Using Zip for backup/archive

Caesar,

From some of your comments, I'm not sure that you understand the difference
between "copying" your C: drive and making an "image" of it. A copy will not
restore the drive if it fails. An image will.

Also, it's not a good practice to keep either a copy or an image on the
drive you're trying to protect the contents of. If the drive fails, you may
not be able to recover the contents of the backup! Also, each time you make
another backup, you will be copying the previous backup too. The size of data
will grow rapidly. And if the computer is damaged, you'll loose your backup.

At the very least, make your backup to another partition on the drive. What
I do is make a new full backup image each month, along with daily incremental
backups. And each month, when I make the full backup image, I copy it to a
thumb drive, which I then store out in my garage. That way even if there's a
fire or theft of the computer I still can do a full restoration to a new hard
drive.

I used to make my copy to a "spanned" set of CD's. But that was tedious. Now
I backup to a thumb drive. I've been buying 16 Gig. thumb drives for $30.
Also, you can use an external hard drive. That's even better.

There are several free utilities for making images. I haven't used any of
them, so I can't comment. But with Ghost and True Image, you can set the
program to make the backups automatically. I let Ghost make them at 3 AM each
day.

Also, the Ghost disk has a simple form of Windows on it. So if I can not
boot from Windows, I can still boot from the Ghost disk and do a system
restore. I think True Image is similar. And I know that True Image has a
"sandbox" so you can try out programs without installing them directly.

Read up on the two mentioned programs on their web sites. You'll then know
better what you need.

Milt

If I were you, I'd

"Caesar Romano" wrote:

On Fri, 25 Sep 2009 13:13:01 -0700, Milt
wrote Re Using Zip for
backup/archive:

Caesar,

You may want to look at Symantec's Norton Ghost or Acrontis True Image. I'm
sure that many other dedicated backup programs are good too.

I use Norton Ghost. It allows me to automatically make a monthly backup and
daily incremental backups starting the first of each month. It also can split
those files into 700 Mb. or 4 Gig. files so that I can copy them to CD or
Thumb Drive that's formated for FAT 32.

Others probably do those things too. I'm just not familiar with them.

Milt

Thanks for the suggestions Milt. I should have mentioned two other
constraints. The solution needs to be freeware, and needs to backup to
the same drive (c:, the only drive available).
--
I filter all messages from google groups.

Caesar,

From some of your comments, I'm not sure that you understand the difference
between "copying" your C: drive and making an "image" of it. A copy will not
restore the drive if it fails. An image will.

Also, it's not a good practice to keep either a copy or an image on the
drive you're trying to protect the contents of. If the drive fails, you may
not be able to recover the contents of the backup! Also, each time you make
another backup, you will be copying the previous backup too. The size of data
will grow rapidly. And if the computer is damaged, you'll loose your backup.

At the very least, make your backup to another partition on the drive. What
I do is make a new full backup image each month, along with daily incremental
backups. And each month, when I make the full backup image, I copy it to a
thumb drive, which I then store out in my garage. That way even if there's a
fire or theft of the computer I still can do a full restoration to a new hard
drive.

I used to make my copy to a "spanned" set of CD's. But that was tedious. Now
I backup to a thumb drive. I've been buying 16 Gig. thumb drives for $30.
Also, you can use an external hard drive. That's even better.

There are several free utilities for making images. I haven't used any of
them, so I can't comment. But with Ghost and True Image, you can set the
program to make the backups automatically. I let Ghost make them at 3 AM each
day.

Also, the Ghost disk has a simple form of Windows on it. So if I can not
boot from Windows, I can still boot from the Ghost disk and do a system
restore. I think True Image is similar. And I know that True Image has a
"sandbox" so you can try out programs without installing them directly.

Read up on the two mentioned programs on their web sites. You'll then know
better what you need.

