Guest Posted December 28, 2002 Report Share Posted December 28, 2002 I have been using Retrospect Express 5.6 for just over a year now and am pleased with the concept but have had some problems. I am backing up to CD-RWs and the backups usually go fine and then, one day, all of a sudden, Retrospect can't find the backup set it needs or some other problem. This made me a bit nervous about the actual validity of my backups. So I bought Norton Ghost. Upon reading the manual, it seems that Ghost just does an image of the whole drive with all the quirks and settings etc. This seems like a good thing. But what I need is a data backup as well and Ghost doesn't seem to be that for me. So now I am thinking I need a strategy that combines the 2. I have a small business with 1 main computer, a second networked computer which mainly accesses the internet and the files on the main computer, and a laptop onto which I have installed mainly application software and then I copy any data files on an as needed basis when I need to take them with me. I am thinking that I should do a Ghost image of the entire C drive of the main computer on CD-R (cheaper) and store off-site. I have a weekly rotating Retrospect backup that is running copying just My Documents which has a backup subfolder where I dump my regular backups from various programs. I have been running the regular backups on there for the past year but the appended file approach creates the need for over 15 CD-RWs by the time a few have run. So every once in a while I wipe them out and start over. Finally, on a daily (semi) basis I am copying the My Documents file over the network to the 2nd computer. The risks I am trying to avoid are 1) hard drive/system crash of the main computer 2) fire or theft of any/all computers. My hope is that in the event these things happen, I can use the Norton Ghost image to "restore" application and preference settings and then use Retrospect Data backup to get files back up to speed. I would love to have the input of those more technically advanced than I on this. Thanks in advance. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AmyJ Posted December 31, 2002 Report Share Posted December 31, 2002 I use this strategy at home - install a clean operating system and appliations. Ghost the machine in the existing clean state. Should my system crash, or I want to bring it back to a clean state - I Ghost the machine back and restore the data files that I backed up with Retrospect. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted January 7, 2003 Report Share Posted January 7, 2003 Thanks Amy, It turns out that Ghost won't work with my system (why does it always take at least 12 hours of frustration to figure these things out!). So I am back to just Retrospect. I was wondering if you have any insight into why all of a sudden my backups start failing. They work they work they work, they fail. I have the logs. Is there somewhere I can send these to figure it out. Also, when doing the incremental backup, the volume just keeps growing and growing. Is there any value to every once in a while just scrapping, reformatting, and starting over? It gets kind of pricey after a while. susan Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AmyJ Posted January 9, 2003 Report Share Posted January 9, 2003 In reply to: They work they work they work, they fail. Providing details on what is / isn't working, your configuration, the error messages, etc. would be helpful. There is no place to send your logs unless you'd like to open an incident with Dantz Techncial Support directly. Yes, an occasional recycle backup will reclaim the space you are using. The big question to ask yourself is - How much historical data do I want/need? Some people like to keep months worth, while others only care about data in the last two weeks. You may want to use two backup sets: * Security - If a set is corrupted or has a problem you have another set of data you can restore from * Longevity - You can rotate two sets and when you're ready to recycle - stagger it. Do one set this week and the other set the following week (or month, etc.) So, when you're wiping every thing out, you're only really wiping out one set of data. The other set is recycled later after the first set builds up again. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kaikow Posted May 24, 2003 Report Share Posted May 24, 2003 I am planning on building a system that will operate as follows using Win XP: One hard drive. Two external USB or Firewire hard drives, each of which would have at least the capacity of the internal hard drive. CD-RW Writable DVD The external drives would be used for full backups only, alternating between the two external drives and not leaving either drive connected (to eliminate chance of damage due to power surges, which can occur even if on a UPS). Incremental backups would be done to CD-RW and/or DVD. Critical files would be copied to DVD or CD-RW as if they were regular hard drives. Periodically, I'd make a full backup to DVD and take that off-site. Critical files would be copied to DVD and taken off-site, as needed. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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