Well, I finally did it, Again!
It's been a pretty busy week on the old PC so I did my weekly (not weakly) thing and performed another Ghost backup.
I realize that many people have their own way of doing backups and I wouldn't want to discourage anyone from doing it,
but, there are a lot of people reading these forums that have never done a backup in their life and are reading this to be
informed as to the proper way, and not fall into a tiger pit.
I read far too many people saying "I do my backups of data files only, or I do my backups to an internal drive, blah, blah, blah".
For instance having the Backup/Restore program on a non-booting HD and not on a recognized Boot Disk. Or thinking that their backup is going to get them going again, seamlessly, when their main drive has gone up in smoke.
Regardless of what Backup Program I would use, it must be on a Bootable media such as CD, Flash Drive, etc., that will boot up the PC with a brand new, empty, hard drive installed. And the Backup Image of the C: drive must also be on an external media, either an external hard drive or DVD's. The only SAFE backup is the backup of the entire C: drive and it must be stored on an external media, stored in a safe place. My own permanent backups, on DVD are in a Fireproof Vault, 20 miles away.
I've set up backup schemes for Banks, Business Offices and private homes and every one has to be handled just a little bit differently, depending on what media and what storage facilities are available. For instance, a Bank will have a Fireproof Vault, the average home will not. So the home PC user has to ask himself "where should I store my backups?".
The answer is simple, either at a friend or neighbors house, or in a bank safe deposit box.
Personally, I make my backups to different media at different times. It I want to do the quickest backup, I save the Backup Image File of my C: drive to the second partition of my SATA II drive, using FAST compression. A little slower but safer backup, I do to my second physical Internal HD (1TB, SATA II drive). My third and much slower choice is to an External USB drive. And finally the safest backup of all (and the slowest) is to DVD's which will go OFF SITE, so in case of fire or Hurricane, they are safe. I have data files going back twenty years, that I would really hate to loose and the way I have my own backup system set up, I will never loose them.
I would gladly work 'one on one' with anybody that does not currently have a backup scheme of their own, but wants to have one.
Very good Backup programs are readily available for FREE and are easy to set up. It's all so easy that no-one should be without a backup of their C: drive.
Sorry for the long post, but this a a topic near and dear to my heart and the business I've been in for over 30 years.
Cheers Mates!
The Old Guy