Milt

If I were you, I'd

"Caesar Romano" wrote:

On Fri, 25 Sep 2009 13:13:01 -0700, Milt
wrote Re Using Zip for
backup/archive:

Caesar,

You may want to look at Symantec's Norton Ghost or Acrontis True Image. I'm
sure that many other dedicated backup programs are good too.

I use Norton Ghost. It allows me to automatically make a monthly backup and
daily incremental backups starting the first of each month. It also can split
those files into 700 Mb. or 4 Gig. files so that I can copy them to CD or
Thumb Drive that's formated for FAT 32.

Others probably do those things too. I'm just not familiar with them.

Milt

Thanks for the suggestions Milt. I should have mentioned two other
constraints. The solution needs to be freeware, and needs to backup to
the same drive (c:, the only drive available).
--
I filter all messages from google groups.

"Caesar Romano" wrote in message

On Fri, 25 Sep 2009 16:15:35 -0400, "Twayne"
wrote Re Using Zip for
backup/archive:

Using DVDs also helps with the space limitations; delete it from
the computer disk after copying to DVD. Or better yet, get an
external drive to back up to. The one terabyte drives are very
reasonably priced right now.

HTH,

Twayne`

Thanks Twayne. Good suggestions, but I'm opperating on a $0 budget. I
should explain.

A widow neighbor lady wants to keep in touch with her grandchildren in
Aultralia. She's on a very limited budget. I had an old computer
laying around that I had rebuilt from scrounged parts and given to her
so she could use email via dialup. The computer is pretty reliable,
but the widow lady doesn't know much about them, and will probably
screw something up pretty soon. I would like to have a generate a good
backup every couple months, so when the anticipated user error occurs,
I can boot a BartPE CD and restore the last known good backup via a
simple and free unzip.

She'll loose some email, but I won't have to rebuild the system. I'm
just wondering if using zip to make the backup and BartPE+unzip to
restore has a chance of really working.

Well, unless you know for sure that BartPE is capable of backing up an
Operating System, it's a pretty dicey thing. Zip files will NOT back up
all the OS parts, period, as there are always files in use.

With your budget, it's also a pretty dicey affair. I looked at the BART
PE site briefly but I didn't come away with a feeling for your plan
working or not working. Your best bet, unfortunately, is to try it and
see if it works IMO. Worst case you could end up having to rebuild that
system from scratch and best case everythign will work just fine.
You might do well with a new post asking if BartPE does a good job of
backing up an XP home or Pro operating system and see what kinds of
responses you get. It might give you a better feeling for whether you
want to try testing it or not on your own system. I'm surprised someone
hasn't piped in already with a comment on that part of it.
At the same time ask for a recommendation on a free imaging program
to use for backing up data AND the operating system. Usually people are
happy to share their experiences with things like that. An imaging
system would give you the best results and be easiest to Restore with.
Then, for her data, set a zip program triggered by Task Schedule to run
at sime time she'll have the machine turned on but not be using it. Or
offer her a batch file called "My computer cleaner" for her to run now
and then. Make a nice, shiney shortcut on the desktop for her right in
the center of the screen where it's easy to see.
Right now I see BARTPE as your biggest roadblock: Will it do what you
need or not? If so, you're in good shape and could test it out. If not,
then perhaps some of my other advice here might suffice.

BTW: There are also some sites on the 'net that will let you back up
your computer to them. I'll leave those to you to check out though; I
don't like them myself. No one should see my data but ME!

Herer are a few links to peruse. I do NOT recommend ANY of these since
I've never used them, but i DID try to only use links of places I'm
familiair with:

http://www.brothersoft.com/paragon-d...ss-158697.html
I know a couple people have used this one; they said it works OK, but
they are newbies, so ... g.

http://www.bestfreewaredownload.com/...-xwprpgtr.html

http://www.download32.com/driveimage-xml-i30593.html
Specifically mentions that it uses VSS, which all of them need to, to be
any good.

http://www.techsupportalert.com/best...ng-program.htm

http://forum.piriform.com/lofiversio...hp/t10217.html
A discussion

There were more, but from sites I didn't recognize and a couple that
Google warned were "dangerous" sites. I still do NOT recommend any of
the above links as although I have used or otherwise know of them,
things change over time. Keep your AV etc. up to date before visiting
unknown sites.

