O.T. deleted bookmark, can't sign-on to FF

Mark Twain wrote:
Yes, but I don't have your experience or
knowledge. I've already outlined what I
would like which is larger space for my
files/folders.

That isn't to say I won't be going through
and getting the fat but that takes time.

Beyond that, I would like to go with your
recommendations on what you think is the
best set-up in your view.

Largely everything I've done has been with
that in mind.

To be honest I thought I was setting it up
as you thought best. I guess I must have missed
something?

To be honest, I had planed to use the 1TB SeaGate
as my primary and now that I've clone both @ 2TB
drives I was going to do month Image backups on
both so one could serve as a backup drive and the
other a replacement drive but also a backup for
the backup. Too redundant?

Robert



Your 1TB isn't full at this time. So that's a
consideration.

If you needed more space, you could do this.

2TB Seagate - placed internally as the boot drive
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| MBR | Dell Utility | Recovery | Large C 1900GB |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------+

2TB WD Black (as an external USB drive)
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| MBR | Dell Utility | Recovery | Small C: | Large E: 1800GB for backups |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------+

Obviously, at some point, even with compression in the Macrium Reflect
imaging function to .mrimg, you might run out of space on the external
drive, to hold a single backup image of the internal drive.

But you're a long way from overflowing either drive.

At the current time, you can put quite a few full backups
on the external drive, and whether the internal drive
is the 1TB Seagate or the 2TB Seagate is immaterial.
It's because it isn't even near to being full.

Backups and clones, are both forms of redundancy. The
backup method, allows more than one "version" to be
stored on the external. The clone is a "single snapshot in time".

For example, when I needed, for an experiment, to take
my WinXP OS back two years in time, I happened to have
an .mrimg of that. With clones, I couldn't possibly keep
enough drives around to be able to do that.

And the Macrium offerings of differential (both version)
or incremental (paid version), gives even more options
for storage, such that the second backup you make, doesn't
have to take as much space as the first (full) backup.
Given your ratio of used space on the internal XPS 8500
drive, there is no need to start arranging differentials
or incrementals just yet.

What I was aiming for in your case, is *some* sort of backup.
Even one full backup, is worth a lot, in situations where
a hard drive dies from age. That's a minimum level of
redundancy. Having three drives in a merry-go-round,
is certainly an interesting approach, but probably
consumes most of your time during the day.

The intention of redundancy is to cover expected failure modes.

At work, we used 1+1 redundancy for systems. A working
system, and a warm standby perhaps. Where the warm standby
takes over if the working system fails. We used Markov
chain model analysis, to validate whether the degree of
redundancy was sufficient. And that sort of thinking,
is where the two-drive model comes from. The working
drive (internal) and at least one external with your
backup. The odds of both drives failing on the exact
same day is relatively small. With three drives,
it would take a catastrophic event (house fire,
lightning hit, sink hole), to ruin all three.

At work, we took backups so seriously, they were
stored in another country. So when automated backups
ran at night, the data traveled over a fiber optic
cable and across the border. That's so if there
was an earthquake, the building collapsed and
all the employees were squished, the data was
safe :-) I like that kind of thinking :-)

And that's an example of planning for expected failure modes.
The shareholders in the company would be ****ed, if
the ability of the company to recover after a disaster
wasn't available. Which is why so much overkill went
into the backup system. It "looks good" as a paper design.

Paul

I see what your saying, if I start to run out of space
I could put my C: drive in the large partition of the
2TB Black.

Well, the whole thought behind cloning the drives
was so that I would have bootable replacement
drives if needed. I just wanted to be able to recover
easily if I had a problem.

I had planned to do Image Backups once a month
for the 2TB drives and for the 1TB for the 8200
but from what you say I can just send them all to
one drive (2TB Black)


Remember, the only reason I have 3 drives is because
the WD is too noisy as a replacement drive should my
primary fail. Hence, it now has become the primary
backup and the 2TB is the replacement drive should
mine fail. That's how all that came about.

So then my overkill isn't so bad after all. Now I only
need to create Image backups which is actually where
we left off when I was hit with the malware problem
so lets resume that.

