Restoring Individual Files/Folders

As good as TI is for partition backup & recovery, imho the 'Explore Image & Virtual Drive' procedure for recovering individual files/folders is way too laborious.

I thought about using a file-by-file backup product in addition to TI, but of course that would necessitate doing two backups instead of one, so whatever time is saved restoring a file/folder is spent on redundant backups!

I would appreciate hearing from some of you on this subject. How do you deal with restoring individual files/folders?

 

TI8 is great for System Images and has saved my butt already!!!. I have numerous small data files that need to be saved quite frequently and I want them saved also to a Flash Key as well as a second internal HDD. I have found using a small backup and synchronization program (do a Google) more than satisfies my needs. If for some reason I need a larger file that is not a frequent backup, i.e. a downloaded utility or other program, I then use TI8's Explore Image to paste it back into my system.

 

Every month or so, I create a full backup on to an external HD. I then transfer the splitted images to 6 DVD+RW's for safe keeping.

Every night at 10:00 PM (automatic scheduled) I use Dantz Retrospect to create incremental file backups to the same external HD, and that is also what I use for retrieval of individual files.

 

Thanks for conveying those backup strategies. Two replies don't make for a consensus, but so far they tend to validate a file-by-file backup product to complement TI. Any other strategies out there?

 

I guess it depends on how frequently you need to restore individual files or folders. For the number of times I've needed to copy an archived file I would find the chore of creating an additional, file-based, backup even more "laborious" than mounting a TI image.

Regards

 

The latest versions of Nero and Roxio CD/DVD writers are moving closer to full backup applications. One option is to use one of these to schedule a backup to CD or DVD of your data files. You can select the folders and save that selection and then run it as a backup job. As long as the backup fits one disk, it can run unattended.

Since the files are simply copied to the CD or DVD (not compressed), you can just open them directly from the disk or copy them back to the hard drive. You can also open the files on any other computer that has any application capable of opening the data files.

 

I've been using the NTBACKUP software that comes with WinXP. I do a full backup once a month with it and incrementals in between. It's not near as fast as TI but it's free and it's easy to restore individual file/s if necessary.