Backup has got me real confused

[skywalker]

Backup has got me confused.

I just want to back up my registry. I think they call it System State.
I have my progs and data saved to CD-RW.

It won't let me copy to a CD, just to a floppy.

I guess you can't copy just the registry file to where you want it anymore.

Thanks.

[P1]

Which Windows are you running / want this solution for ?

Regards,  P1  :8)

[skywalker]

Which Windows are you running / want this solution for ?

Regards,  P1  :8)

XP Professional

[Mark Jones]

I backup all my drives to an external firewire drive using FolderClone. Doesn't do "system state" but when something that bad happens, you usually end up reinstalling anyways... so best to just have all files backed up. :)

I think XP saves those files to the CD. The floppy is needed for the old "repair" info. Both are needed to restore.

[P1]

skywalker,

Read this completely, because I am not going to go into all that detail for you.:  This is a must read for anyone who works on XP.
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;307545

So that this makes some sense to you:
In the Snapshot directory of the recent/latest RPxxx directory is your five hives of the registry.  You have the choice of backing to CD just the registry files or the whole restore point.

Just a thought, if the hard drive is trashed so bad, that you need an external restore point, I would consider reloading.  Plus you have the option of setting how many restore points for windows to keep.

Remember, to make a current restore point, before back through the old ones.

Regards,  P1  :8)

[skywalker]

skywalker,

Read this completely, because I am not going to go into all that detail for you.:  This is a must read for anyone who works on XP.
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;307545

So that this makes some sense to you:
In the Snapshot directory of the recent/latest RPxxx directory is your five hives of the registry.  You have the choice of backing to CD just the registry files or the whole restore point.

Just a thought, if the hard drive is trashed so bad, that you need an external restore point, I would consider reloading.  Plus you have the option of setting how many restore points for windows to keep.

Remember, to make a current restore point, before back through the old ones.

Regards,  P1  :8)

Thanks.

[hutch--]

Andy,

The only safe way I know is to use disk imaging. It used to be Norton Ghost, these days I use Acronis disk imaging instead. Its your choice as to whether you back up onto another partition or a DVD if a CD is not big enough for your boot partition. This will beat anything, viruses, trojans or a crashed disk.

[skywalker]

Andy,

The only safe way I know is to use disk imaging. It used to be Norton Ghost, these days I use Acronis disk imaging instead. Its your choice as to whether you back up onto another partition or a DVD if a CD is not big enough for your boot partition. This will beat anything, viruses, trojans or a crashed disk.

Thanks. I found this link to make a smaller bootdisk using system files.

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;314079

My system won't support a DVD writer. Can the boot partition be that big for a 20M drive that it takes more than one CD?

[PBrennick]

A CD will be sufficiient for your needs but remember it is because of the 20mg drive.  If you ever buy a large drive you will have trouble because of that motherboard.

Paul

[MichaelW]

XP Pro on a 20 MB drive??

[zcoder]

I think he meant 20GB as I think most people are all on
a 40GB and orver.

I had that porblem of backing up, so I wrote a simple
disk image backup program that also commpressed
the image.

If you had only half the drive full it would only copy those
sectors that contained data.

Each sector was marked with what sector number it was at
when put into the comressed image.

So it would be written back to that same sector
so all would match the fat table.

when backing up to CD's you have to have at least 600MB left on the
drive as it use's this space to make each CD image.

works for me, but I would not release this program as I am
not sure it would work on all Machines.(It was just a fast hack of mine.)

I am sure there is some program out there that would work similer to
this you could find, as it would be the best way to backup.

Zcoder....

[skywalker]

XP Pro on a 20 MB drive??

My mistake, it's a 20 GB. I'm only using a third of the disc space, but may look to see how big a drive it could support. At idle memory usage is around 23%, it'll spike up to 60% or more for some apps.

I lowered the time slice given to Spybot, but need to put it back where is was, but forgot how I did it. I did a search for performace etc. with no luck.