First backup, few questions please

Just installed TI 10 and did first backup. Few questions Please.

1. Did also run the verification and it was OK. And have the disk TI 10 came with. Is there a way to test all of this so don’t have to wait until I do have a real problem. Or is it not necessary. Should I go ahead and try to boot from the TI 10 disk and try a restore? Just saved it to a file on the same PC until I get an external drive next week.
2. I do have a laptop with a wireless card on my home network. Is this just as good as an external hard drive? I started and stopped moving a copy to it of the backup. It was connected at 54 mps and my backup was 10.7 GB and it said would take 82 minutes. Is this time about right?
3. Is there a way to make a direct connection between 2 PC’s like with a USB cable and would that be better/faster?
4. The TI 10 backup was 10.7GB but under my disk defrag it saids I am using 12 GB. Should they match?

Thanks, sorry so many questions

 

1. You do not know if your backup works until you do a restore. The next best thing is to boot with the recovery CD and validate the archive. This must be done with the CD version rather than Windows because this is the version that is required to restore the Active partition when your disk dies. If you can do the validate with the CD then odds are pretty good but not 100% it will restore.

If your file is on a different HD in the PC then it is pretty safe since multiple HD failures are rare. If it is on a different partition then it is safe from C drive being corrupted by some software quirk or virus infections but if the whole HD fails then it likely is gone. I really wouldn't worry too much about that happening if you are getting an external drive next week - HD failures are really not that common but we know they will happen at some time - like they say, not if, when!

2. If you copy an image to another machine then it is safe. However, TI9 and perhaps TI10 do not support wireless networking so you would have to get your file to the PC by another method such as a USB drive or a supported wired connection. 82 minutes seems a bit long since theoretically it should take about 30 minutes but there are a lot of other factors such as quality of connection and time estimates being inaccurate.

3. I'm not familiar with using USB in this way I do recall using parallel ports years ago but it required a special program. In any case I don't think TI supports it so it would do you no good in the recovery environment. Why not try a wired connection if you just want to transfer the file faster.

4. TI compresses the image if you have compression turned on so the actual size of the archive will depend on how much the data compresses. Files like jpg, mpg, zip, rar etc do not compress and can actually increase in size with double compression. Even if you have no compression the archive will be smaller since TI does not copy the pagefile and the hibernate file into the backup. TI places a few bytes as a "placeholder".

 

Thanks, I was thinking about skipping the external hard drive and just using the laptop as a backup device. Which was the main reason I bought it for anyway. So would always have a working PC. Only use the laptop about 1 hour a month.
But I spent about 2 hours on phone today with tech support from Linksy and Toshiba.
The toshiba laptop has a wireless card and connects to my router at 54mbps.
But nobody could get the ethernet card to work off of a cable connection. Finally they had me change something under device manager, ethernet card.
Changed it from auto negotiation to 100 mbps then finally 10mbps. The only way it would work is with 10 mbps. and now it wants to take about 4 hours to move my backup file.
2 months old and still under warrenty. Does this just sound like a bad card?
Tried a different cable and tech support spent a lot of time trying what seemed like everything else. But they now want me to believe my card is ok with a connection of 10 mbps.
thanks

 

Buy the external hard drive because you can backup both computers to it and both will be able to restore from it if needed. These external drives come in handly for copying things, etc.

If your router is the Linksys Wireless-G, then it should connect at 100Mbps. Mine does, and my NIC is set on Auto Detect.

The 10Mpbs connection is not acceptable for copying large files as you have found. I would insist that Toshiba find a fix or repair or exchange the machine. Network cards are too important to not work.

Either a bad card or a bad driver for sure. Unless your call to Toshiba was elevated to a second level tech, you were dealing with an amature trouble shooter reading off a computer script. The help desk is the worst job in the company, and it's an entry level position if the person was in the US or Canada. (Techs in third world countries may have more experience.) If the tech sends the job up the line, he looks bad and may not be able to transfer out of the help desk job, so he wants you to go away. Call back, and if it's not resolved, demand to speak to a second level tech support person. Sometimes there's a third level, but along the way, if they can't fix it, you will be dealing with someone with authority to repair or replace the system.

 

It should work at 100 Mbps. I have a Toshiba with wireless and a wired card which works at 100Mbps. If you look at the documentation and/or the advertizing for the machine you will likely find it saying it supports 100Mbps.

However you have to make sure everything in the connection path will handle 100Mbps or else the entire connection will back off to the slowest part. This can be the router, the machine on the other port on the router you are connecting to, or the cable.

If everything else is OK then the network adapter in the Toshiba is faulty and it most likely is integrated with the motherboard, not a separate card.