[Leica] Question Re Backing Up to External Hard Drives

[datamaster at northcoastphotos.com (Gary Todoroff)]

Bob - the problem with a simple Windows file-to-file backup (as in 
dragging and dropping all your folders to the backup drive), is that 
you can't restart the process where it left off if something goes 
wrong. One corrupted file will halt the whole Windows Explorer file 
transfer process.

For several years on my PC's, I have been very happy backing up (and 
even happier when the restore has worked fine on a couple of 
occasions) using the free shareware program, XXCOPY. It uses a 
straight-forward DOS command line. I am also able to span the backup 
across multiple backup disks, so make good use out of an assortment 
of leftover and/or cheap 120,160 and 250GB IDE hard drives that I put 
into removable tray caddies. The backup copy is a standard Windows 
set of folders, just like the source files. I can post or send the 
XXCOPY batch files if anyone is interested.

The other tool is another freeware program, "Solway's Task 
Scheduler". I use it to do an automatic backup every day using 
XXCOPY. It only backs up the files that have been added or changed 
since the last full backup to the removable hard drives. Those 
incremental files go on a self-contained 120GB hard drive that sits 
on top of the computer. The full backup hard drives go to my 
daughter's house for offsite storage.

The actual photo files are all on a Windows PC using RAID5 that 
stores files redundantly. When (not if) one of the four drives fails, 
no data is lost. I keep a spare drive in the case that will 
automatically be reconfigured into the broken array. The RAID will be 
back to full health after about a day of rewriting the array.

After running a computer time-sharing business for many years with a 
dozen or more businesses depending on their data, I am very religious 
about backup.

Gary Todoroff


At 05:36 PM 05/23/07, you wrote:
>Thanks for the quick responses.
>
>I am not sure I am a Luddite but I am definitely ignorant.
>
>As I understand Retrospect (don't know about other programs) it does 
>the backing up in some language or compression of its own.  Thus to 
>restore what it has backed up you need to have the software at hand 
>to expand or read the backups.
>
>If I just copy over the images to these external drives I won't have 
>to worry about that.
>
>This would be slower of course but much easier for me to deal with.
>
>KISS, as Ted might say.
>
>What I want to back up / store / save are photographs. I can 
>remember to do the backups most every time I am working with my 
>photographs, I think, which for me is (unfortunately) not nearly as 
>often as I would like.  Think of it as putting the negatives back in 
>their glassines after a printing session.
>
>Does this make sense?
>
>--Bob