Fast, Easy Backups
For Win98 / ME / NT / 2K / XP
Copyright © 1997-2005 Fred Langa/ Langa Consulting LLC. All worldwide rights reserved.
10) FRED’S LARGE-PARTITION BACKUP ROUTINE
Alas, with Win2K and XP, my core, “essential files” partition is too large for the one-step Drive Image method to work as an everyday thing. So I developed a multi-part process that on most days takes literally just a few minutes to complete, and yet provides extremely high “restorability” for my systems. Here’s the first step:
For routine daily backups, I use a tool (like Windows’ built-in NTBackup) that allows for unattended backups so I can schedule operations to happen automatically at night. (But if I were using something like Win98’s MSBackup, I could perform the same tasks in attended mode during the day; say, during a coffee break or lunch. It’d just be a little less convenient.)
I use the backup tool to clone all my most-rapidly-changing files, and those that carry my personal system customizations. In XP, it’s easy: I just flag for backup most everything in my “C:\Documents and Settings\Fred” folder and subfolders. Your location and specific backup choices may vary, but whatever your specifics, you’d simply use your backup tool’s front-end to focus on your most-important user files and the core system setup files that frequently change. For example, you probably want your “My Documents” folder, and you may also want folders such as “Favorites,” “Application Data,” and so on. But you wouldn’t need to backup up files that don’t often change: Your “System” or “System32” folders, for example, usually only change when you install new software or make a truly major system change; you may not need to back this stuff up every day. (I don’t.)
Once I’ve selected the files and folders I want backed up, I tell the backup tool to place the resulting backup file on a separate partition--- my D: drive--- and I then set the backup job as an automated task to run late at night. Having set up the backup once, it then will run exactly the same way, every night at the same time, providing me with automatic backups with no further effort on my part. (Again, with a non-automated tool, like MSBackup, I’d just run the job manually during lunch or a coffee break.)
Because I’m backing to a hard drive partition instead of tape, CD or another medium, the backup is very, very fast--- typically only about 2-3 minutes on my system. (The number of files and the speed of your CPU and drive(s) will determine how long this step takes on your PC.)
But we’re not done, because the backups files themselves are large, and because they still exist only inside the PC, where a major system problem could wipe out both the original files and the backup copies. So I do another step:
To keep the backups from occupying too much space and to facilitate moving them to off-site storage, I run a script to automatically change the name of the backup to a date-based name (so I can keep many backups straight), and automatically to use WinZip to place the renamed backup file in a maximally compressed, password-protected Zip file. (More on this script in a moment.) This takes another 4-5 minutes or so, on my system. I also have this backup/rename/compress operation run automatically in the middle of the night, every night, but again, it’s also fast enough that I can run it on demand when I'm about to make any significant system change (or if I were using non-automated backup tools): A 10 minute coffee break later, and my system can be well backed up.
The daily backups capture all the most-essential stuff, but there’s still the need for total system backups of *everything.* So, I still use Drive Image to capture "all the bits" (see http://www.langa.com/newsletters/2001/2001-12-03.htm#1 ) and to ensure I can roll my entire system back to a known-good state: I have DI5 set up to run automatically twice a week in the middle of the night, and I also run it manually before any really major system change. I use DI5's "Quick Image" to clone my entire C: partition using maximum data compression, and automatically to split the backup file into pieces that will fit onto separate CDs, and to password-protect the whole thing. DI5 places these CD-sized files in the same directory where I store the normal daily backup files--- on a separate partition, away from my main files. [UPDATED INFO: HERE]
Thus, every morning, I sit down to find my system has backed up all my essential data into a ZIP file whose name is the date on which the backup was created; and twice a week I also find that Drive Image has kicked in to clone my entire C: partition. As a background task during the day (so there’s no interruption of my work) I burn these files to blank CDs, and then store the CDs offsite for maximum safety.
The whole thing costs me pennies a day: The Zip-compressed backup files, representing my most valuable and rapidly-changing data, currently run around 200-300MB, so they easily fit on a single CD. The DI5 all-the-bits backup currently fits on 3 CDs. So, most weeks, I achieve total data security for about $0.77 a week--- about a dime a day--- at current CD sale prices, or for about $1.65 a week for normal, non-sale bulk-purchase CD prices. How can you beat that?
Just as described earlier in the “Small Partition” process, every month or so, when my D: partition starts to run out of disk space from the accumulating backup files, I delete the oldest backup files, and start fresh. This way, I always have many days’ worth of recent backups both in “live” storage (on the hard drive, from which restores are fast and convenient) and on CD in a remote location as well. After a month or so, I no longer have the live, on-disk copy, but I still have--- and will have, for years--- the on-CD copy.
Because most of the backups and Drive Imaging happens unattended, at night; it's an almost-effortless way to ensure that I have multiple backups of both the data and the system state. Combined with XP's own "system restore," which can deal with minor roll-back issues, I feel I can weather just about any problem that might happen. And because I store my backup CDs offsite, that means I can even recover from major problems--- lightning, fire, flood, theft--- that might otherwise ruin my PC and all the on-system backups.
Next: FRED’S FREE LARGE-PARTITION
BACKUP-MANAGEMENT SCRIPT
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