wi98se backup

[kala]

I have windows 98se installed.Is it possible to use the supplied backup to backup my boot drive to a second drive or a CDRW.I have tried without success.If not can you suggest software to easily do the backup.

Thank you for your help

James

[Budfred]

What "supplied backup" are you referring to?? Do you mean the backup program that comes with Windoze?? You can probably use that to back it up, but if you want to back up a whole drive, you may what to use something like Norton Ghost or Drive Image. It make an image of the drive that can be reinstalled easily or even put on a new drive....

[Paul Komski]

The problem in backing up a system or boot partition is that the partition is "in use" at the time you want to make the backup (from within windows) thus rendering such backup invalid or corrupt.

I'm sure MSBackup could be used to create a backup of the system partition as long as it were run from another system partition with a second boot OS on it - but not from within the partition you are hoping to copy.

Imaging programs such as Drive Image achieve this by either being run from caldera dos in the first place or by rebooting and running from a "virtual floppy" drive which they create for the purpose.

Proper imaging software also copies other "stuff" related to the partition but which doesnt reside within the partition itself and which is necessary for a proper restoration when required. MSbackup would only backup files within the partition.

PS You might also like to explore creating and using EBCD (http://www.t4k.org/~ebcd/) which contains imaging software on it which you can run from the bootable CDROM that EBCD creates.

[ErnieK]

It is that long since I used MS backup, but, you can safely backup to another partition as well as the partion you are backing up. (In other words you can backup to and from a single drive/partition)

To do so make sure that you only have Explorer and Systray running (Cnrl-Alt-Del to close down other) You will show errors becuase files are in use but this is normal as far as I remember.

Win98 backup CANNOT write direct to CD as it is not designed to do that.

You can make back up and then write the completed backup to disk afterwards. As PAUL said you would be better using the likes of Ghost or a third party Backup program. If you go to the link below you will find a couple of Free programs.

http://www.hsinlin.com/software/backup.html

[Paul Komski]

ErnieK are you sure you can use msbackup to create a partition backup from within Windows in this manner and in such a way that you can use that qic file to restore the partition?

In Win95, msbackup had to be run from dos, (http://pegasus.cc.ucf.edu/~caron/c_backup.htm) to achieve this result. Maybe Win98 is different.

With Win98, I agree that one can "force" msbackup to copy all files on, say the C partition. But is this backup file any good for restoring the whole partition in the event of it being lost/deleted/formatted.

[kala]

Thank you all for the help I will get another program as suggested to do the backup.

James

[Vic 970]

paul,

I remember using backup a while ago to bkp C:/ from within w98se.

it shows errors from progs that were running at the time, ok. and restore was not a problem.

however one has to remember that backup, backs up everything including the backups, so if you bkp C:/ (onto same partition) say 1 Gb next time it will be 2 Gb (disregarding compression for clarity) then 4Gb then 8Gb etc. so you soon run out of disk space.

as for bkp to CD there is an option to bkp to CDRW (in my case 'K') I thought that the problem was not that it would not backup to CD but that it would not span CD. I have an idea that I tried it once, and it reported media full but no option to enter another disk. that was a while ago however, so I could be wrong.

[Paul Komski]

Out of interest - how did you run the restore Vik?

The spanning of multiple CDs could be achieved using a file splitter/merger utility - but one would still have the problem of merging them and then running msbackup from a corrupt or absent partition.

I can see how msbackup can restore all or individual files once Win98 is up and running - but how do you restore an empty partition or one that for whatever reason one cant get back into. To my mind this is where true imaging software (Drive Image is my favorite by a long way) comes into its own.

Another problem to be aware of with MSbackup is that the different versions released by MS are not all compatible with each other. They are not even backwards compatible such that the version shipped with later versions will not necessarily work on earlier versions. I remember this being a big problem when moving from Win95to98 or it may have been Win98toME. I had to go back to a box with the earlier version to restore my data and then copy it uncompressed.

Another thing is speed. I just tried backing up C onto D on a Win98 box using its native msbackup. 29minutes later it ran out of space; Drive Image creates the partition image (both were set for high compression) in the same space in under 5 minutes.

PS Remember too that if restoring to a bad system partition that it may have to be manually marked as the active partition. Imaging software would normally take care of this aspect of things as well. MSbackup as backup rather than imaging software can usefully create incremental backups, particularly of data files, and which is where it and software like it come into its own.

[Vic 970]

just tried again writing to cdrw. when it gets to the limit of the media, it just reports that theres not enough room, delete some files and try again.
as you say an option would be to bkp to another partition, use file splitter then write to CD. when required merge to partition then restore from there.

I have only rtestored from another partition.

I still feel that all this backup stuff is fine when your backiing up, its when you restore that you find the problems and its then too late.

I am playing with ghost at the moment.

[ErnieK]

Paul
Vic has saved me typing a reply.

As to your question about restoring to empty partition

You cannot. You need an installation of 98 before you can restore a backup. Only any good for restoring corrupted program files and documnets. This is the reason I have not used it for 3-4 years.

As you say I strongly believe the best type of back up is (ghost) imaging. More so with programs like Drive image (and I think newer versoins of ghost) that allows you to restore individual files

[Paul Komski]

He He

its when you restore that you find the problems and its then too late
Absolutely !! - indeed my question was going to be: "do you trust msbackup enough to delete your partition and use it to restore your system?" I would trust DI enough to do this - indeed I do it regularly.

that allows you to restore individual files
DI comes with an associated prog called Image Explorer. When you use this to access the .pqi images you can restore the individual files to their original or to any new position you desire.

;)