer is "it depends"  Yes, the imaging backups
will span multiple CDs.  If it currently takes 7 CDs and you use compression
in your backup, I doubt you're going to get an Image backup to do much
better.  Also, understand that when you do an image backup, you don't have
the option of what to back up; it's all or nothing.  Other factors affecting
number of CDs/DVDs include how fragmented your HDD is and whether the unused
disk space has been wiped with a pattern that is easily compressible.  If
the image backup can be used to restore individual files, you'll want to
make it a habit to defrag before doing the backup, otherwise the potential
is there that you would have to insert multiple CD-roms multiple times to
restore just one file.

It may make sense to break up your HDD into multiple partitions, which the
BootItNG application does (up to 200?!?!?), each bootable.  (Note that the
Image app is built in to BootItNG, but you can buy the Image app by itself,
which is what I think I am going to do.)  The question I am trying to answer
is whether BootItNG's Image forces you to back up the entire physical drive,
or it allows you to pick the partitions to back up.  I'm hoping it's the
latter, otherwise I might be forced to buy CD-Rs by the bulk.  Anyway, under
that scenario, I would create a separate partition for where you'd keep all
of your data (i.e., your documents, spreadsheets, other data
created/maintained by other programs) that can't be restored by
re-installing software.  Then I would be inclined to use the normal Windows
backup on that partition.  I also created a small partition that just has
the Windows swap file in it; no sense backing that up at all.  There are a
whole bunch of scenarios I could throw at you, but you get the idea.

And now I hafta get back to work!

hth,
db