Jump to content

Backups & Partitions


Recommended Posts

Hello all,

 

I have been browsing this forum and apologise if this issue has been discussed earlier. If so, please feel free to direct me to the relevant link(s).

 

My situation is thus:

 

I have a laptop with a 40Gb hardrive, which I would like to backup entirely (programs and files) to an external USB2 hard drive (Seagate 160 or 200Gb). Following the initial backup, I would like to backup on a weekly basis. I am currentlyt looking at Retrospect Professional V7.0 to assist me with this.

 

In addition, I am accumulating many digital images and audio files that I would like to store on the external hard drive, and not on the laptop, as I seldom need to access them. I will be continuously adding either photos or audio files to the external hard drive, while simultaneously removing them from the laptop in the interests of preserving my meagre 40Gb wink.gif

 

My question is, what is the most straightforward way off initiating this backup strategy. In my naive mind, I envisaged that I would need to partition the external hard drive so that I could perfrom my weekly backups to one partition, while I 'drag and drop' photo/audio files to the other partition as required.

 

Is this is a sound approach, and if so, how large should the partition for backing up the 40Gb laptop drive be? I am having a hard time trying to understand how the backup process works, whether compression involved, what happens to previous backups etc.

 

Any and all advice will be appreciated - TIA!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Your basic strategy is OK. I don't think you need to partition the USB2 drive--it just reduces flexibility as you have to decide up front (Partition Magic not withstanding...) how much space to allocation for data and for backup (size of backups, number of backups, compression of backups, etc.). Retro 7 Pro will allow you to back up to a backup File or a group of files (Disk Backup) in a directory. So you can backup your 40G to a directory on the 160/200G while you have other directories where you store your image and audio files.

 

BTW, you should think about backing up the data files stored on the external harddrive. "Seldom accessed" is not the same as "not valuable and don't care if I lose them." Perhaps you could store them on the 40G and back them up along with everything else. Perhaps a bigger laptop drive would be better. Perhaps you need another dedicated data drive (e.g. another internal IDE [hard to do in a laptop], another USB2 drive, etc.) that also gets backed up to the 160/200G drive.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Thanks GoAWest,

 

You have raised some very good points. I think your suggestion of not partioning is a good one.

 

More importantly though, your comments regarding my photo/audio files is well taken. I think in alll the excitement of finally being a responsible adult and backing stuff up, I forgot that the drive I backup onto is just as suceptible to failure as my laptop. More importantly, I failed to appreciate that the photo/audio files would not actually be backups, as they would be deleted from the laptop. Scary - thanks for bringing that to my attention! I owe you one!

 

A bigger laptop drive is certainly an option, as is an additional external HD. I probably should mention, that in the event of a HD failure, I would not loose the photo and audio files per se, as the audio is ripped from my own CD collection, and the photos are scanned negatives. Yep, I do things the old-fashioned way. That said, it would suck royally to have to re-scan/rip 100Gb worth of stuff!

 

Well, thanks again, you have given me plenty of food-for-thought.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 1 month later...

I'm pretty new to Retrospect, but couldn't you just archive the audio and image files? I haven't used that function, but it seems you could just archive all new files in the specific locations and/or of the specific types, using the Move Files option.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

×
×
  • Create New...