Backing up systems querey?????

[popotech]

hello
i am the comp. tech at a city deparment, i have the job of keeping track of software and hardware on pcs. my newest request is that i need to have a back of all the pc in the building *about 40* and bascially have a backup ready asap. what i am saying is that i don't know what software or method to use. "Should i use partition magic, image drive or ghost, i just need a successful way of backing up the systems.

*option 1-
connecting a 60gig harddrive as a *slave drive* and coping the drive of the pc to the slave "60 gig drive"

*option 2-
use ghost, partition magic or something like that to copy the drive to the 60 gig drive

*option 3-
run a system back through microsoft back up and save the back up to a CD?

any input would be greatly appriciated
thanks

 

[edfair]

No matter what method, restoring will require some software to accomplish it. So no matter what you have, not everything will be required since some will be reloaded during rebuild.
What operating systems/environments are you dealing with? Are the systems networked?
Had planning been done at the beginning one networked drive or system could have beeen the repository of data and the backup would be of one system. Or possibly multiple servers by departments. Ed Fair
efair@atlnet.com

Any advice I give is my best judgement based on my interpretation of the facts you supply.

Help increase my knowledge by providing some feedback, good or bad, on any advice I have given.

 

[popotech]

im sorry i am a bit new to this site, i was a bit vague. the OS is 95/98 windows, i have pcs scattered throughout the department. we are not on a network as of yet so i was wondering what would be the best way in backing up a HDD for future errors. for instance if one of the PC's HDD take a crash and the harddrive is shot, i would install a new harddrive and get the pc to where it was when i did a back up. hopefully********i am looking for a way to do this without having to re-install the windows software.
thanks

 

[ayjaycee]

You need something like Ghost - you should be able to create an "image" of a freshly installed PC onto a CD (requires a CD writer, of course), which can be used to build and/or restore a PC.

http://www.tanda.f2s.com

One by one, the penguins steal my sanity.

 

[edfair]

How often are changes made to the systems? Are the systems similar?
CD writers on every machine will be overkill. ZIP drives for data backup will be within reason. But the amount of data or version of windows may make it inappropriate.
I carry windows stuff on zip drives that I copy to the hard drive so the install is done from there. It helps that my customers have simple setups. And those that don't have zip drives have a parallel port that I can use for zip access.
What ever way you go, your data will be out of date so a restore from any media you use for the major backup will be just the start of the recovery.
Ed Fair
efair@atlnet.com

Any advice I give is my best judgement based on my interpretation of the facts you supply.

Help increase my knowledge by providing some feedback, good or bad, on any advice I have given.

 

[Guest_imported]

It doesn't sound like your users are backing up their data regularly, if at all. If there are no immediate plans to network the computers within your building, you will need to treat each machine individually. First priority should be to get users to make daily backups of data - depending upon just how much data we're talking about, a 250Mb ZIP drive in each machine would be a relatively cheap and safe option. Get this in place and working first. Next use something like Power Quest's DISK IMAGE to make an image of every hard drive. You will need to go to each machine, open it up, and temporarily connect a second hard drive, say 60Gb preformatted. Put the .PQI image files onto this drive which can be returned to safe storage after the job's complete. Do the usual checks for viruses, scandisk etc., prior to making an image.


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