Computer back-up revisited.

[Boomyal]

Some time back I posted this question and I think that Xcusme posted a link to a program in answer to my post. As it turned out, the program did not do what I had hoped. I even emailed the outfit to confirmed that to be the case. They said maybe sometime in the future but not now.<br /><br />I thought I'd ask again in the event that something new has developed or that someone else might know of a program.<br /><br />I run my little Dossy business program off of an external FireWire drive attached to a PC that also has two internal harddrives. For safety sake I back up the data file every time I do entries on the program. I copy and paste it to each of the internal harddrives. I figure that the likelyhood of a failure of all three drives at once is very unlikely.<br /><br />Here is my hope. I'd like to find a program that would let me set up any number of copy and paste back up functions and let me execute them with the push of one button (icon). <br /><br />For example: Firewire data file to each of the other two internal drives and the program itself to each of the internal hard drives. All of these functions chained together so when I push the button I can just get up and walk away.<br /><br />Any ideas??

 

[tomatolord]

Re: Computer back-up revisited.

Yes - you need a script or a batch file to do it - just find out what the commands are to run in a dos window and your are free to go! <br /><br />If you cant do it yourself someone in a geek shop should be able to help you.<br /><br />OR<br /><br />There are many windows key repeater (macro's) programs out there. You do it once and it records your keystrokes then creates a file out of the strokes - next time just double click on the file and away it goes.<br /><br />tomatolord

 

[Solittle]

Re: Computer back-up revisited.

Though not in the DOS world I am a big advocate of a back-up program for windows called Acronis. Google it.

 

[Boomyal]

Re: Computer back-up revisited.

Originally posted by SoLittle:<br /> Though not in the DOS world I am a big advocate of a back-up program for windows called Acronis. Google it.

I run this program in Windows so I'll check it out SoLittle. Thanks

 

[vipzach]

Re: Computer back-up revisited.

boom, you need to create yourself a batch file. There are articles out there that would explain how to do them. You could create batch file that would do what you wanted everytime you click it.

 

[Xcusme]

Re: Computer back-up revisited.

Making a batch file to do what you need is not a big deal. It can be a bit of a hassle if your not versed in the old DOS commands. Basically, it involves using the notepad to type out the commands to copy your data files From some place TO some place else.<br />In this case, the FROM part is the location of your data files folder. The TO part is the folders on the other drives.<br /><br />As an example:<br /><br />command....FROM....TO<br /><br />xcopy c:\myprogram\data\*.* d:\backup<br /><br />"xcopy'is the command and does the copying part<br />"c:\myprogram\data\*.*" is the FROM part<br />"d:\backup" is the TO part<br /><br />The above command line will take all files (*.*) in the data folder of myprogram and copy them over to the D: drive into a folder called backup..<br /><br />To copy the same files to another drive, just change the TO part.<br /><br />Example:<br /><br />xcopy c:\myprogram\data\*.* e:\backup<br /><br />You get the idea.<br /><br />The only problem that comes to mind is the fact that each time you do a backup, you're overwriting the previous backed up files. As long as you don't want to restore the data files to a previous date in time you're alright.<br /><br />A slicker way to do this is to first compress your data files into a zip file. Give the zip file a name based on todays date. Then do the copy thing to save the zip file over to the other backup drives.<br /><br />Your data file would come out with a name like 10172005.zip. That is naturally October 17 2005. You could always unzip the file back to it's original program data folder. <br /><br />You might ask, "What if I do more than one backup on any given day, what would the zip file name be then??"<br /><br />In the batch file you make provisions for that too. All that's needed is to add a letter after to the zip file name.<br /><br />Example:<br /><br />10172005.zip.....this is the first backup of the day.<br /><br />10172005a.zip....this is the second backup made on Oct 17, 2005.<br /><br />10172005b.zip would be the third backup made on Oct 17, 2005...you get the idea...

 

[ndemge]

Re: Computer back-up revisited.

I do computer work for a construction company, twice a month go out and to PM...<br /><br />I used "retrospective", has a sheduled script every night to backup all the important data to another drive on the network. Then every two weeks we do a cd backup that is kept off site. <br /><br />We were using tape, but didn't seem to be too reliable.

 

[BoatBuoy]

Re: Computer back-up revisited.

You can examines the switches for the xcopy command by typing xcopy /? in a command window. Two that I would recommend are /y (prevents prompting when copying to duplicate file exists) and /s (copies directories and sub-directories).<br /><br />To use Xcusme's example:<br />xcopy c:\myprogram\data\*.* e:\backup /y /s<br /><br />There's also some other switches you might play with. (/D:m-d-y for date selection, etc.)<br /><br />Since you're using XP, you could also use ntbackup.exe, but xcopy is probably easier.

 

[Solittle]

Re: Computer back-up revisited.

A bit more on Acronis - I run Windows XP and have about 26 GIG of "stuff". The thought of having to rebuild my system brings to mind tons of work. I have two hard drives. I use one exclusively for back-up. Acronis True Image backs-up everything and I do mean everything including all hidden system files. If I have a problem I use the Windows built-in back-up. If that does not fix it I can use True Image for a complete recovery of everything. If I have an unrecoverable hard drive crash all I have to do is replace the bad drive and do the recovery. <br /><br />By the way I am just a satisfied user.

 

[Dreamer1Q]

Re: Computer back-up revisited.

Personally I would add a third drive of the same size as the other two and stripe the drives. If you run a RAID controller, you can have redundant backup thru the three drives. If one fails, the other two repair it. If two fail, the last one fixes the two broken ones. If the harddrives are not fixable, like a lot of bad sectors, you install a new one of the same size, and the other two then repair that new one to look like the old one. You lose a bit of space to do this, but it is flawless if done right.