HTH,

Twayne`



HTH,

Twayne`



If you can't afford the ten bucks or whatever for an external floppy,
then, if you aren't willing to test it out on your own system, I'd say
just make up your mind to backing up all here data and know you'll have
to rebuild the disk if anything goes too wrong.

"Caesar Romano" wrote in message

On Fri, 25 Sep 2009 16:15:35 -0400, "Twayne"
wrote Re Using Zip for
backup/archive:

Using DVDs also helps with the space limitations; delete it from
the computer disk after copying to DVD. Or better yet, get an
external drive to back up to. The one terabyte drives are very
reasonably priced right now.

HTH,

Twayne`

Thanks Twayne. Good suggestions, but I'm opperating on a $0 budget. I
should explain.

A widow neighbor lady wants to keep in touch with her grandchildren in
Aultralia. She's on a very limited budget. I had an old computer
laying around that I had rebuilt from scrounged parts and given to her
so she could use email via dialup. The computer is pretty reliable,
but the widow lady doesn't know much about them, and will probably
screw something up pretty soon. I would like to have a generate a good
backup every couple months, so when the anticipated user error occurs,
I can boot a BartPE CD and restore the last known good backup via a
simple and free unzip.

She'll loose some email, but I won't have to rebuild the system. I'm
just wondering if using zip to make the backup and BartPE+unzip to
restore has a chance of really working.

Well, unless you know for sure that BartPE is capable of backing up an
Operating System, it's a pretty dicey thing. Zip files will NOT back up
all the OS parts, period, as there are always files in use.

With your budget, it's also a pretty dicey affair. I looked at the BART
PE site briefly but I didn't come away with a feeling for your plan
working or not working. Your best bet, unfortunately, is to try it and
see if it works IMO. Worst case you could end up having to rebuild that
system from scratch and best case everythign will work just fine.
You might do well with a new post asking if BartPE does a good job of
backing up an XP home or Pro operating system and see what kinds of
responses you get. It might give you a better feeling for whether you
want to try testing it or not on your own system. I'm surprised someone
hasn't piped in already with a comment on that part of it.
At the same time ask for a recommendation on a free imaging program
to use for backing up data AND the operating system. Usually people are
happy to share their experiences with things like that. An imaging
system would give you the best results and be easiest to Restore with.
Then, for her data, set a zip program triggered by Task Schedule to run
at sime time she'll have the machine turned on but not be using it. Or
offer her a batch file called "My computer cleaner" for her to run now
and then. Make a nice, shiney shortcut on the desktop for her right in
the center of the screen where it's easy to see.
Right now I see BARTPE as your biggest roadblock: Will it do what you
need or not? If so, you're in good shape and could test it out. If not,
then perhaps some of my other advice here might suffice.

BTW: There are also some sites on the 'net that will let you back up
your computer to them. I'll leave those to you to check out though; I
don't like them myself. No one should see my data but ME!

Herer are a few links to peruse. I do NOT recommend ANY of these since
I've never used them, but i DID try to only use links of places I'm
familiair with:

http://www.brothersoft.com/paragon-d...ss-158697.html
I know a couple people have used this one; they said it works OK, but
they are newbies, so ... g.

http://www.bestfreewaredownload.com/...-xwprpgtr.html

http://www.download32.com/driveimage-xml-i30593.html
Specifically mentions that it uses VSS, which all of them need to, to be
any good.

http://www.techsupportalert.com/best...ng-program.htm

http://forum.piriform.com/lofiversio...hp/t10217.html
A discussion

There were more, but from sites I didn't recognize and a couple that
Google warned were "dangerous" sites. I still do NOT recommend any of
the above links as although I have used or otherwise know of them,
things change over time. Keep your AV etc. up to date before visiting
unknown sites.

