Disk swaps - when restoring dvds?

[jjbtnc]

I've seen comments about the use of optical media and it's downsides - all understood i will be attempting to image to dvds but it's only a method i'm going to use in the very short term! Don't have much option at the moment - hopefully soon i'll have a usb hard drive etc

Anyways - i've seen references to having to go through loads of disk swaps when restoring from optical media (i.e. cds and dvds)

How bad is it ?

Say you have a backup spanning 4 dvds how many swaps can you (very roughly) expect? Obviously it depends on what was imaged and so on but is there a rough ball park figure? Are we talking 100 50 20 10

Just curious as to how bad it is

Oh - do you get the same disk swapping problem when you are validating a backup you've just done on to dvds?

[Brian K]

jjbtnc,

I can't answer for TI but with Ghost 9 the order for 5 discs would be
1 5 1 5 1 2 3 4 5 1

I'd be interested to hear about the order for TI as well.

How much data do you have on your C: drive? How large is your HD? Any other partitions? Do you have a second HD? I prefer backing up to a second HD although I later copy an occasional backup to an external HD.

[jjbtnc]

Just one hard drive with 1 partition - about 30gb of files

Could do with a 2nd drive but not possible at the moment, got some things to do so wanted to try an image now which means to dvd OR i can do it to the same drive but i wouldn't be able to restore from a backup on the same drive so i wouldn't be able to use it. Unless - if i do to the same drive but split the backup in to dvd sized chunks, can i copy the chunks to dvds AND restore from those dvd? Or will TI not be happy that they've been moved?

Would be easier and quicker!! But don't know if you can do that?

One other thing i'd be interested in knowing is where you select your archive split size there is a drop down option box with 4.7gb dvd option. Does it actually split archives in sizes of 4.7 gb or in a size that will FIT on to a 4.7gb dvd? Reason i ask is that you can't fit 4.7gb on to a dvd it's actually something like 4.38 gb - to do with calculating the size based on 1000kb in a mb and 1000mb in a gb rather than the 'real' 1024 kb in a mb 1024 mb in a gb

Is that accounted for with the 4.7gb size option in the archive split size drop down menu?

[seekforever]

I don't use DVDs other than as a third line media after internal HD, HD on other machine or External HD. I would do everything to get the archive from DVD back to HD if I had to do a restore.

It has been said, and it makes a bit of sense, that if the source drive you making the archive of is defragged you will have fewer swaps than if it fragmented.

You can save an image to the partition being imaged if there is enough room (ignore the warning) and you can then copy the image to DVD. Many of us consider burning an image from a HD to a DVD to be the preferred way of making a DVD archive. Be sure to use the burning programs "verify after burning" feature.

The drop down box listing for 4.7MB I believe is OK since it is the size of a DVD the advertizers like to use if K=1000.

[jjbtnc]

Just one thing - burning to dvd is not my preferred way just a stop gap at the moment. If something goes wrong, it's not the end of the world i can reinstall xp and my apps plus i have my data backed up. It would be better if i can image and then restore if i have to, but as i said it's not totally critical.

I only have one partition at the moment which i can image to and split the backup in to dvd sized chunks BUT i won't be able to use those chunks to restore from. I can image to the same partition but you can't restore from an image on the same partition so...........if i copy these dvd sized chunks to dvds will i be able to restore from them? Will TI treat them in exactly the same way as if i had written straight to dvd and spanned a few disks? Or will it throw a wobbly and start screaming 'Oi - i'm trying to restore from a set of dvds but the files on them weren't originally written to dvds!'

[jjbtnc]

Unsure whether to try the split to hard drive, copt to dvd, restore from dvd or not - could try both i suppose - direct to dvd and then hard drive -> dvd ->restore from dvd - just as a little experiment!

[seekforever]

Originally Posted by jjbtnc

Unsure whether to try the split to hard drive, copt to dvd, restore from dvd or not - could try both i suppose - direct to dvd and then hard drive -> dvd ->restore from dvd - just as a little experiment!

I think it would be a good experiment to try both and it also does provide more than one archive. You also have the option of creating a Secure Zone on your HD and saving the archive there which might be handy for restoring if doing software testing etc but won't likely be of any use if your HD fails. You can't access an image in the SZ for burning to DVD.

To answer your other question, TI sees the archive as a big file or set of files, it doesn't care if it was originally created on a different device and then copied.

[jjbtnc]

Just thought i'd post back - haven't done it yet as i've got a few things to do first. Popped round a friends though who has 9.1 workstation and he showed me it working on his laptop - fat32, 10.5 gb of data on a 73gb drive

Ghost - took 50 mins on high comp to write to 2 dvds
- 50 mins to check the image

TI 9.1 w/station linux boot disk- took 120min on high comp to write to 2 dvds
- took 50 mins to validate the image
TI 9.1 detects more drives and made a smaller image file!

Disk swaps with 2 dvds - put in volume 2 first, then asked for vol1, then asked for vol2, then asked for vol1 - completed

He also had a bootable cd for TI 9.1 workstation that used winpe or something to boot in to a win xp type enviroment, using this he could write the image to the hard drive that was being imaged which the linux boot disk couldn't

time of image on high comp - 16 mins
time to validate image - 8mins

Ghost (2003 from dos disk) - did not detect external usb dvd writer, the internal writer is only -r/rw but ghost did not like -rw only -r

TI - detected all dvd writers but did not like +rw in the external drive - loved -rw though!

shows what a big difference there is using the window environment and writing/validating to hard drive rather than dvd.
Just wish i could build a BartPE disk

As said in other posts seems that the way to go if you want to archive to dvd is write to hard drive in dvd sized chunks - 1492mb is good or 635mb (to allow using cds if you have loads to use up!) - validate and then manually burn to dvd!