FileSlinger™ Backup Reminder 03-31-06: Missed Backups

It’s true—I’ve gone from a 20 GB internal hard drive to 160 GB in two internal drives, and it’s pretty mind-boggling to have all that space. Having two drives, and internal storage larger than my two external drives combined, requires a new approach, and I haven’t quite figured out my new backup routine.

That’s not why I missed last week’s backup reminder, though. I put in a 12-hour day on Thursday, had to get up at 5 AM for a 7 AM meeting on Friday, and promptly collapsed for three days. I feel especially bad because one of my Loyal Readers said she’d forgotten to back up as a result. (Worse yet, her computer started acting funny last night.)

What I’ve done so far is to install the machine (it was a floor model and set up with CompUSA as the administrator), create a Ghost backup of the bare OS and then of the OS plus drivers and major applications, and re-establish my Karen’s Replicator backups to the external hard drive. (And it is *so* nice to have both FireWire and USB hi-speed—the first Ghost image was finished almost before I started it.)

I’m also experimenting with Comodo Backup to synchronize my working files onto the second internal drive (which has the highly original name of “Data”). Comodo is a free product which has a number of options but also some quirks I haven’t figured out yet, so I prefer to continue relying on Ghost and Replicator, my old standbys.

The Ur-Guru is getting to be pretty enthusiastic about the most recent version of Acronis TrueImage, though, so don’t be surprised to hear more about that in the future.

In the meantime—go forth and back up!