Backing Up and Restoring Your Computer
Contents
1. tasks must not be a PITA pain in the a Productivity Backup e If your hard drive dies can you be back in production in minutes rather than days e If your motherboard dies you have a fire or your PC is stolen can you be back in production in 4 or 5 hours rather than days Includes the time to purchase and bring home a new PC The answer is YES and it can be done easily cheaply and reliably IF AND ONLY IF YOU USE THE RIGHT TOOLS Critical Files Backup Some examples of critical files e Pictures amp Videos e Music purchases e TV shows amp Movies e Email e Business Data e Financial Data banking tax investment e Personal documents e Medical records e Passwords login info licences install keys Some of these files require vastly different treatment Some Services Utilities to handle critical file backups are evolving at this time Critical file backups will be dealt with in Part 2 and Part 3 if necessary A Productivity Backup does a significant part of the job of Critical File Backup Productivity Backup Clone a Hard Drive Equipment required e At least 2 hard drives equal to or larger than your current hard drive but at least as big as you would want in a new machine I suggest either Western Digital or Seagate e A docking station also affectionately known as a Toaster I suggest a USB 3 0 model by Thermaltake Or spend a little less on the USB 2 0 Vantec e And t2. then the clone can be used or can be converted to be used in a brand new PC even if the PC maker or the motherboard manufacturer is different This last step requires paid software from Acronis called The Plus Pack This eliminates the need to build your Windows setup from scatch when faced with a disaster e The clone drive is easily searched in Windows Explorer e You can easily test whether your backup the clone drive will actually boot and work Why 2 or more hard drives e They are cheap and very reliable storage e One drive can always be off site safe from fire and theft The other can be stored elsewhere in your house e Two possibilities for clean copies of a critical file e Even your backup hard drive can die How to Clone a Hard Drive e Video from dpBestflow org e Using WD Acronis shown during presentation no useful video available Seagate one will do e Using Seagate DiscWizard video 1 part e Using Macrium Reflect Free video How often e Depends on needs for security e Depends on tolerance for repeated tasks e Depends on discipline or sometimes nagging The Essential Bit Testing e Once clone complete shutdown the PC e Remove existing boot drive from EZ Swap drawer e Insert clone in EZ Swap drawer e Turn on the PC e Ifthe PC boots and you can perform some normal tasks your Productivity Backup is golden e Sleep soundly Note all other free software I tried
3. Computer Show amp Tell Wednesday June 27 2012 BACKUP and RESTORE PART 1 The Very Essential Minimum Part Presenter Brian Bentley Intro taken from the FreeBSD Handbook The first requirement in devising a backup plan is to make sure that all of the following problems are covered Disk failure Accidental file deletion Random file corruption Complete machine destruction e g fire including destruction of any on site backups It is perfectly possible that some systems will be best served by having each of these problems covered by a completely different technique Except for strictly personal systems with very low value data it is unlikely that one technique would cover all of them Some of the techniques in the toolbox are Archives of the whole system backed up onto permanent media offsite This actually provides protection against all of the possible problems listed above but is slow and inconvenient to restore from You can keep copies of the backups onsite and or online but there will still be inconveniences in restoring files especially for non privileged users Filesystem snapshots This is really only helpful in the accidental file deletion scenario but it can be very helpful in that case and is quick and easy to deal with RAID Minimizes or avoids downtime when a disk fails At the expense of having to deal with disk failures more often because you have more disks albeit at a much lower urgency
4. It is quite easy to come up with even more techniques many of them variations on the ones listed above The important thing is to know what dangers you want to protect against and how you will handle each Some Approaches and background reading material First A basic non cloud based personal backup strategy is a short article that comes quite close to my philosophy and experiences The recommendations are plus Use an imaging tool like Acronis True Image to create images of the machines you REALLY care about You can also use the System Image tool built into Windows Encrypt your external drives disagree with this one Backup files and disk images to two external drives Keep one external drive off site Test your backups by practicing a restore The rule of thumb is that backups ALWAYS succeed It s restores that fail use SyncBack to copy files on a schedule Second a wonderful detailed presentation can be found here http dpbestflow org links 39 Although this article is written for Photographers it is complete and is relevant for home users and small business There are some great video tutorials here like this one we will refer to later An important lesson PRIMARY COPY OF DATA where 1s it EXTERNAL OFFSITE ONLINE COPY COPY ALL NECESSARY TO CONSTITUTE A BACKUP Elements of a Backup amp Restore Plan e Productivity Backup e Critical Files Backup e Restoration Guarantee e All
