XP mirrored disk/backup

[GeoffW]

Hi, my first thread on NTLH.

I was hoping someone might offer some advice on the best way provide some resilience for my XP home PC. I bought a new HD having realised I now have so much data and so many apps on my system that I really would want it to croak without having a backup or being able to restore it.

My first thought was disk mirroring - wrong XP Home doesn't do it. So I thought about backup, but the problem with a backup is that unless it runs automatically and in the background, I'll never remember to run it. I found the NTbackup on the XP disk, and apart from the fact it hangs part way through, it is a solution, albeit a poor one. So can anyone recommend any utilities (preferably free) that could mirror my disk or back it up without me doing anything other than set up the backup.

Thanks.

[Flubflow]

Normally I would use something like Ghost and do a disk image copy every week or every month (depending on how important your PC is to you). Sadly Windows XP rather puts the mockers on that idea unless the original drive is OK and just needs a reformat and you can image copy the back up straight back onto it. If you need a new original drive or try to use an imaged copy directly from the backup drive then XP won't work me thinks (because of all this activation rubbish). Perhaps there is some tweak on the net that gets round this.

[Stuartbe]

Originally Posted by GeoffW

Hi, my first thread on NTLH.

I was hoping someone might offer some advice on the best way provide some resilience for my XP home PC. I bought a new HD having realised I now have so much data and so many apps on my system that I really would want it to croak without having a backup or being able to restore it.

My first thought was disk mirroring - wrong XP Home doesn't do it. So I thought about backup, but the problem with a backup is that unless it runs automatically and in the background, I'll never remember to run it. I found the NTbackup on the XP disk, and apart from the fact it hangs part way through, it is a solution, albeit a poor one. So can anyone recommend any utilities (preferably free) that could mirror my disk or back it up without me doing anything other than set up the backup.

Thanks.

You dont need windows xp to support a mirror drive arangement. It can be done at hardware level.

You can buy a motherboard that has a raid controler built in or you can jhust buy the card. Everything you write to one disk will be copied to the other automaticaly - you dont need to do anything.

A drive mirror will protect you from hdd failure but now fron file deltion and viruses. You should have another form of backup for that.
HTH

A big to the site BTW

[GeoffW]

Thanks, Stuart I hadn't thought about a hardware solution. It's a bit drastic for now, but when I replace my motherboard it will definitely have hardware RAID. For now I was looking for a software solution.

[Doofy]

Originally Posted by GeoffW

Thanks, Stuart I hadn't thought about a hardware solution. It's a bit drastic for now, but when I replace my motherboard it will definitely have hardware RAID. For now I was looking for a software solution.

I normally use ghost or drive image

[Xaccers]

IDE controllers with RAID are dirt cheap, have a look around and see what you can find.
I needed one myself as my harddrives are ATA-133, but my motherboard can only handle ATA-100

If you just want an image of your drive then like people have said - use Ghost.

If you want to use raid then only do it via hardware - software raid is slower and uses up your pc's resources.

[Sociable]

Another "compromise" solution is to run dual boot so that getting the system up and running is almost instant but making regular back ups of the un recoverable data you accumulate by making backup cd's of the "My Documents" folder and posibly also the email database files.

I also have a special folder which I keep for copies of handy progs and info in which I also back up about once a month or so. (Nothing worse than finding the download link you rely on as the backup has suddenly disappeared.) LOL

I mainly use CD/RW for this as I can then "update" the backup rather than just copying everything, but I also make a "hard Copy" on CDr every once in a while to cover the times when a document gets deleted as being no longer of use, only to be absolutely essential the very next day. LOL

The final tip worth considering is to keep the data partitions seperate from the operating system ones as often one may need to just format and reinstall the windows partition but get forced to format the data files too if they share the same drive.

Just something to add to the melting pot of very good advice already given.

[GeoffW]

Thanks for the helpful replies, but I guess there is no easy answer for someone as lazy, disorganised and tightwadded as myself. I guess I either need to spend £60 on ghost and remember to image it regularly, or ~£80 on a raid MB.

I think it sucks that an OS as widely used as XP has no facility to safeguard itself and the users data, but with hindsight I should have probably thought of this before shelling out wads of cash on my PC.