What are the best Back-up procedures? 1

[danhasmail]

Hi everyone,
I wanted to do a nice clean re-install, so I just finished reloading Windows 7 and all my drivers and programs. It sure is time consuming. I would like to do a back-up or two so if i ever need to do it again, it won't take so long.
What would be the best ways to do it? I currently own a new WD My Book 1-TB External HDD, I also have the newest Acronis back-up software, and I might buy an additional HDD that matches the one I have (WD1002FAEX 1TB).
Any suggestion, tips, hints, would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks in advance.
Live long and prosper.
danny

 

[edfair]

Under the same circumstances I would use Acronis to create an emergency boot CD (if that is still required, mine does) and do an OS backup using Acronis to a memory stick. An alternative would be to clone the hard drive once you have it set up the way you want.
You'll find as many opinions on the best way as people you get to comment.



Ed Fair
Give the wrong symptoms, get the wrong solutions.

 

[danhasmail]

Thanks edfair,
My computer is set up just the way i want it now.
How would you suggest making a back-up so that if my HDD were to crash, i could use the back-up to get back to this point? How would i go about putting the back-up onto a new Drive?

 

[tf1]

I also use Acronis TI. Once installed, you use TI to make an image of the disk to an external device. The external device can be a USB or eSATA hard drive or a series of DVDRs (it will let you span across several DVDs if necessary).

To minimise the initial image size, you should empty the Recycle-bin, delete all but the latest RestorePoints and reduce the size of area assigned to the RestorePoint (not forgetting to reset it when you have finished). Also delete any residual install files. Then create your image followed by creating a TI Rescue disk.

Store those away safely somewhere you will remember though!!!

Use TI at regular intervals to create backup images to an external drive. In the event of a failure, you can then rescue the whole image to the current date if required or run the TI Explorer to rescue individual files or folders.

If you are a heavy user of Word or Excel and need to keep really current backups, then I suggest you look keeping an external drive attached all the time and create some macros for Word or Excel that will automatically save two copies of any files, one to your target home folder and a second to the external drive.

See

http://www.gmayor.com/SaveInTwoPlacesAddIn.htm

and

http://www.gmayor.com/automatically_backup.htm

Regards: Terry

 

[goombawaho]

An image is the way to go and store it somewhere safe. Or if you have the money, buy another similar hard drive and just image your "good" hard drive over to the new drive and put it on a shelf for safe keeping.

 

[danhasmail]

Thanks for all the imput, it was very helpful.
I will use the Acronis software to back-up to my WD external drive, and i think i'll spend the few dollars for another internal drive to back-up to also. And keep it in a drawer, seperate from the computer. The money spent on the extra drive will be well worth it in case of a failure.
And the WD external drive comes with it's own back-up software which i'll also use to make a copy. I partitioned it so i can use half for Acronis and the other half for Western Digital.It can also be set up to continously monitor the computer and copy files that are added or changed.
Thanks again for your help, i'll check back later to see if anything was added.
danny

 

[goombawaho]

Don't forget to back up your data on a regular basis as that will change much more often that the PC image.