Can you please show me how to create a Image Backup
for the 2TB Black . Also show me how to retrieve the
mrimg from the 1TB for the 8200. Then we should be
done I believe unless you want me to do anything?

Robert

Oh one other thing,.. after I put a clean
clone on the 8200 (I hardly ever use it)
then do the same for the 320GB replacement
drive.

After than I will just do Image backups for
the 2TB Black for the 8500 and Image Backups
for the 1TB Seagate for the 8200.

Sound ok?

Robert

... after I put a clean
clone on the 8200

I meant Mrimg of course.

Robert

Mark Twain wrote:
I see what your saying, if I start to run out of space
I could put my C: drive in the large partition of the
2TB Black.

Well, the whole thought behind cloning the drives
was so that I would have bootable replacement
drives if needed. I just wanted to be able to recover
easily if I had a problem.

I had planned to do Image Backups once a month
for the 2TB drives and for the 1TB for the 8200
but from what you say I can just send them all to
one drive (2TB Black)


Remember, the only reason I have 3 drives is because
the WD is too noisy as a replacement drive should my
primary fail. Hence, it now has become the primary
backup and the 2TB is the replacement drive should
mine fail. That's how all that came about.

So then my overkill isn't so bad after all. Now I only
need to create Image backups which is actually where
we left off when I was hit with the malware problem
so lets resume that.

Can you please show me how to create a Image Backup
for the 2TB Black . Also show me how to retrieve the
mrimg from the 1TB for the 8200. Then we should be
done I believe unless you want me to do anything?

Robert

I would think the picture would look like this.

2TB Seagate - a "spare"
2TB WD Black - the current backup storage device
- if you want to backup the C: partition on this drive
you can, it would be backing up E: that wouldn't
make a lot of sense.
1TB Seagate - the current OS drive.

Scenario:

1) 1TB drive fails (as it is in constant usage, while the
other drives are only used intermittently).

2) Time to restore.

1TB --- Install 2TB --- Now, boot 2TB Seagate
Seagate Seagate
(remove) ^
|
Restore image -----+
from 2TB WD Black
external (noisy)
drive

The side effects from that idea

1) 2TB Seagate can be overwritten at any time. If you keep
other files on the 2TB Seagate, you transfer them to the
2TB WD Black, just before doing the "restore".

2) 2TB WD Black is used regularly for making backups

3) 1TB internal Seagate holds daily working files.

4) Regular backups of the internal drive, holds the newly
created files safe.

One other thing about that sequence. If the 2TB Seagate
is not being used right now, you can "practice" doing
a restore onto the 2TB Seagate.

1) Backup internal 1TB drive to 2TB WD Black drive.
Include all three partitions in the backup image.
Dell Utility, Recovery (active), and C: partition.

2) Remove 1TB drive from machine. Install 2TB Seagate drive.
Boot Macrium CD. Using the Restore tab, browse
to the external 2TB WD Black drive, locating the
newly created backup from (1). Restore to the
2TB drive.

3) Now, reboot. Selecting the internal hard drive
(2TB Seagate at this time), see if it boots, see
if all your files and partitions are present.

That is a way of proving, that if an emergency
happens, the method works.

The method is "safe", as long as the 2TB Seagate
is considered a "scratch" drive and suited to
doing experiments.

My view at this time, is you don't really need to
backup the 2TB WD Black. It holds your backups.
It holds an emergency C: boot drive (not always
up to date). If the C: drive is not used
regularly, and is not up to date, it may not
be worth snapshotting.

Your primary drive is the 1TB Seagate. In an
emergency (hardware failure), the 2TB Seagate
(quiet) becomes your new boot drive. The WD Black
continues to hold backup images.

Here's a film strip on doing a backup...

http://s22.postimg.org/gxz3fdbch/Macrium6_Backup.gif

HTH,
Paul

Paul wrote:


Here's a film strip on doing a backup...


Maybe this will work.

http://postimg.org/image/f664kgrzh/

Paul

Mark Twain wrote:
Oh one other thing,.. after I put a clean
clone on the 8200 (I hardly ever use it)
then do the same for the 320GB replacement
drive.