5. failed this test Why a Rescue Boot Disk e Needed to restore an Image File to a hard drive that will not boot e Sometimes easier less clicks to use Boot Disk to clone hard drive e Sometimes needed to create an Image File of a misbehaving hard drive before trying risky troubleshooting actions Why not use a Rescue Boot Disk e Most rescue disks are Linux disks and may not work with some motherboards and or controller drivers Running the software from Windows avoids this issue e Macrium has a Windows based rescue disk but it is very difficult to create Creating a Rescue Boot Disk e WD and Seagate Boot Disks are created from their Windows software Although they are Linux Disks you will not notice any difference in the user interface e Macrium s Linux based Boot Disk is little use to us it does not offer Cloning e Building a WD Boot Disk will be demonstrated video e Appendix contains Start Up Parameters you can use to make a Boot Disk that works for a troublesome system For example an Acer Aspire 5640 Desktop requires noapic and acpi off to boot many Linux disks APPENDIX 19 Startup Parameters Additional parameters that can be applied prior to booting Linux kernel 19 1 Description Additional parameters that can be applied prior to booting Linux kernel Description The following parameters can be used to load Linux kernel in a special mode acpi off Disables ACPI and may help with a
6. he part no one ever thinks of the Vantec EZ Swap 4 Note you must have a usable CD DVD drive bay available This trayless hard drive rack is where your Desktop boot drive will live from now on No need for this part if you have a laptop only e Michael at the PC Shop corner of Westmount and Highland Road will match or beat Canada Computers pricing and include installation of the EZ Swap 4 Tell him Brian sent you e A carrying case for a hard drive the 1010 Micro Case from Pelican Adventure Guide sells them or this protection box by INEO from Canada Computers Software required e For Western Digital hard drives get Acronis True Image WD Edition Free e For Seagate hard drives get Seagate DiscWizard Free Also based on Acronis True Image e For any other hard drive manufacturers get Macrium Reflect Free e To burn Boot Disks if and when you need them get ImgBurn to get the iso files on to CDs or DVDs Why Clone e A clone is an exact bit for bit copy of your hard drive That means it includes all the hidden files needed to boot into and run Windows It also includes all your data files e Once started cloning a hard drive can be left unattended for example while you sleep e If your hard drive dies or becomes corrupted or is virused then just swap in the clone and boot up You re back in business Quicker if you have the EZ Swap tray because you do not have to open up the PC e If your PC is stolen
7. particular hardware configuration noapic Disables APIC Advanced Programmable Interrupt Controller and may help with a particular hardware configuration nousb Disables loading of USB modules nousb2 Disables USB 2 0 support USB 1 1 devices still work with this option This option allows using some USB drives in USB 1 1 mode if they do not work in USB 2 0 mode quiet This parameter is enabled by default and the startup messages are not displayed Deleting it will result in the startup messages being displayed as the Linux kernel is loaded and the command shell being offered prior to running the Acronis program nodma Disables DMA for all IDE disk drives Prevents kernel from freezing on some hardware nofw Disables FireWire IEEE1394 support nopcmcia Disables PCMCIA hardware detection nomouse Disables mouse support module name off Disables the module e g sata_sis off pci bios Forces to use PCI BIOS and not to access the hardware device directly For instance this parameter may be used if the machine has a non standard PCI host bridge pci nobios Disallows use of PCI BIOS only direct hardware access methods are allowed For instance this parameter may be used if you experience crashes upon boot up probably caused by the BIOS pci biosirq Uses PCI BIOS calls to get the interrupt routing table These calls are known to be buggy on several machines and they hang the machine
8. when used but on other computers it is the only way to get the interrupt routing table Try this option if the kernel is unable to allocate IRQs or discover secondary PCI buses on your motherboard vga ask Gets the list of the video modes available for your video card and allows selecting a video mode most suitable for the video card and monitor Try this option if the automatically selected video mode is unsuitable for your hardware NOTE Extracted from the Acronis User Manual
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