Backup and restore - Win XP home

[Alister]

I have been reading about backup and restore on the internet before I start with it on my computer, but I don't feel confident enough. So please can someone help me out here?

What I need is the following:
I want to have a system backup that enables me to restore my system and my applications in case of a crash or if I install a new OS and I decide to restore to my previous OS and applications. How should I backup my computer to achieve the above?

Can Windows ntbackup utility do this or I need a third party program?
Can the free backup software syncback do this?

[netcracker]

Acronis True Image allows you to create an exact disk image for complete system backup and disk cloning providing the most comprehensive data protection.

The disk backup file contains the exact copy of a hard disk, including all the computer data, operating system, and programs.

After a system crash you can restore the entire system or simply replace lost files and folders from your disk backup.

Based on the exclusive Acronis Drive Snapshot disk imaging technology, Acronis True Image allows you to create an online system disk backup without reboot to keep the system productive. The product provides the fastest bare-metal restore dramatically reducing a downtime and your IT costs.


quoted from http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/products/trueimage/

[PrntRhd]

Alister,
It depends on how much backup you need. Any backup is better than no backup:
Backing up your data is paramount.
Backing up your setups is nice.
Backing up your whole partition is superior.

I personally am using DriveImage2002/DriveImage7. It lets me image the entire HDD to compressed image on CD-ROM or hidden HDD partition or network drive, including all the drivers, setups, licenses, absolutely everything. It is not cheap!
Netcracker's link is to Acronis True Image which is somewhat similar, about $20 cheaper.
Symantec's Ghost is another choice for the imaging route, about $20 more expensive.
Check out many of Sylvander's posts, he has about 5 ways to do backups, some free and some paid.

[Paul Komski]

BootIt-NG from http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/ is fully functional trialware and much cheaper than the apps already mentioned here. It is a great utility and you get a partitioning and boot manager into the bargain. Its like getting Partition Magic, Boot Magic and Drive Image all in one application.

DriveImage is indeed very good but more expensive.

Imaging/Cloning is much the best way to go IMHO - and the only way to go if you want to reinstate a whole OS.

[Alister]

Thanks guys.
I have decided to go for AISBackup. It has the most features from all the available softwares on the market and is $37.5! And very good manuals and support.
Because Partion Magic 8 was not able to partition my 200GB C drive, I decided not to take chance with other partitioning software and go for an external hard drive.

[Paul Komski]

Alister - and especially since you have PM8.

Owners of Partition Magic have to look no further than their installation CDs for one of the best BackUp Programs and which is called DataKeeper. I never understand why so few people (including PM owners) don't even know about this great program.

It's a no brainer to use (once you have set it up) since it constantly runs in the background and thus automatically backs up the files/folders you have designated, when changes are made to them. Its up to you how often to store complete copies of the originals or whether to always use incremental back-ups and such like.

It can be configured to only backup onto removable media/devices or to also have a secondary location on the hard drive itself. The latter can then be used by the program running constantly in the background and when the removable media is reattached the backups made in the interim are copied from the secondary to the primary backup location.

The particular point I like about it is its automaticity - which means that one doesnt have to remember to do backups; just to remember to attach the backup media or device from time to time. I personally use a second fixed HDD so that this process is truly continuous. As it happens, I also use a mirrored array for the primary drive so that in the case of HDD failure I have no down time.

[Alister]

Paul,
I am aware of DataKeeper, but the fact is that I am not happy with P.M.! It could not even extract a smaller partition out of my 200Gb C drive!
I also gave up on AISBackup after trying it. It does not look professional. It also does not support disaster recovery for win XP.
I'm still lokking...

[Sylvander]

Strongly advise you to keep the C: partition as small as possible and keep only the "Windows" and "Program Files" folders, plus odds & ends on it.
This means it is quick to backup and restore and defragment.
It would be a smart idea to keep the OS [or OS's in a multi-boot environment] on a small separate HDD. Then [to fix a configuration or infection or program or Windows problem] you could re-partition and/or re-format that drive and all your data would remain safe and untouched on the other HDD.
What I do in practice is keep my emails, address book, My Documents, favourites, Temporary Internet Files on the D: partition and huge files like wave and MP3 on the E: partition.
I use small cluster sizes for small files on a small partition, large clusters for large files on a large partition.
In my case I use a 3rd party backup program ["Simple Backup"] to make backups [of C: and D:] to CD-RW disks.
If I'm forced to re-partition the HDD everything on the drive is lost [that's why it would be a good idea to have the OS's on a small HDD, and the rest on the other, much larger HDD], so it's really important I have backups that are not held on that HDD.
Re-formatting the C: partition is ok.
When the C: partition has been restored, Windows can then be booted.
Once Windows has been booted it's possible to restore the other partitions from within Windows.
That means it's possible [even if not the best of methods] to restore using Microsofts own backup program that runs only within Windows [in Win9x].
I've just recently set up an external IDE HDD in an enclosure that connects using USB [1.1 or 2.0] and making backups direct to that using Microsoft Backup. It took 1hr 30 min to make a backup file 3,455,000,000 Bytes to that drive. That was 3.22GB of files on the E: partition.
Thank goodness I don't need to back those up nearly as often as the C: partition. :)

