backup suggestions??

[sfeeley]

I ust got an external usb powered harddrive and want to do some backup. (seagate expansion)

My main computer is set up like this:
sda1 : ntfs partition windows XP
sda2: ntfs partition for data (documents, music files, etc)
sda3: ext2 partition puppy savefiles and sfs files
sda4: linux swap

To use puppy I use a CDboot + savefile in sda3. Otherwise I just pull the CD before booting to load XP. (In other words, I don’t have grub or anything like that installed).

I’d like to do the following:
1) Right now my XP install is fresh and runs well. I’d like to have a copy of this that I could easily restore/replace when inevitably it gets crapified.

2) I’d like to periodically back up the data files on sda2. (automated would be nice, but maybe not if that means having something hogging resources in the background all the time)

3) from time to time I’d also like to drag data folders onto this harddrive either from this computer or another computer so that I can easily move large #s of files from machine to machine (those other machines run vista and windows 7)

A couple questions:
1) should I set up separate partitions on the external harddrive for these different functions?
2) is there something simple that you recommend to handle this?

On the forums I’ve seen mention of pudd, pbackup, and clonezilla but don’t really understand which would best suit my needs. Of perhaps there is something else?

Oh, one last question: I don’t quite know the vocabulary : whats the difference between “clone,

[sfeeley]

PS: If I plug the drive in while using XP, it wants to install a "seagate dashboard." Useful? Or the sort of crap to be avoided?

[nooby]

There are several older threads on clever scripts that can do automatic back up of the save file. That is the only file that needs to be back up on.

That one only being at most 2GB or thereabout can be manually back upped very easily, no need for script.

You boot in using puppy pfix=ram and then make a copy of that file to a safe place. maybe a usb decicated to have the backup. Then when the crash happens you reuse that back up. Private things like pictures and movie clips and music and texts you can have on external media too unrelated to the puppy backup. Take at most 5 minutes to back up a big pupsavefile unless very slow usb.

[sfeeley]

thank you Nooby for the response.

However, I have no problem backing up the savefile. I am more curious about a solution that can also take care of windows XP and my data outside my puppy savefile.

[PupGeek]

I would think you could try Norton Ghost or something like that to take a "snapshot" of your good working WinXP installation and back that up to the external hard drive or even a dvd as a ghost image. I have used those to restore computers at work. A restoration with one of them takes only ten minutes or so as well.

[puppyluvr]

Hello,
The PBackup tool in utility may suit your needs....

[Bernie_by_the_Sea]

I would think you could try Norton Ghost or something like that to take a "snapshot" of your good working WinXP installation and back that up to the external hard drive or even a dvd as a ghost image. I have used those to restore computers at work. A restoration with one of them takes only ten minutes or so as well.

I use partimage in Puppy to take "snapshots" or images of working installations for backups. I've restored totally destroyed installations using partimage. Time depends on CPU and drives but it's compable to Norton Ghost.

The version of partimage I'm using now in Puppy can restore image backups of partitions I made six years ago with older partimage versions in Knoppix and Mepis.

http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?p=392317

[rcrsn51]

Or have a look here and here.

[cowboy]

sfeeley,

For XP, I primarily backup my docs and settings. My photos, documents, scanned docs, music, etc, the things I've produced on the computer, are what really concern me. Don't care about program files, or really, about my old XP version. For backup I use the freeware version of Syncback that is available at the bottom of the page here. http://www.2brightsparks.com/downloads.html. Syncback has a great many very useful features, even in the freeware version, and is very reliable for scheduled backups. Most importantly, it backs up in native fashion - simply the files in their original extensions, it does not attempt to corral your data into something proprietary. Watch out for that.

If you really want to preserve your entire disk, in re-bootable form, you will need to mirror, or create an image of the entire drive. As a Windows user, many times, it's best to spend money to get the right software. Acronis True Image has a good reputation. http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/pr ... trueimage/

HOWEVER, backup is its own scene, and you need to get your head around the whole idea...the Tao of backup, if you will. A great place to start - the blogger and dev Tim Bray has an excellent bit on how he runs backups, and is worth reading. http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/ ... Protection


My dos centavos, completely worthless.