HTH,

Twayne`



HTH,

Twayne`



If you can't afford the ten bucks or whatever for an external floppy,
then, if you aren't willing to test it out on your own system, I'd say
just make up your mind to backing up all here data and know you'll have
to rebuild the disk if anything goes too wrong.

On Sep 25, 1:54*pm, Caesar Romano wrote:
Hello,

I need to develope a backup/archive solution that can be run from a
command console (cmd.exe). *I was thinking of using the Info-Zip zip
program *http://www.info-zip.org/*as follows:

zip -r -q -S * Backup.zip *c:\*.*

where

*-r *= recurse into directories
-q = quiet operation
-S = include system and hidden files
c: = the WinXP system drive

The purpose of Backup.zip would be to keep an archive that can use to
restore the c: drive by booting from BartPE and unziping Backup.zip
back to c:

Does this have a chance of working for a restore? Is there something
out there better than Info-Zip for this?

Thanks for any comments.
--
I filter all messages from google groups.

ZIP is completely inappropriate for backing up a harddrive. Do what
Milt said and go with Norton Ghost or Acronis TrueImage. Since you
said you're on a $0 budget, you may want to try CloneZilla which is
open-source but not nearly as user-friendly as Ghost.

But since you only have the one harddrive...you may want to install
Microsoft SteadyState and have her login to a user account.
Steadystate is free and resets to the last image you saved whenever
you reboot the computer. It is a terrible piece of trash and will
cause errors if you try to install updates and may even kill the
harddrive though.

Your best option would probably be to just create a custom automated
install of Windows XP. You can inject drivers into it and integrate
service packs and updates, and have it run batch files after
installation to take care of anything else. You could boot into
Bart's PE to copy her files to a flash drive or something, and then
just run the install. If you've never created one before, you may
want to use Nlite to create it. Nlite works well for home pcs, it's
not so great in a corporate environment though.

On Sep 25, 1:54*pm, Caesar Romano wrote:
Hello,

I need to develope a backup/archive solution that can be run from a
command console (cmd.exe). *I was thinking of using the Info-Zip zip
program *http://www.info-zip.org/*as follows:

zip -r -q -S * Backup.zip *c:\*.*

where

*-r *= recurse into directories
-q = quiet operation
-S = include system and hidden files
c: = the WinXP system drive

The purpose of Backup.zip would be to keep an archive that can use to
restore the c: drive by booting from BartPE and unziping Backup.zip
back to c:

Does this have a chance of working for a restore? Is there something
out there better than Info-Zip for this?

Thanks for any comments.
--
I filter all messages from google groups.

ZIP is completely inappropriate for backing up a harddrive. Do what
Milt said and go with Norton Ghost or Acronis TrueImage. Since you
said you're on a $0 budget, you may want to try CloneZilla which is
open-source but not nearly as user-friendly as Ghost.

But since you only have the one harddrive...you may want to install
Microsoft SteadyState and have her login to a user account.
Steadystate is free and resets to the last image you saved whenever
you reboot the computer. It is a terrible piece of trash and will
cause errors if you try to install updates and may even kill the
harddrive though.

Your best option would probably be to just create a custom automated
install of Windows XP. You can inject drivers into it and integrate
service packs and updates, and have it run batch files after
installation to take care of anything else. You could boot into
Bart's PE to copy her files to a flash drive or something, and then
just run the install. If you've never created one before, you may
want to use Nlite to create it. Nlite works well for home pcs, it's
not so great in a corporate environment though.

Thanks to all who replied for the suggestions. I've decided to use
DIXML http://www.runtime.org/driveimage-xml.htm to make a backup
image to a USB drive. That should work well.
--
I filter all messages from google groups.

Thanks to all who replied for the suggestions. I've decided to use
DIXML http://www.runtime.org/driveimage-xml.htm to make a backup
image to a USB drive. That should work well.
--
I filter all messages from google groups.

