TI Newbie with some basic questions...

I just bought TI-10 after purchasing a 320Gb external drive for back-up on three computers. I've never backed up my computer but after having to do a full re-install (thanks to Registry Mechanic S/W), I decided it would be money well spent. I partitioned the external hard drive into 200/80/40 sections, the first to accommodate my primary computer's 200Gb hard drive. I'd like to be able to do a full restoration in the event of any problems but know little about what would work best. Here are some questions I have:

1. What's the difference between cloning and backup? TI does both and I assumed that a full backup would be the same as cloning but there are separate processes for each. Which would be better for my purposes?

2. When I did my first backup, I performed it without compression, figuring that I had enough storage space and avoiding compression would take less time and reduce the likelihood of file corruption. Is this correct?

3. If I program my BIOS to boot from the external drive as a second choice, is there any reason for creating the TI boot rescue disk? I created one but I can't help but wonder when I would use it.

4. In the event of a system crash, I assume that with a full backup (or clone?) on the external drive, I would simply boot from the external and use TI to replace the contents of the primary drive. Is that how it would be done?

5. My external drive is plugged into an eSATA plug on my computer but has a USB2.0 plug as well. But since my other computers are networked to mine, I wondered whether I could back them up using the network rather than plug the external drive's USB into each computer for backup. And if I backup via the network, how much longer will it take than using the USB connection?

Thanks for any guidance you can offer.

Bob

 

1. Cloning makes an identical bootable drive like your original. You can only put one clone on the spare drive no matter how large it is. Backup (or Imaging) makes a compressed image of your original drive. The Image has to go through the Recovery (or Restore) process before it will make a drive bootable. You can have many Backup Images from many computers on the same drive as long as there is space.
2. Yes, but file corruption can happen to any backup.
3. I haven't yet read about a Bios that will allow booting from an external drive. Flash drives, yes, but then those are relatively small. You will need the Rescue cd to do the Recovery of an Image if your main drive bites the dust. And in fact some of us do all our Backup, Recovery, Clone procedures from the Rescue cd.
4. If your Bios will let you boot from the external, yes. Otherwise, you would use the Rescue cd.
5. I think you would have to use the Server or Workstation version but I may be wrong on this. I don't have a network to backup so have no experience here.

 

If you can map the external drive connected to the PC then you should be able to back up to it.

Just using the theoretical numbers USB 2 is 4.8 times faster than your network transfer rate (480Mbps vs 100Mbps) unless you have a 1000 Mbps network. In practice these numbers aren't achieved but you get the idea.

I strongly suggest you make the rescue CD and confirm it works because when you are flat on your butt that may be the only thing you have unless you also make a BartPE CD.

 

Thanks for the help, folks. It sounds like I want to stay away from cloning and just rely on backup and intermittent updates to protect my system. But now I need to understand "BartPE CD" mentioned by seekforever. After doing a search of other posts, I encountered the following post from mfabien:

"In my case, it works from the Acronis Rescue CD but works best with the BartPE CD with TrueImage10 plugin (takes about 1/3 the time, compared to Acronis Rescue CD)."

So it sounds like I'd want a BartPE CD instead of (in addition to?) my recently created Acronis Rescue CD. Can someone point me to the post that describes what it is, how to create it, how to use it and whether I need to modify my newly installed TI-10?

Thanks,

Bob

(Jeez, who knew there was this much to back-up? No wonder folks shy away from it!)

 

Here is a link which is contained in the Sticky post at the top of the forum that should get you going. https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=162424

Just how much faster BartPE makes your TI work faster depends on how much better the Windows drivers are than the Linux drivers. For some devices it can be little and for others it can be huge. Anyway, good idea to make one anyway just to have it and also it is a good learning experience.

Yes, reliable backup is no trivial task and the effort that goes into it in large installations is significant. Last thing you want to tell a few thousand users is that the disk system crashed and they have no data left.

 

Thanks for the lead on BartPE, seekforever. I started putting a BartPE CD together following the instructions and ran into a snag. I successfully (I think!) created an XP installation CD but when asked to "locate the Windows drivers for any hard disk" and for my network adaptor and copy them to my pebuilder file, I don't know what to look for. I found a C:\Drivers file but don't know what to copy from there. How do I recognize the hard drive and network adapter drivers and where will I find them.

I have a 2005 Media Center Edition computer with a SATA-150 hard drive. (And incidentally, the instructions made no mention of how to identify this OS as XP-Home or XP-Pro; from what I've read, I assumed it was XP-Pro when I created the XP installation CD.)

Thanks,

Bob