How do I duplicate 2 hard drives?

[drart]

I am rather new to Retrospect Express (v. 6.5.342) and have looked at knowledge base and posts and cannot find this answer. I have a system with 2 hard drives (80 GB and 160 GB) and want to duplicate each drive on an external hard drive (250 GB). I cannot find how to do this. Can someone give me instruction? Thanks.

[awnews]

Definte "duplicate."

 

Are you looking to just copy your data, data + apps + OS, every used byte, *every* byte?

 

Do you want to copy it in the same format (e.g. Windows) or is a backup file (only readable by a backup program) OK?

 

Do you want to be able to boot directly from this "duplicate" or is it OK if this is an image file, all the same data but non-bootable OS, etc.?

[drart]

I was thinking that it would be safer (more secure) to copy the entire drives...data, apps, OS in the same format (Windows XP). Since I would be doing this over the night, data transfer time is not an issue. I am not interested in booting from the duplicate, though.

 

I have a ton of storage available in the 250 GB external drive, so I was not concerned about the total duplication, but, maybe if I understood the backup product better, I would consider that a more viable option.

Thanks.

[drart]

After thinking more on this subject, I wonder if I should use the backup feature instead of the duplicate feature. Seems to me that, unless I plan to boot from the duplicated data, there is no real value to duplicating other than I would not have to use the Retrospect software to retrieve backed-up files.

 

So, may I have your opinion on backing up vs duplicating? and then the process I should follow to backup both drives (C: and I:) to the external drive (H:)?

 

Thanks.

[awnews]

From your description of what you want, I think you're better off with a standard backup. You can do a Disk backup (splits backup into smaller files, has grooming feature option) or a File backup to a directory on your backup drive. If you have plenty of space, you might want to set up multiple backups (extra safety if something ever goes wrong with a particular backup set, can set up different strategies for the backups).

 

Here's an *example* of a backup strategy to one or more directories on the H backup drive:

 

1) BackupShort: Backup nightly (normal incremental), groom to N backups *or* recycle montly.

 

2) BackupLong: Backup weekly (normal incremental), groom to N backups *or* recycle yearly.

 

As you pointed out with dup vs. backup, you do need to use Retro to recover files from the backup. A dup allows you to read files directly from Widows. If you need/want that, you could replace/add one of these backups with a dup backup to a directory on the backup drive. I usually do backups, but I have used dups when I wanted to allow somebody else to quickly recover data from the backup destination without my help.

[drart]

Thanks. I agree that the backup feature is the best for me. I appreciate your help.

[drart]

Now that I have setup and successfully run backup for both hard drives(C: and I:) to Backup Set A, shouldn't I see the results in the a file/folder in the external drive (H:) where they were backed up? When I view the contents of the external drive, I see nothing with the date of the backup.

[awnews]

There should be file(s) at the backup destination. If you did a File backup, there will be one big .rbf file. If you did a Disk backup, there should be a folder hierarchy (e.g. H:...\Retrospect\Backup\1-Backup) with a bunch of .rdb files.

[drart]

Thanks. For some reason, I had the backup scheduled and it ran, but I had not identified the drive where the backup would be housed. I have done that, ran an immediate backup, and all the .rdb files you mentioned are there. I suppose that if I need to restore, I will be able to do that easily via the Restore feature.