Why can't I do backups on XP by just backing up files and folders?
goog...@kwcpa.com
backup strategy that uses only NTBACKUP. But, I don't buy it. Please
read my story of woe, and post if you can help me understand (either
way). I've posted in lesser places without getting a solid answer....
======
I'm migrating from WIN98SE to WINXP Home. For years, I did backups by
PKZipping all the files on a disk into a single ZIP file stored on
another machine. When the disk crashed, I bought a new disk, hooked
it to another (working) machine, did a SYS on it, restored the ZIP
file, plugged the disk into the original machine and booted. I know
that PKZIP never captured files open for writing, but that never
seemed to be a problem.
Why won't the same scheme work for WINXP? Why can't I use NTBACKUP
(or PKZIP for that matter) to backup all my files and folders in
compressed form to a file on another PC, and then when the disk
crashes, get a new disk, use another machine to init it as bootable
and restore a backup, and then just plug it into the original machine
and boot up?
I've had some people suggest that this won't work, that XP is more
than the sum of the contents of all the files and folders and that
outside of the boot record there is other "information" stored on the
disk somehow that NTBACKUP, PKZIP, etc, won't capture, but Ghost or
DiskImage magically will - is this really true?
I'm eventually going to be upgrading multiple machines to XPHOME, and
that's why I don't want to use Ghost - too pricey at $70/machine.
If there is other information I must capture and restore, can someome
specifically tell me what's missing?
I've posted to few smaller forums and I suspect there's a lot of FUD
out there - why would the NT folks make it more complicated? Why would
they make it HARD to recover from a Disk Crash? What am I not
"get"ting?
thanks very much!
/j
PS - and yes, I plan to use NTFS unless there's a good reason not to
Olof Lagerkvist
> Summary - I've been told I can't recover from a disk crash with a
> backup strategy that uses only NTBACKUP. But, I don't buy it. Please
> read my story of woe, and post if you can help me understand (either
> way). I've posted in lesser places without getting a solid answer....
>
> ======
> I'm migrating from WIN98SE to WINXP Home. For years, I did backups by
> PKZipping all the files on a disk into a single ZIP file stored on
> another machine. When the disk crashed, I bought a new disk, hooked
> it to another (working) machine, did a SYS on it, restored the ZIP
> file, plugged the disk into the original machine and booted. I know
> that PKZIP never captured files open for writing, but that never
> seemed to be a problem.
The main difference is that om Windows NT/2000/XP/2003 you cannot backup
the registry files because they are kept open while the system is
running. To be able to restore an XP system the way you want you also
need to backup the registry.
On Windows 95/98 this was not a problem because it was possible to read
the registry files while the system was running.
> Why won't the same scheme work for WINXP? Why can't I use NTBACKUP
> (or PKZIP for that matter) to backup all my files and folders in
> compressed form to a file on another PC, and then when the disk
> crashes, get a new disk, use another machine to init it as bootable
> and restore a backup, and then just plug it into the original machine
> and boot up?
AFAIK ntbackup utility should backup enough to get your system running
again on a new hd, but you cannot use pkzip because of the registry file
issue.
> I've had some people suggest that this won't work, that XP is more
> than the sum of the contents of all the files and folders and that
> outside of the boot record there is other "information" stored on the
> disk somehow that NTBACKUP, PKZIP, etc, won't capture, but Ghost or
> DiskImage magically will - is this really true?
Ghost and DiskImage makes file system images, not file and directory
archives. This means that everything from the filesystem are stored in
the backup image, i.e. files, attributes, extended attributes, security
descriptors and a lot more. Even if most of this also can be stored in a
zip archive, it is up to your zip tool to include it and then extract it
in a usable way. Not every zip program does that.
> I'm eventually going to be upgrading multiple machines to XPHOME, and
> that's why I don't want to use Ghost - too pricey at $70/machine.
>
> If there is other information I must capture and restore, can someome
> specifically tell me what's missing?
>
> I've posted to few smaller forums and I suspect there's a lot of FUD
> out there - why would the NT folks make it more complicated? Why would
> they make it HARD to recover from a Disk Crash? What am I not
> "get"ting?
I usually recommed to use two psysical harddrives in a mirror set. There
are cheap IDE RAID cards nowadays, so this is no longer an expensive
solution. This way you handle physical drive crashes and then you can
add an ntbackup to some other media to backup files in case of mistakes
such as unintended deletions of files, etc.
> PS - and yes, I plan to use NTFS unless there's a good reason not to
That's good.
--
Olof Lagerkvist
ICQ: 724451
Web page: http://here.is/olof
goog...@kwcpa.com
environment: NTFS, XP Home.
For backups: Use NTBACKUP (with system state selected) to create weekly
full, and daily incremental backups - each is written over the network
to a file on a different PC.
For restore - (assuming my disk crashed). I go to another PC, install a
new virgin drive as a 2ndary IDE drive, then
1) Format the drive using XP
2) Restore the backed up folders and files using NTBACKUP (including
system state).
3) Boot to the Recovery Console and make the drive bootable by running
fixmbr.
4) Install the drive in the failed machine.
5) boot and celebrate
will this work? - is this the right way to do it? what am I missing?
thanks!
/j
Olof Lagerkvist
goog...@kwcpa.com
backup an image backup, and then skip the fixmbr step (as people think
it won't work) - with the image backup all I do is restore the image
and the incrementals and boot off the disk. better?
/thanks
/j
Olof Lagerkvist <n...@email.address> wrote in message news:<5yL%c.2715$d5.2...@newsb.telia.net>...