Number 203 - April 2000

Another Backup Idea
by Joe Sherry, NOCCC - January 2000
We all know how important backing up our data is (or do we?). At least we quickly realize it after our hard drive crashes, or it gets a damage-glitch at the point where the data are located.     There are many backup procedures, hardware and software, out there that may be too complicated, too expensive or just plain whatever to attract us to them. Tape drive units (tdu) and the various types of Zip removable drives don't really turn me on, since my computer operation does not include extensive business records, data, etc.     However, having had to rebuild a crashed drive in the past, it is clear to me that some sort of back-up is useful, but it must be a simple method. One technique that worked well for me was to have a duplicate partition on the same hard drive. Here is my latest idea.     A second hard drive has been added to my computer, the same size as the main one. For no particular reason, in the CMOS setup and the jumpers, it is set as the primary drive on the secondary IDE. The CDROM is set as the secondary drive on the secondary IDE.	The program Norton Ghost (from Symantec) is on my main computer. Periodically, about once a week, the Ghost program will be run and a clone of the first hard drive will be created on the second hard drive. It doesn't take long to do this and the material on the second hard drive can be random accessed if/when needed.     There are similar programs for cloning drives but be sure they aren't just copying files between drives. You may lose the long filename aspect of Windows, preventing some programs from running later. Check to see, if it is a copy program, that the long files names are preserved somehow. Actually, you could do a file copy procedure within Windows Explorer and the long filenames would be preserved but that is a longer process and for some reason there is something uncomfortable about it to me.     For me, the advantage of doing the back-up on a completely separate drive saves all of the programs and covers the possibility of not being able to access the second partition of the primary drive as in my earlier method of backup. With the cost of hard drives rather low now, this can be a cost-effective approach to your backup needs.
Number 203 - April 2000