On 25 Wrz, 19:54, Caesar Romano wrote:
Hello,

I need to develope a backup/archive solution that can be run from a
command console (cmd.exe). *I was thinking of using the Info-Zip zip
program *http://www.info-zip.org/*as follows:

zip -r -q -S * Backup.zip *c:\*.*

where

*-r *= recurse into directories
-q = quiet operation
-S = include system and hidden files
c: = the WinXP system drive

The purpose of Backup.zip would be to keep an archive that can use to
restore the c: drive by booting from BartPE and unziping Backup.zip
back to c:

Does this have a chance of working for a restore? Is there something
out there better than Info-Zip for this?

Thanks for any comments.
--
I filter all messages from google groups.

On 25 Wrz, 19:54, Caesar Romano wrote:
Hello,

I need to develope a backup/archive solution that can be run from a
command console (cmd.exe). *I was thinking of using the Info-Zip zip
program *http://www.info-zip.org/*as follows:

zip -r -q -S * Backup.zip *c:\*.*

where

*-r *= recurse into directories
-q = quiet operation
-S = include system and hidden files
c: = the WinXP system drive

The purpose of Backup.zip would be to keep an archive that can use to
restore the c: drive by booting from BartPE and unziping Backup.zip
back to c:

Does this have a chance of working for a restore? Is there something
out there better than Info-Zip for this?

Thanks for any comments.
--
I filter all messages from google groups.

On 25 Wrz, 21:25, Caesar Romano wrote:
On Fri, 25 Sep 2009 15:04:16 -0400, "Richard Urban"
wrote Re Using Zip for
backup/archive:

My personal feeling is that I will "never" use anything to backup that
compresses files or takes many files and coagulates them into one file.

I have seen way too many problems over the past 18 years where a person can
not get to his backups because of file corruption. If a .zip file containing
20,000 small files goes bad (it happens) you can't get to ANY file within
the container.

Just my thinking on the subject!

Good and valid point Richard.

However, that would be the case with any backup approach that uses a
single container file wouldn't it (e.g. DIxml image backup)? The only
way I can think of to avoid that is to make an uncompressed copy of
all the individual files on c: and that isn't an option due to disk
space limitations.
--
I filter all messages from google groups.

On 25 Wrz, 21:25, Caesar Romano wrote:
On Fri, 25 Sep 2009 15:04:16 -0400, "Richard Urban"
wrote Re Using Zip for
backup/archive:

My personal feeling is that I will "never" use anything to backup that
compresses files or takes many files and coagulates them into one file.

I have seen way too many problems over the past 18 years where a person can
not get to his backups because of file corruption. If a .zip file containing
20,000 small files goes bad (it happens) you can't get to ANY file within
the container.

Just my thinking on the subject!

Good and valid point Richard.

However, that would be the case with any backup approach that uses a
single container file wouldn't it (e.g. DIxml image backup)? The only
way I can think of to avoid that is to make an uncompressed copy of
all the individual files on c: and that isn't an option due to disk
space limitations.
--
I filter all messages from google groups.

On 25 Wrz, 22:13, Milt wrote:
Caesar,

You may want to look at Symantec's Norton Ghost or Acrontis True Image. I'm
sure that many other dedicated backup programs are good too.

I use Norton Ghost. It allows me to automatically make a monthly backup and
daily incremental backups starting the first of each month. It also can split
those files into 700 Mb. or 4 Gig. files so that I can copy them to CD or
Thumb Drive that's formated for FAT 32.

Others probably do those things too. I'm just not familiar with them.

