Use XP Restore or Backup data?

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt (More info?)

If I do image backups and daily incrementals using Ghost....is there a
reason I should also keep the XP System restore feature on? I do a baseline
once a month and then daily incrementals with Ghost 9.

Turns out if I have the XP Restore on, then Ghost wont do incrementals, only
the large baseline backups.

My thought is that doing it by Ghost means I restore everything, even apps
from the date chosen, whereas XP Restore only restores system data...drivers
and such. So the only problem may be a longer restore from my backup drive
vesus using the XP Restore.

What do you think?

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt (More info?)

"jtsnow" <jtsnow@yahoo.com> wrote:

> If I do image backups and daily incrementals using Ghost....is
> there a reason I should also keep the XP System restore feature
> on? I do a baseline once a month and then daily incrementals
> with Ghost 9.
>
> Turns out if I have the XP Restore on, then Ghost wont do
> incrementals, only the large baseline backups.
>
> My thought is that doing it by Ghost means I restore everything,
> even apps from the date chosen, whereas XP Restore only restores
> system data...drivers and such. So the only problem may be a
> longer restore from my backup drive vesus using the XP Restore.

Are you saying that he is ghost to make incremental backups and
then you can delete the entire Windows partition (or disk) and
copy the backup in its place?

If so, I would say heck yes, go with the ghost.

Does that work only with the entire disk, or will it work with
partitions? Do you have to have the exact same size disk?

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt (More info?)

I would also keep a removable media copy of your most important files
such as files you generate.

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt (More info?)

> If I do image backups and daily incrementals using Ghost....is there a
> reason I should also keep the XP System restore feature on? I do a baseline
> once a month and then daily incrementals with Ghost 9.

I've got the XP System Restore turned off, and back up my drive
with Drive Image 7. Shortly after I installed XP, the one time I
wanted to correct some screwup with software that installed
improperly, System Restore didn't work for me, so I said to
myself, The hell with this, it takes up a huge amount of space and
does squat when you need it.

 

[JohnS]

Archived from groups: alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt (More info?)

> My thought is that doing it by Ghost means I restore everything, even apps
> from the date chosen, whereas XP Restore only restores system
> data...drivers and such. So the only problem may be a longer restore from
> my backup drive vesus using the XP Restore.
>
> What do you think?

I use PowerQuest 2002 to create an image of my C-drive to my D-drive.
If I get a total corruption caused by a virus or something like that, I can
easily restore everything since my last image creation. I do that about
once a month. Since I have a large hard drive ( 160 c: 60 d:100 ), I
also do manual copies of important things like wifes email, my docs,
and anything else she may have scattered around. That takes maybe
5 minutes on my system, and I do it when I think about it .. once a
week or so. Then, I also have a 160 gig external USB drive that mostly
stays turned off. I manually copy all of my backup stuff on the d-drive
to it .. maybe once a month .. and then I power it down. And here is
how I use it:

1. Virus damage like one of those web page hijackers .. I use XP
restore. Takes about 5 minutes.
2. If the damage is too great, I reimage ( about 18 gigs ) the C-drive
and that takes ( on my AMD 64 ) about 15 minutes, plus I might
have to restore a few docs, and wifes email .. another 3 - 5 min.
3. If I have a hard drive failure, I restore from the backup image
on the USB drive, plus I check to see I need to manually restore
email to update it ... and generally I can slave the old drive and
recover any recent stuff from it. Most of the time that works.
4. I can also burn cdrs, but I'm finding I do that less and less for
backing up anything other than backing up my install cds.

The trick here is to have a system like my AMD 64 which has an
image restore rate of over 1 gig / min. Older systems like an
old AMD athlon 2000 will have a data rate of more like 60 meg
per minute, and that takes many hours for 18 gig ... all night.