[Alister]

I've got Acronis Drive Partition too now. As I mentioned, PM8 could not partion the 200 Gb which is probably due to its limitation to 80 Gb!
By the way, partitioning the 200 Gb C drive which has the OS allready on it, will kep my OS in tact, right? Because I am not going to format it.

[Paul Komski]

As long your 200GB partition was not more than 90% full of data, then PM 8.0 should be able to manage any partition up to 300GB.
Ref = http://www.symantec.com/partitionmagic/features.html
As a matter of possibly unrelated interest, PM most often "screws up" when partitions are very full.

Two quotes:
1) Because Partion Magic 8 was not able to partition my 200GB C drive,

2) It could not even extract a smaller partition out of my 200Gb C drive!
From these quotes I now just wonder how exactly you are attempting things and whether you have been attempting it from within Windows or from a PM boot floppy and also how you originally got a single 200GB partition.

It occurs to me that to "extract" a partition from the 200GB you must first either delete an existing 200GB partition or else resize it. Both these methods will create some unallocated space. You would then create a new partition of whatever size you wanted in that unallocated space. I would avoid using the split partition option if that is available to you. PM should non-destructively be able to resize an existing partition and leave the data and file system intact on it - BUT - any partitioning utility can go astray so do have your backups in place before proceeding.

One word of warning - dont resize the existing system partition in such a way that you make any new PRIMARY partitions in front of it. Only create new primary partitions after the current one - or be prepared to have to get in to modify boot.ini at a later stage.

[Alister]

This is how my Hard drive is organised. From the whole 200 Gb, I have a 5 Gb D drive(FAT32) that contains a disaster recovery copy of my OS. The remaing of the 200 Gb is my C drive(NTFS). More than 160 Gb of this partition is unused, but of course allocated. I used PM from within windows that did not work. I have no idea why! But I read on the website of PM that there was a 80Gb limitation!?
What I want to do is to resize the C partition to become smaller, say 50 Gb and have the rest as a new partition.

[Sylvander]

"C partition to become smaller, say 50 Gb"
I'd make it more like 5GB!
My C: partition [holding Win98se] is only 3,000MB of which 1.84GB is used. That also includes more than 50 programs.

"I have a 5 Gb D drive(FAT32) that contains a disaster recovery copy of my OS."
And if Windows won't boot how will that be restored?
Backups on another partition on the same HDD are better than not having anything, but sometimes you're forced to re-partition and re-format, in which case those backups are lost. On my other PC I have an old [1.2GB] HDD as the D: drive and that's very useful. Even when I re-partition the Primary Master HDD, that drive remains untouched.

"I used PM from within windows that did not work."
It would probably work if you'd booted the copy on the floppies.
I'd guess you cannot repartition [on the fly] the partition that the OS is working from.

[Paul Komski]

I used PM from within windows that did not work. I have no idea why! But I read on the website of PM that there was a 80Gb limitation!?
I regularly do partition work on a 120gig HDD with PM8 so the 80gig limitation is certainly wrong and I would suspect that, as they state, PM supports drives up to 300gig.

In what way did it not work from within windows? PM doesn't do ("on the fly") partition work on any partition that windows is using at the time and instead reboots to a Virtual Floppy drive and runs the program from there before rebooting normally. If this rebooting didn't occur then the problem may lie with your hardware being incompatible in some way and not with PM per se.

The PM floppies can be absolute life savers, though I mostly use PM from either a configured EBCD (emergency boot cd) or from a small hidden DOS partition at the start of the drive and on which I keep a number of DOS-based utilities. In emergencies this can be easily unhidden or made active using PTedit on the PM boot floppy.

PM should have no problem in resizing your C: drive and will tell you the min and max you can resize it to. If it doesn't reboot to run the virtual floppy run it from the real PM floppies.

Always ensure important data is backed up before using any partition utilities.