Milt



Caesar Romano" wrote:
Hello,

I need to develope a backup/archive solution that can be run from a
command console (cmd.exe). *I was thinking of using the Info-Zip zip
program *http://www.info-zip.org/*as follows:

zip -r -q -S * Backup.zip *c:\*.*

where

*-r *= recurse into directories
-q = quiet operation
-S = include system and hidden files
c: = the WinXP system drive

The purpose of Backup.zip would be to keep an archive that can use to
restore the c: drive by booting from BartPE and unziping Backup.zip
back to c:

Does this have a chance of working for a restore? Is there something
out there better than Info-Zip for this?

Thanks for any comments.
--
I filter all messages from google groups.

On 25 Wrz, 22:13, Milt wrote:
Caesar,

You may want to look at Symantec's Norton Ghost or Acrontis True Image. I'm
sure that many other dedicated backup programs are good too.

I use Norton Ghost. It allows me to automatically make a monthly backup and
daily incremental backups starting the first of each month. It also can split
those files into 700 Mb. or 4 Gig. files so that I can copy them to CD or
Thumb Drive that's formated for FAT 32.

Others probably do those things too. I'm just not familiar with them.

Milt



Caesar Romano" wrote:
Hello,

I need to develope a backup/archive solution that can be run from a
command console (cmd.exe). *I was thinking of using the Info-Zip zip
program *http://www.info-zip.org/*as follows:

zip -r -q -S * Backup.zip *c:\*.*

where

*-r *= recurse into directories
-q = quiet operation
-S = include system and hidden files
c: = the WinXP system drive

The purpose of Backup.zip would be to keep an archive that can use to
restore the c: drive by booting from BartPE and unziping Backup.zip
back to c:

Does this have a chance of working for a restore? Is there something
out there better than Info-Zip for this?

Thanks for any comments.
--
I filter all messages from google groups.

On 26 Wrz, 00:36, Milt wrote:
Caesar,

From some of your comments, I'm not sure that you understand the difference
between "copying" your C: drive and making an "image" of it. A copy will not
restore the drive if it fails. An image will.

Also, it's not a good practice to keep either a copy or an image on the
drive you're trying to protect the contents of. If the drive fails, you may
not be able to recover the contents of the backup! Also, each time you make
another backup, you will be copying the previous backup too. The size of data
will grow rapidly. And if the computer is damaged, you'll loose your backup.

At the very least, make your backup to another partition on the drive. What
I do is make a new full backup image each month, along with daily incremental
backups. And each month, when I make the full backup image, I copy it to a
thumb drive, which I then store out in my garage. That way even if there's a
fire or theft of the computer I still can do a full restoration to a new hard
drive.

I used to make my copy to a "spanned" set of CD's. But that was tedious. Now
I backup to a thumb drive. I've been buying 16 Gig. thumb drives for $30.
Also, you can use an external hard drive. That's even better.

There are several free utilities for making images. I haven't used any of
them, so I can't comment. But with Ghost and True Image, you can set the
program to make the backups automatically. I let Ghost make them at 3 AM each
day.

Also, the Ghost disk has a simple form of Windows on it. So if I can not
boot from Windows, I can still boot from the Ghost disk and do a system
restore. I think True Image is similar. And I know that True Image has a
"sandbox" so you can try out programs without installing them directly.

Read up on the two mentioned programs on their web sites. You'll then know
better what you need.

Milt

If I were you, I'd



"Caesar Romano" wrote:
On Fri, 25 Sep 2009 13:13:01 -0700, Milt
wrote Re Using Zip for
backup/archive:

Caesar,

You may want to look at Symantec's Norton Ghost or Acrontis True Image. I'm
sure that many other dedicated backup programs are good too.

I use Norton Ghost. It allows me to automatically make a monthly backup and
daily incremental backups starting the first of each month. It also can split
those files into 700 Mb. or 4 Gig. files so that I can copy them to CD or
Thumb Drive that's formated for FAT 32.

Others probably do those things too. I'm just not familiar with them.

Milt

Thanks for the suggestions Milt. I should have mentioned two other
constraints. The solution needs to be freeware, and needs to backup to
the same drive (c:, the only drive available).
--
I filter all messages from google groups.