OT: Sunday nite

[Puddin' Man]

Back in the 80's, I was running something called MUSIC under VM, submitting
across an interface to a VS2/SVS (batch) system. Folks would caution me
not to submit tape jobs on Sunday nite, lest the operators might abend
my job to free up a tape drive for the backups they were always running
on Sunday.

How times have changed.

I have a little desktop system built around an Asus H55 board and Intel
Nahalem Clarkdale cpu and 2 identical Samsung 500gb HD's.

---------------------------------------------------------
| | | | | | |
Disk 1 |D1P1| D1P2 | D1P3 | D1P4 |unalloc | D1P5 |
| | W7 | XP | data | | old sys |
---------------------------------------------------------

-----------------------------------------------
| | | | | |
Disk 2 |D2P1| D2P2 | D2P3 |unalloc | D2P4 |
| | W7 | XP | | old sys |
-----------------------------------------------

where DiPj is Partition j on Disk i.

All OS's are either Win7 or XP. All partitions are NTFS. The P1's are
presumably mere fragments (7.84 mb) left over from allocation, but Partition
Wizard CD lists them as partitions.

Every Sunday nite I delete D2P3 and copy/compress D1P3 to D2P3 running a
bootable Partition Wizard CD. This effectively gives me an image copy of the
used data on my primary use partition. D1P3 sits on 79 gb of space. The
copied D2P3 is compressed down to used space of about 26 gb.

Is D1P3 100% safe? If a file on D1P3 becomes corrupted, I can merely copy such
file from D2P3 back to D1P3. Similar for a directory/file structure.

If D1P3 became corrupted, I could copy D2P3 back to D1P3 using bootable
Partition Wizard CD in a similar fashion? Remember that the disk geometries are
identical.

Safe? Unsafe?? What say you? :-)

P

"Law Without Equity Is No Law At All. It Is A Form Of Jungle Rule."

[Paul]

You could use Macrium Reflect Free to do this. Like a number
of other backup tools, it uses WinXP VSS, and you can do
the backup of WinXP, while booted ihto WinXP. Only if you're
doing a "bare metal restore", do you need to boot from the
included Macrium boot CD, to do the restoration. (Most of the
Macrium download, is a small Linux environment that boots
into a dedicated GUI. You don't "see any Linux" while it is
running, so there is nothing to learn.)

The .vhd file collected, can likely be accessed. I think
you might be able to do it with "vhdmount". It's possible
the Macrium tool can do it as well. An OS like Windows 8
may be able to mount a .vhd natively. I don't remember
right off hand, how many Windows OSes can do this. WinXP
needs the help of this tool to do it.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc708295(WS.10).aspx

http://www.petri.co.il/mounting-vhd-files-with-vhdmount.htm

The advantage of this method, is you can stay in WinXP
when doing the backup.

A disadvantage of your method, is if the compressed file
is corrupted, error multiplication may cause the loss of
more than one file from the backup.

The VSS copy method, only writes out "busy" sectors. The
service seems to know exactly which sectors are "officially busy".

For maximum safety, disk2 should be in an external enclosure,
and disconnected when not in usage. This prevents lightning
from destroying both copies at the same time. Another
fault mode, is when a power supply overvolts and burns
both disks. Unplugging disk2 covers those kind of
obscure failure cases. I think I've run into a USENET
poster or two, who has experienced one of these kinds
of failures (all disks ruined inside PC, at the same
time), so the fault modes have actually happened.

Paul

[Puddin' Man]

On Fri, 15 Feb 2013 20:25:44 -0500, Paul <nos...@needed.com> wrote:

>You could use Macrium Reflect Free to do this. Like a number
>of other backup tools, it uses WinXP VSS, and you can do
>the backup of WinXP, while booted ihto WinXP. Only if you're
>doing a "bare metal restore", do you need to boot from the
>included Macrium boot CD, to do the restoration. (Most of the
>Macrium download, is a small Linux environment that boots
>into a dedicated GUI. You don't "see any Linux" while it is
>running, so there is nothing to learn.)

I don't trust WinXP VSS. Microsoft has a horrorific rep
for such software.

>The .vhd file collected, can likely be accessed. I think

likely???

>you might be able to do it with "vhdmount". It's possible

might???

>the Macrium tool can do it as well. An OS like Windows 8
>may be able to mount a .vhd natively. I don't remember
>right off hand, how many Windows OSes can do this. WinXP
>needs the help of this tool to do it.
>
>http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc708295(WS.10).aspx
>
>http://www.petri.co.il/mounting-vhd-files-with-vhdmount.htm
>
>The advantage of this method, is you can stay in WinXP
>when doing the backup.

I don't see that as an advantage. I seek stand-alone backup
/image copying running on inactive HD partitions. This is
traditional in the industry.

>A disadvantage of your method, is if the compressed file
>is corrupted, error multiplication may cause the loss of
>more than one file from the backup.

I'm thinking of eliminating the compression step. There is
plenty of disk space.

>The VSS copy method, only writes out "busy" sectors. The
>service seems to know exactly which sectors are "officially busy".

If I had a nickel for every software process failing in one
way or another this claim, I could afford to purchase the state of
Rhode Island for a summer retreat? :-)

>For maximum safety, disk2 should be in an external enclosure,
>and disconnected when not in usage. This prevents lightning
>from destroying both copies at the same time. Another
>fault mode, is when a power supply overvolts and burns
>both disks. Unplugging disk2 covers those kind of
>obscure failure cases. I think I've run into a USENET
>poster or two, who has experienced one of these kinds
>of failures (all disks ruined inside PC, at the same
>time), so the fault modes have actually happened.

This is true. The design wasn't intended to cover all bases.
Only very common disaster recovery scenarios.

Are you using any Macrium software for such purposes? Tell
the truth, now. :-)

If I eliminate the compression step, shouldn't Partition Wizard
be sufficient for my purposes?

[Paul]

Where is your spirit of adventure ? :-)

I haven't needed to use VHDMount, because I can load a .vhd into
VPC2007 and get at the files that way. Because I have multiple
methods of doing stuff, I haven't evaluated all possible methods.
I've heard of VHDMount - it isn't trouble free, and needs to be
tested.

VHD files can also be mounted directly in Windows 8, as can ISO9660
files. But not many people will own a copy of Windows 8, just so they
can augment their backup and recovery processes. A few things about
Windows 8 suck, which kind of keeps things in check (I won't go
overboard as a promoter).

Paul

[Paul]

In this film strip, I evaluate Macrium within a VM (so I can take
screen shots for documentation). You can see the interfaces, and
how it works. Here, I'm demonstrating the backup of a Windows 7
system which also has a couple (empty) data partitions. Just
to give the test case some flavor. (Clicking your web browser
cursor, should zoom into the picture. Scroll to review it.)

http://img31.imageshack.us/img31/4512/macriumrestore.gif

I do both a backup and a restore there. To do the restore,
I boot the VM with the Macrium CD, and proceed to restore
from the backup.

You can do the first half of that procedure, then experiment
with VHDMount and see whether it mounts all possible
partitions at once, or allows you to select a particular
partition.

Have fun,
Paul