Posted on 04/27/2009 9:11:18 AM PDT by Ernest_at_the_Beach
Rsync absolutely rocks for that kind of thing. my desktop at work takes about 5 minutes to give me a full backup of /home, /usr/local/, /etc/ and /var/www.
I get similar results at home backing up my wife and mother-in-law's laptops across wireless to my desktop.
One cool benefit to backing up /home/$USER on their laptops to /home/$USER on my desktop, is when they sit down at my desktop, everything looks and works exactly the same as it does on their laptop. Can't beat that IMO.
Just would very much like a similar system on Windows.
It certainly would be useful, but I just don't see how you could have something as seamless as my setup because of registry (spit) issues. Roving profiles might do it, but few folks have the kind of servers that would support that at home.
I’m sure you know Ghost will do most of what you want. Install your O/S and all your base applications on partition C of 500gb hard drive Then make a Ghost image which will reinstall all this in ten minutes. Lets say partition C is 25-50 gigabytes
Partition D is what remains on your 50gb hard drive and is where you keep photos and documents. As far as backing up your images, photos and documents why won’t an external hard drive do it to your satisfaction?
Partition D is what remains on your 500gb hard drive’’’’’’’
When your Mac craps out it's sign from above to send more money to Uncle Steve for a new one
When my home assembled windows machine craps out it's a sign for me to get out my crescent wrenches
I actually started using Unix to do backups, but mostly I was commenting on the product at hand, and the lack of a simple solution for home users. While, yes, I can use a dynamic drive in XP to put the Windows documents and settings folder for the active user on a separate drive or partition, and make relatively easy backups from that, the product being announced is yet another back it all up, for that very rare occurrence when a drive completely fails.
Odds are much bigger that it'll be a software error that’ll take down the system, or the most common Windows hardware failure - the video card. Someone who buys the above product and uses it on their system, and tries to restore the image onto a new computer will a) lose their new version of Windows, b) have driver issues as it'll load from the image, which was for another machine, and c) will likely have a non-functional system in the end.
I really want a do it all backup system that I can feel comfortable telling friends to buy that will do a vanilla system restore, maintain documents, photos, etc in such a way that it can be accessed separately, and if they want an outstanding rating, it'll also work if the end user moves to a new machine, knowing what it doesn't have to overwrite.
For myself, I'm just going to stick with Unix for the most part.
Why do you say unix? You mean linux? Ubuntu?
I have not used Ghost in a while but I remember 15 minutes to restore XP fully updated plus base applications
New range of green drives that have already been out on the market. They are slow, and are therefore recommended as a storage drive, not as a primary (OS) drive.
Might save a few bucks in electricity, but I have chosen not to sacrifice the performance even when the greenies are on sale for good price.
What version of Ghost and how much does it cost?
Can you give a brief explanation of the steps involved?
XP or Vista?
XP
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