Relocating TIB Files

My computer has 2 internal SATA drives and a USB2 external drive.

My c(system+program) and d(data) drives take several hours to back up to the external drive. This may be because d: includes 45Gb of jpg andMP3 files.
With normal compression, this weighs in at a 60Gb image file.

Back up to the spare internal SATA drive takes only 30 minutes.

I propose to image to the internal SATA and then at some convenient point, move the file over to the external USB.
This will be a whole lot quicker than going direct to the external drive.

Is there any inherent problem or danger with working this way? Any precautions to take?

 

Yea that should work.

You can save the .tib file to one of your internal HD and then transfer it to your external HD.
But it will still be slow to transfer to the external.

Why use an external drive at all? You can purchase very large internal HD for so cheap. Heck I got a 1TB for $85 bucks. If you don't have enough SATA connections you can get an internal card for $19 bucks. Then it would back up very FAST and you have massive amounts of space.

But the external will work, just be slow.

 

I always image my C partition to a second internal HD and every now and then, I copy selected images to an external HD for extra security.

If you want some extra assurance that all is well, use TI to valdiate the TI image you copied to the external drive. It indicates that the archive was copied correctly and can be read correctly.

 

seekforever mentioned a very important point.

If you move the archive to a different location, it is always safer if you validate the archive in its new location and validate it when booted from the Rescue CD.

 

Thanks for the replies.

As I said, I do have two SATA disks, one of which I back up to . The reason for transferring to an external disk is so that I have an off-site backup.

If my computer is stolen or there is a fire, a SATA disk in my machine or near it is not much help!

 

You don't say which disk your data (jpg's and mp3) files reside, are they on the system disk. Many of us on this forum keep our data on either a separate disk or partition and back this up with a program such as Karen's Replicator or Microsoft's synctoy both free. As jpg's and mp3 are already compressed there is little point in trying to compress them further with TI or any other imaging software.

 

There is no question your images to an internal disk will run faster, and there is no reason you cannot copy them to an external drive later. But there is no time savings involved. The transfer speed of most external drives is very close to the imaging speed, so you have to add the copy time to the image time, and it will come out longer than the image time to the external drive.

If time savings is the plan, it won't work. But, the faster internal drive, in my experience often produces more reliable images with fewer corruptions, and the copy process does not seem to cause any problems. Your suggested approach may be slower but it is probably more reliable.

Good luck.

 

My first HD is partitioned to c: for system and program files, d: for data, programming projects, music and photos.

I image to another SATA HD w: and then copy those files over to the external USB2 disk x: for storage away from the computer.

Imaging to the USB disk directly takes several hours. To the SATA disk takes 30 minutes. Copying to the USB disk from the SATA disk is faster. This I can do while having lunch.

 

1) How does one "relocate" an archive other than backup as data followed by removal?

2) after relocation, can I do incremental backups to the original location?

I ask because after doing the first, total backup of my system drive, to my system drive (I have no external drive for my laptop), there is insufficient space to do the incremental backup. So I want to store the original, total backup to DVD, but continue to do the incremental backups to the system drive.

Thank you

 

You can use Windows to simply copy a .tib file to an other location. If you do this then you should verify the new copy either from the rescue disk or by calculating the MD5 sums.

Not if you intend to delete the original .tib file, you must have the original and incrementals\differentials in the same folder.

It is not recommended to use the system drive as a backup location, if the drive fails then your backup is gone. As external drives have reduced in price you would be better to purchase the largest you can afford. If you find that it is slow in creating an image to the external then you can copy the image from your system disk to the external, you must however verify the image on the external as above.

Many users do not recommend backing up to DVD, if you have more than one DVD in a set then you stand a chance that one will become corrupt, in addition apparently you are constantly swopping the DVD's during a restore. Search this forum re backing up to DVD's

 

I would also suggest esata as another option. You get the same speed and functionality as an internal drive, with the benefit of being able to easily remove it from your system.

Your current sata controller may support esata now (for instance if your internal drives are enumerated in Windows "safely remove hardware list"). This is true for many nvidia chipsets. Certain intel chipsets will work as well, with the correct bios settings. If this is the case, you simply need to buy a backplate that will create an external port (and connect it to a free internal sata port).

Otherwise, it's as easy as buying a pci express card that supports esata.

For what it's worth -- a lot of esata enclosures (such as the Antec MX-1) come with a passthrough backplate (as described above) included.

 

You can also get a removable dock that fits into a free 5.25" bay. That connects to your motherboard internally and provides you with, not only the speed of a regular internal connection, but no need to power an external case with a wasted outlet or "wall wart".

Back up to that drive, remove it, and place it off site. Then, when you back up, just put it in the bay, back up (or restore) and you are good to go.

An all-metal bay/tray combination is available everywhere for less than $30. I have several.

The advantage here is that you can also use that bay for additional drives for extra storage or, if you were wanting to, experimenting with different operating systems. Windows? Pop in the Windows drive and boot to that. Linux? Pop in the Linux drive and boot to that!

Making the *.tib on an internal drive and copying it later is a time waster in my opinion especially if you can simply just create the *.tib on the removable drive and you are done!

 

kevinkar and nemesisdb

krcmd1 states his computer is a laptop

 

Como,

I'm not in threaded view (which may be part of the problem), but my response was meant to be directed at the OP.

 

I was just pointing out that as the OP has a laptop yours and kevinkar whilst being excellent suggestions for anyone with a desktop or tower are not practical in this case. One of the reasons that unless you need to have a computer whilst you travel a laptop is not a good solution for office or home use.

 

Not to beat a dead horse, but the Original Poster, DVT, seems to have a desktop. krcmd1, who asked a seperate question, seems to have a laptop.

 

I apologise the original thread was started so long ago I had forgotten who had started it.

 

thanks to all. Good advice. My plan was Rube Goldberg.