[Louis Lee]

1. Preparation

1.1. Burn a free Live Linux CD

Download from here http://www.knoppix.org/

KNOPPIX is a bootable CD with a collection of GNU/Linux software, automatic hardware detection, and support for many graphics cards, sound cards, SCSI and USB devices and other peripherals. KNOPPIX can be used as a Linux demo, educational CD, rescue system, or adapted and used as a platform for commercial software product demos. It is not necessary to install anything on a hard disk. Due to on-the-fly decompression, the CD can have up to 2 GB of executable software installed on it.

1.2. Boot up your Knoppix Live CD

2. Backup Disk Image

2.1. Copy Master Boot Record (MBR)

Type at prompt:
> dd if=/dev/hda of=hda-mbr-image bs=512 count=1

Read 'dd' manual, type:
> man dd

Devices explaination see here:
http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Partition/partition-2.html

Check available partitions, type:
> fdisk -l

2.2. Create Disk Image of 300G primary IDE first partition

Type:
> dd if=/dev/hda1 bs=1G count=300 | gzip > hda1-image.gz

3. Restore Disk Image

3.1. Restore Master Boot Record (MBR)

Type:
> dd if=hda-mbr-image of=/dev/hda >& /dev/null

3.2. Restore hda1 image

Type:
> zcat hda1-image.gz | dd of=/dev/hda1 >& /dev/null

Good luck and have fun!

[pop pop]

That is absolutely brilliant...if it works. I know many people who use Linux bootables for troubleshooting Windoze-based systems, but I never heard of--or thought of this. Marvelous idea!

[Sylvander]

Whew!
Knoppix took 2hrs 16min to download. :(

[Sylvander]

...But I'm astonished how easy to use!
Just booted from the CD and it worked 1st time and here I am browsing the PC-Guide using its version of Firefox.
Pretty good GUI too considering its running from a CD-RW disk.

WOW! :D :cool:

[Alister]

... I once tried to burn an iso image onto a CD, but it never worked. Isn't it supposed to become bootable? I did not burn it as regular data CD, but I chose the ISO image feature of the burning kit. The image I am talking about is the image of Recovery Console from here (http://forum.tweakxp.com/forum/Topic153115-39-1.aspx?DisplayMode=1&#bm160275).
How did you exactly burn this?

[Sylvander]

"Isn't it supposed to become bootable?"
It certainly is, and it does too. :D

"How did you exactly burn this?"
Astonishingly easy. Only easy IF you do it right of course.
I used "Easy CD Creator->File->Create CD From Disk Image..." and "chose" the ".iso" file.
That simple.

[Paul Komski]

Alister - If you haven't sussed this or cannot still make the correct CD then tell us which burning software are you using? Then we can be sure we are on the same wavelength.

Glad you posted because I had forgotten to respond to Louis Lee's very interesting post.

The principles involved in the suggested way of making a free backup using Linux are sound - but there are a couple of hitches that need to be overcome.

Firstly if using Knoppix on a CD then the output is not going to work properly (as written) since the standard output is going to want to write either to the Knoppix CD or to a RAM drive (not sure which is the standard output in Knoppix) so the destination partition and folder would need to be specified.

Thus, for example, if backing up the mbr into a backup folder on a second IDE hard drive the command line used above would need to be modified to read: dd if=/dev/hda of=/dev/hdb1/backup/hda-mbr-image bs=512 count=1

The second problem is that no Linux distros (that I know of yet) can natively and directly write to an NTFS partition. So the destination partition must be DOS or Linux - unless someone knows a distro that can do this. I know about using Captive (http://www.jankratochvil.net/project/captive/) for such NTFS writes but I haven't yet tried it and it does rather complicate matters.

The last problem is speed. On my own system and using SuSE 9.0 Home any such imaging takes about four times longer than using Drive Image.

Apart from those limitations it is a fine free way to make and restore such image backups. I just think that imaging a 300GB partition is going to take the whole of a "weekend" to make the image and one must also have an appropriately sized second drive on which to store it.

[Alister]

Paul - I have Sonic Recordnow which does not support iso images, but for this I used Nero 6. I simply chose to burn an iso image, then I was instructed to select the iso file and it all started. I used a CD-RW media. The CD was "kind of" bootable! Upon reboot, a dos screen appeared scrolling fast. I just could see that there was an error regarding a USB and at the end I got the A:\ prompt! I made a dir to see what is on the CD, I certainly did not see anything like recovery console!

[Paul Komski]

I can use my own RecordNow to burn images.

Blank CD in Drawer
Start Record Now
File Menu
New Job
Global Image or Other Image
Add File (choose iso file type and browse to the downloaded iso)
Hit the red Record Button.

The CD created is bootable. It has a B&W Starting Windows screen followed by the blue and white text mode screens the same as when running WinXP setup.

