Suggestions on a simple computer backup plan?

[Handruin]

A friend at work asked me a simple way to backup his entire computer and I was thinking some type of external hard drive might be a good method.

He has one home PC running windows XP home. It has roughly a 40GB hard drive and he would like to backup the entire system. My thought was to use an external hard drive (maybe 100GB) and use something like norton ghost or Acronis True Image. Does anyone else have suggestions...simplicity is key?

He doesn't want to dig around his hard drive to find .pst files, bookmarks, .jpg's, etc. A one-touch button backup is ideal (something like Maxtor's One Touch drives)...if you know of any viable solutions I'm curious to hear opinions.

 

[ddrueding]

You got it. Acronis TrueImage and a USB drive is the way to go. For such a small target drive; I'd actually think about getting 2x 40GB pocket-sized ones, and rotate them through.

 

[timwhit]

I would go with the bigger drive now, so that if/when he upgrades, he doesn't need to purchase a new backup drive.

 

[Handruin]

Which pocket-sized ones are you referring to? I'm not familiar with them at all.

 

[Handruin]

I know he's trying to keep the price down, so that's why I mentioned a 100GB drive vs a 300 or larger. He just upgraded the RAM and video card in his P4 system, so I don't think he'll be upgrading for a while (unless if the machine dies). I think he'd like to keep this around $100 - $150 or less if possible. Acronis is $50 alone, so that's why I'm asking around for other suggestions.

 

[Mercutio]

Acronis can be had for $25.
Buy a 160GB drive for maybe $70.
Buy a USB external case for $20.

That is reasonable and it is EASY to set up.

Make one full system backup and do daily incremental backups of the documents and settings folder, less some Temporary Internet Files/FF cache-type folders, and that drive will last a long, long time before it fills up.

 

[Bozo]

Acronis built in scheduler is great. Once setup it can make backups automatically.
You can also set up the Acronis Secure Zone for a one touch repair.

Bozo :joker:

 

[ddrueding]

If his system drive is 40GB, getting a drive larger than 40GB to hold an image of his system is silly.

This is a smaller USB drive that doesn't need seperate power so it's easy to use.

That, plus Acronis ($30) is all you need.

 

[Handruin]

My only concern with getting a drive the same exact size if that it will run out of space much sooner if he uses the change-log/incremental backups way of tracking changes, no? I've had no prior experience with Acronis so I don't fully know all its features yet.

If you think the 40GB drive would work, I think it's a good overall price with Acronis for a simple backup plan for around $100. That makes it even easier since it doesn't need separate power and is smaller in size.

How easy is it to restore a system with Acronis? I've only used ghost in the past and that was always done through DOS. I've never used any of these windows based software solution for drive imaging.

 

[ddrueding]

Acronis does it in Windows, both create and restore, very easily. All I do is store a backup image of my entire system drive. I don't do incremental, I just re-do the whole thing when I think it's been a while (if you've ever had to do a restore from incremental backups, you know it sucks). The only advantage to doing incremental is that you can get multiple revisions of files (sometimes, but a real PITA). Otherwise, you may as well just do the whole thing.

 

[Handruin]

If windows blows up...how does one restore using an Acronis backup? Do you need to reinstall windows, install acronis, and then restore the image? Or do they have some way to restore from a floppy/CD-ROM?

 

[Bozo]

If windows blows up...how does one restore using an Acronis backup? Do you need to reinstall windows, install acronis, and then restore the image? Or do they have some way to restore from a floppy/CD-ROM?

Actually, all the above. :-D

After you install Acronis, you make a boot CD that you can restore with. This will do a bare metal install.

Bozo :joker:

 

[Pradeep]

You can also boot from the True Image CD, and select a network location to restore from.

 

[Adcadet]

I would love something that can be plugged into a USB2 port or my network (ethernet) and has two 400GB drives in RAID 0 and some sort of backup program that can pull data off of multiple PCs. From what I can tell I'd need Acronis True Image Corporate for backing up multiple PCs. Any idea on an external enclosure that can run two HDs in RAID 0? Maybe the RAID part is overkill and I could just spring for two external enclosures.

 

[Adcadet]

Are there any practical speed differences between an external HD connected over USB2 vs. a NAS with 100 mb ethernet? What about gb ethernet?

 

[LunarMist]

Are there any practical speed differences between an external HD connected over USB2 vs. a NAS with 100 mb ethernet? What about gb ethernet?

100 mb ethernet = too slow

 

[P5-133XL]

Yes, 100Mb only results in aprox 10MB/s usable speed on a switched network. Since modern drives are commonly able to sustain 20-30MB/s, you can do the math and see why 100Mb Ethernet isn't acceptable.

If you are gonna do NAS, 1000Mb Ethernet is much better than 100Mb Ethernet because even without jumbo frames you should be able to get 300Mb which will result in 30MB/s usable speed.

USB 2.0 has a speed of 480Mb which results in aprox 48MB/s. Which is entirely aceeptable speed for a HD.

 

[CityK]

Just to add a further tidbit to Mark's info:

Keep in mind that the quoted usb2 speed (480 Mbps or ~57.2 MBps) is the theoretical transfer limit. In real practice, you'll get much lower results ... best I ever achieved (when I've actually taken the time to benchmark the transfer rate) was a shade under 28MBps....that was a while back. Perhaps chipset combos (motherboard usb controller <--> enclosure usb bridge controller) have improved some, as I just glanced at a few recent Tech report reviews, and they have them showing with ~32MBps rates. Still a far cry from their ceiling.

I guess that factor about transfer rates also points out that you most certainly don't need RAID0 ... the other factor would be that you're looking at a backup solution, and that most definitely eliminates RAID0 .... perhaps you meant RAID1 ?

 

[Adcadet]

I guess that factor about transfer rates also points out that you most certainly don't need RAID0 ... the other factor would be that you're looking at a backup solution, and that most definitely eliminates RAID0 .... perhaps you meant RAID1 ?

Yes, sorry, I get confused between Raid 0 and 1 all the time. I would never consider a Striped array for anything. Mirrored I would definitely consider.