[sfeeley]

thankyou for all the suggestions.

I tried rcrsn51‘s suggestion:
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... 381#407381

However, I got a warning about a “bad sector

[rcrsn51]

I've never seen this message on my own machines, but I saw it once while attempting to backup a friend's Vista install. The message is coming from the ntfsclone program which is at the heart of the gnost script. I don't know if it's legitimate or a false positive. I think that it refers to the source partition and not the destination drive. From the man page:

--rescue
Ignore disk read errors so disks having bad sectors, e.g. dying disks, can be rescued the most efficiently way, with minimal stress on them. Ntfsclone works at the lowest, sector level in this mode too thus more data can be rescued. The contents of the unreadable sectors are filled by character '?' and the beginning of such sectors are marked by "BadSectoR\0"

It should be possible to modify the gnost script to include the "--rescue" option, but I don't know how much faith you can have in the image.

Code: Select all

ntfsclone  --rescue --save-image --output - /dev/$PART | gzip -c > $FILE

When you ran the Windows disk check, did you use the "quick" or "full" version?

[sfeeley]

When you ran the Windows disk check, did you use the "quick" or "full" version?

I think it was the full one-- I clicked the boxes for autorepair, etc. It required me to reboot to run the check, and took about 45 minutes or so.

It didn't come up with any errors. I ran the gnost again after doing all that and had the same result (warning regarding sector, etc)

[rcrsn51]

Then I don't know what to suggest. Ntfsclone is a pretty mature program so I don't know why it would find a bad sector if Windows cannot.

It would be interesting to know what happens if you do a raw backup using dd. Would it also stop on a bad sector?

Code: Select all

dd if=/dev/sda1 | gzip -c > /mnt/sdb1/xpimage.gz

[sfeeley]

It would be interesting to know what happens if you do a raw backup using dd. Would it also stop on a bad sector?
Code:
dd if=/dev/sda1 | gzip -c > /mnt/sdb1/xpimage.gz

Ack! I tried this and all of a sudden I got a warning that my personal storage is getting full. And the terminal reported:

Code: Select all

gzip:stdout:no space left on device.

um, how do I get my pupsave back?

[sfeeley]

It would be interesting to know what happens if you do a raw backup using dd. Would it also stop on a bad sector?
Code:
dd if=/dev/sda1 | gzip -c > /mnt/sdb1/xpimage.gz

Ack! I tried this and all of a sudden I got a warning that my personal storage is getting full. And the terminal reported:

Code: Select all

gzip:stdout:no space left on device.

um, how do I get my pupsave back?

[rcrsn51]

You did mount sdb1 before you typed the command?

[sfeeley]

maybe not (probably not)

[sfeeley]

sfeeley wrote:

um, how do I get my pupsave back?

well, I dug up an old savefile and am using that instead. So that crisis is put aside. That said, if anyone has suggestions on recovering this savefile, I'd appreciate it.

It would be interesting to know what happens if you do a raw backup using dd. Would it also stop on a bad sector?
Code:

Code: Select all

dd if=/dev/sda1 | gzip -c > /mnt/sdb1/xpimage.gz

now that the dd command has thoroughly frightened me can somebody tell me exactly what I should expect to occur here?
-I've learned to mount sdbb1 first. What about sda1?
-what will this be creating on sdb1? if this is copying everything from sda1 is it possible instead to move this to a directory inside sdb1 instead? (to keep things more organized)

after trying several times it looks like gnost worked once. I don't think I did anything different though. And I tried again afterwords, and I got the error again. So I'm getting inconsistent results at a rate of 1 success per 9 attempts.

[rcrsn51]

You can run the command from inside any folder large enough to hold the image file. The Windows partition /dev/sda1 is NOT mounted.

Code: Select all

dd if=/dev/sda1 | gzip -c > xpimage.gz

[sfeeley]

so would I use:

Code: Select all

dd if=/dev/sda1 | gzip -c > /mnt/sdb1/xpbackup/xpimage.gz

to create the copy in a folder on my external drive (sdb1) in a folder called xpbackup?

And what does this create exactly? Does this create something that I could use for a restore if my xp system crashes? Or are we just testing something because gnost did not seem to run smoothly?

thanks