PS
The MD5 checksum for the RC.ISO is as follows if you want to check the integrity of your own download.

[Info]
Version=1
Format=MD5
Date=18.05.2005
CreatedBy=CDCheck (http://elpros.si/CDCheck/)

[Data]
DIR
cedb277eaf09d4cc3ca2825f125c0a01 RC.iso

[Alister]

I checked the image file with CDCheck. There were no problems. My Recordnow does not seem to have the iso burning option (this is not a full version), so I tried Nero again. I chose to make a bootable CD and I chose "burning images". I don't know how it tries to make it bootable, but when I try to boot from the CD, as before, a DOS alike screen appears saying: "Starting Caldera DR-DOS" and then I get the A:\ prompt after a bunch of messages. What is going on!?

[Paul Komski]

If you get to that A: prompt you have probably successfully booted to the CD but the CD has not actually started up on its own. That A: prompt is either a real floppy in the floppy drive or a part of a CD using "floppy emulation" - though I dont think that the recovery console iso uses any emulation - so that's a bit puzzling.

Are you sure you selected the correct image file when choosing to burn from Nero and did you get to a screen similar to the attached?

If the MD5 is the same as the value I posted the iso must be OK. Perhaps there is a problem with your medium. You could also try burning at a slower speed.

[Alister]

I am sure that I selected the correct iso image. If I explore the CD, i see that the correct file is on the CD! However I do not understand the MD5. I checked the file with CDCheck and it reported that the file was in good condition. I did not get any MD5 number as you mention!
I don't recall having seen the above screen either.

[Paul Komski]

To get/calculate an MD5 value you must select hash and not check. Select the source file (RC.ISO) and a destination folder for where the result should be written. Select as per the attached pic but with you own values substituted. Then compare the 32-digit hexadecimal number it creates with the one I calculated from a known good file viz: cedb277eaf09d4cc3ca2825f125c0a01

This hash (or any checksum) is calculated from the file's structure and if as much as one bit (not even one byte) is different it will generate a different 32-digit hexadecimal "hash".

[Alister]

Hi Paul,
It did not produce the same code as yours! Here is what I got:
-----------------------------
[Info]
Version=1
Format=MD5
Date=27.05.2005
CreatedBy=CDCheck (http://elpros.si/CDCheck/)

[Data]
DIR
d6eeddbf6d23202cf8df05c37655958c RecoveryConsole.iso
---------------------------------------------------------
Is my download corrupted? CDCheck rports that there were no errors, but one warning!

[Paul Komski]

The only thing I can say for sure is that your RecoveryConsole.iso and mine are not the same. Yours is either a different version or is a corrupt download. I would try downloading it again since mine does work properly. Is there a reason for yours having the name RecoveryConsole.iso and not RC.iso as per the download from http://forum.tweakxp.com/forum/Topic153115-39-1.aspx?DisplayMode=1&#bm160275

[Alister]

I downloaded it from the same link, so it should be the same file. I only renamed it so that I can remember what that is after some time. Can you please post back the exact size of the download?
Thanks ---

[Paul Komski]

FWIW, the size is 7,716,864 bytes. However you could have a file of the same size but with a different MD5 hash if just one of those bytes had a different value. Let's say there was, for example some text in the file and a letter A had been changed to a letter B. That would only change one bit in the relevant byte but the total number of bytes would be the same. So file corruption is not detected by checking file sizes - only by comparing checksums of one sort or another. That's the actual point of using an algorithm to confirm a file's identitly.

[Alister]

I downloaded the image once again and problem solved. Thanks Paul.
Let me ask you a few things about it now. Booting from th CD brought to a blue screen with three choices, Setup of windows, Repair (RC) and exit. I tried "R" to get in RC. Unlike my expectation, the screen was black with a dos prompt not blue as I expected. It again gave me choice among three OS!? By selecting C:\Windows, I was prompted to enter administrator password. My password was rejected, so I just hit the return and I got the prompt. I guess this is because the administrator password in home eddition is none by default. Right?
But then I tried to browse the files under C:\program files, but then it said "access denied"!
I wonder if I really was in the Recovery Console.

[Paul Komski]

The blue to black after R is normal. The run setup of windows option is a carry over from the full installation CD but will not take you through a reinstallation on this mini iso.

It first displays all existing installations that it finds, which I though you selected by choosing a number rather than pressing Enter; perhaps the end result is the same.

You have to insert the Admin password and this is Enter if none was previousy set by you.

The prompt is usually sitting at the Windows folder. There are limits to where you are allowed to navigate to and I think these are within the Root of C and withing Windows.

So all you have described sounds normal.