After than I will just do Image backups for
the 2TB Black for the 8500 and Image Backups
for the 1TB Seagate for the 8200.

Sound ok?

Robert

The 8200 is running WinXP. I take it you
are cloning a copy of WinXP that has
run on the 8200 before.

You can't take your Win7 drive over there.

Maybe you have your emergency boot C:
on the external backup drive. Is that
were the OS is coming from ? One C: is
clean and the other isn't ?

Paul

I have no problem switching drives to test
it,

However you said if the drive isn't used
regularly e.g. 2TB Seagate (replacement
drive) then does that mean when and if I
need it it won't work?

We still have not created a single Image
Backup or fixed the 8200 which is my backup
for the 8500 and I would like to finish
everything before I start testing.

Should I just start Image Backup and follow
the prompts? As far as restoring the 8200
from one of the Mrimg files I have no idea
how to go about doing that.

Thanks,
Robert

I didn't see your next post on
crating a Image Backup, sorry.

I already have mrimg files created
for the 8200 on the 1TB external
Seagate. So I must have done it at
some time.

http://i67.tinypic.com/2s7je60.jpg

Robert

Mark Twain wrote:
I didn't see your next post on
crating a Image Backup, sorry.

I already have mrimg files created
for the 8200 on the 1TB external
Seagate. So I must have done it at
some time.

http://i67.tinypic.com/2s7je60.jpg

Robert

Each of those files is quite varied in size.

When making the backups, you can edit the Comments field,
which is exposed in the same window as the Compression options.
So the Advanced button, gives you a place to write a description.

I also use unique file names when making my one-off backups.
To me, that's roughly as effective as writing on the hard
drive mechanisms with a marker pen. So I don't have to look
inside the drive, to see what's there.

And if you right-click the .mrimg, there should be a Macrium
context menu entry, to "mount" the .mrimg as if it was
a disk drive.

http://knowledgebase.macrium.com/dow...mage2014-12-29 20%3A11%3A9.png

This kind of dialog pops up, showing one line per partition
stored inside the .mrimg. You can select "Cancel" from this
dialog, without going forward with the mount operation. On
one of your typical full-disk backups, there are likely
to be three lines, noting the three partitions on your Dell
drives.

http://knowledgebase.macrium.com/dow...mage2014-12-29 20%3A16%3A18.png

In File Explorer, you can right-click a partition which came
from a mounted .mrimg, and select "Unmount Macrium Image" to
make the partitions go away again. That's in case you mounted
the backup image for some reason. You can also see the .mrimg drive
in Disk Management, and there should be an option in there, in the
left-most box, to get rid of it. It would either be there, or
up in one of the Disk Management menus (as there is a Detach VHD
option up there for unmounting virtual machine images that is put
there by Windows).

http://knowledgebase.macrium.com/dow...mage2014-12-29 20%3A51%3A43.png

Those images are selected from this knowledgebase article.

http://knowledgebase.macrium.com/dis... dows+Explorer

*******

I can make you a restore filmstrip. It shouldn't take as
long as before, as the virtual machine is still installed
as starting material.

Paul

I was having trouble finding the
destination file when off it went!

http://i66.tinypic.com/33a5gjs.jpg

http://i67.tinypic.com/2cc7qa.jpg

Also, am having trouble with my
mouse. I click it but nothing
and it usually takes 2 clicks now.
I replaced the battery but it still
does it. Time for new mouse?

Robert

Success, we did it!

http://i68.tinypic.com/k2hk6r.jpg

Robert

I saved the link you gave and it's
quite detailed and informative and
even gives the Command Line commands.

I'll give your test a try but I need
to catch my breath and still need to
work on the 8200 and get it clean and
it's replacement drive.

Thanks,
Robert

Typing this on the 8200, boy
is it allot different than the
8500.

I tried to restore a Mrimg
on the 8200 but its not working.

I closed everything and restarted
the computer but it gives me the
same message.

So I'm doing something wrong or
not doing something.

Robert

http://i66.tinypic.com/5vrbyc.jpg

http://i67.tinypic.com/157yc2.jpg


Robert