PCA Forums

Anybody here use CD-RW to back up their HD's?? I really like the way ghost works, but I don't see how some of you guys can justify the cost (if using CD-R/DVD-R media) when making your backups (if you do it once a week). If you're using one set of CD-RW/DVD-RW then I can understand that and it's feasible (sp?) Just curious.. Yes, I know the write times are greatly diminished when writing to RW but it's much more cost effective.. Your Thoughts? eGo

Well first off CD-Rs are cheap (DVD-Rs are expensive). I buy them in 50 or 100 pack spindles.

If you're going to backup every WEEK though, it's not very economical. What's so mission critical? You running a bank?

Seriously, I only make a full ghost image once every couple of months or whenever I'm about to make a radical change to the system. I ONLY Ghost the boot, apps and data partitions.

See my post at the bottom of this thread for more info here on how to partition a drive efficiently for Ghost backups into several partitions: http://www.pcabusers.net/forums/showthr ... adid=28781

I never backup directly to CD. I save the images to a partition I'm not Ghosting (I have a nice big 40Gb scratch partition I use for that and video editing). I configure Ghost to break up the image into 700Mb chunks so it can later be burned onto CDs. Lately I use a DVD if it takes more than 3 CDs.

The only thing you need to regularly backup is your data. This is made MUCH easier if you segregate ALL your data into a seperate partition which is what I do (and I mean EVERYTHING: My Documents, email folders, favorites, address book, it can be all redirected to a different partition - see the link above). Then you can just Ghost that data partition weekly. Since Ghost does 2 to 1 compression, you can get 1.4 Gb on a CD and I doubt your data is bigger than that.

You only need to backup the boot partition and apps less frequently. Nothing's going to change too often there except when you install a new app. Worse comes to worse and you have to restore the boot and apps from a month old copy, it probably wouldn't take long to install the few things that changed since then, and your data partition would be more recent which is more important.

If I intend to install a program or driver that I'm worried may screw up my OS, I Ghost the OS partition ONLY to a spare partition (only 3Gb so it backs up in a couple of minutes). BETTER than System Restore. Something goes very wrong, I just restore the partition and everything is back the way it was.

If you're interested in knowing how to change the default path for My Docs, Favorites, outlook and address book, etc, let me know and I'll post it. It's probably here somewhere already.

If you still want to do weekly CD or DVD full backups then the smart thing would be to use re-writable media.

I use ghost as well, but I also have 4 differnet partitions.

C:\ "OS"
D:\ "work apps"
E:\ "games"
F:\ "personal data" - redirected settings partition

I image the c:\drive and the f:\ drive to a seperate hard drive that is used for nothing but images. so I really don't have to use dvd's for images. hard drives are still a better cost effective solution for saving hd images.

At work we use "Ghost Enterprise Edition" that pushes the image to the computer to restore from the server.

Originally posted by FlyingPenguin
If you're going to backup every WEEK though, it's not very economical. What's so mission critical? You running a bank?

Seriously, I only make a full ghost image once every couple of months or whenever I'm about to make a radical change to the system. I ONLY Ghost the boot, apps and data partitions.

I missed the 2nd part there.. I thought I read someplace that you backed up more often.. LoL.. So now I'm not worried about it.. Thanx for the input.. eGo

I use an old 10 gig hard drive for my ghost back up image files. I realize it could die on me but I figure the odds of both drives going south at same time is pretty low. And I do make a back up about once a week or so just to keep things up to date.

I missed the 2nd part there.. I thought I read someplace that you backed up more often.. LoL.. So now I'm not worried about it.. Thanx for the input.. eGo

I Ghost the OS & Apps folder every 1 or 2 months (depends on how much I've changed).

I do make a Ghost of the OS/Boot partition before installing ANY major app or new hardware. I did that before installing the Logitech MX500 mouse which I wound up not liking. It was a LOT easier to just restore the boot parition instead of trying to re-install the Intellimouse drivers and put all the settings back the way they were from memory.

I used to Ghost my Data partition every week, but I don't do that anymore. I use one of those USB JumpDrive memory fobs to backup my critical data every morning - not so much as a backup but so I have current client information handy to load into my laptop if I need it while I'm on the road.

I no longer keep the bulk of my data on the local computer - I have a file server and my Documents folder and most of my data are on the server so I can access it easily from any computer in the house or the laptop. The server has a tape backup that does a nightly backup. It's one of those nice DDS 3 drives (a client had to upgrade their drive because it wasn't compatible with his newer server tape software, so I gave him a credit in exchange for the drive and kept it).

This is all rather extreme but I do computer repair work and my home workstation is not just a gaming system - I use it to manage my business. I need to backup my data rather often.

I ghost monthly to a separate hard drive. It's not the cost of CD-R's, it's the fact that I inevitably lose or scratch them.