To comment on Ian's contribution first.

I agree with you Ian. A program that is hard to use is is useless.
Having said that, sometimes there is no alternative and one must
persevere to learn the intricacies.

Now to backing up. If you image a disk it is essential to ensure that
the result is what you expect. There is nothing worse than backing up
data over a long period of time only to find when a crash does occur all
your work has been in vain and the backup is useless. Having backed up
to some device it is essential to actually recover the data.

How to do that? Simply create a duplicate of the entire "C" drive on  a
spare disk, put that disk in the computer in place of the "C" drive and
see if it works. If it does well and good. If it doesn't find the
problem. Don't forget to reset the jumper on the drive if necessary.

If you are only interested in backing up part of a disk's data then
select a folder that has been backed up and copy the folder (for
safety). Try restoring the backed up folder to the original folder. Have
a look at the date of some of the files in that folder to ensure that
the backed up files are indeed the files now in the folder. NOTE: Some
data will be lost if the files have been changed since the original back
up. If necessary, restore that safety folder.

Now to Lewis' situation. I refrained from answering earlier because I
work in a different way and I am not sure if what I am about to say is
correct. Perhaps someone will correct me if I am wrong.

Question 1.

Ghost allows you to nominate files or folders not to back up during a
load or create function. In your case this will not work because you
will not know what files to exclude and there would be too many files
anyway.

Ghost was designed to make an exact image of one disk on another, either
using the whole of the disk or as an image file. What you are attempting
does not fit that category. You would be better off saving folders with
your data and the original files that you probably downloaded from the
internet - mostly ZIP files.

Your best bet would be to forget Ghost. Instead, save downloaded program
files to one folder, call it My Download Files. Create a macro that
copies all folders containing your data files as well as the My Download
Files folder to a CD. You can then use the created CD to recover any
files that you may need.

Question 2.

I have not found it necessary to worry about GoBack because I ghost the
entire "C" drive. However, if I need to recover individual files or
folders I am aware that GoBack may not work correctly. Therefore, I
would create a new GoBack restore point after restoring my system and
not use any previously created ones.

By Ghosting the entire "C" drive I can recover my computer to the state
it was in when I Ghosted. Much quicker that reloading individual
programs. I Ghost to a file image on a hard drive mounted in a mobile
rack. I do this so that I can save multiple copies of my "C" drive.
However, I could Ghost to the drive itself so that all I would need to
do to recover my system would be to replace the (damaged) "C" drive with
the one from the mobile rack.

Question 3

Ghost indicates the number of bytes to be backed up. Divide this number
by the number of bytes your CD holds and that will give you the number
of CDs required.

General comment.

What you could do is to store all data to be backed up in a separate
partition and just Ghost that partition. However, loaded programs on
that partition would not run because a reload of the operating system on
the "C" drive from the original CD would delete any references to loaded
programs from the registry.

If you want to use Ghost then back up your entire system to another hard
drive mounted in a mobile rack. The backed up data can then be stored
off site for safety. The back up procedure can be simplified by creating
a floppy disk with all the information necessary to carry out the
backup. Once created it is only a matter of inserting the mobile rack,
booting to the floppy and then one click of the mouse to start the process.

If needed, I can help you with more information on a mobile rack or
creating a bootable floppy.

Hope this helps.

Orf Bartrop




Ian wrote:

>Lewis, I dunno if this'll be helpful for you, but it's my solution to the same problem.
>
>After a recent rebuild, my first priority was to get a reliable backup system in place.  Ghost 2003 was my first thought as I've used it in the past, and although I've ALWAYS found it a real pain in the butt to use, it's qualifications seemed to indicate that it should have the ability to do what I wanted.
>
>But it screwed up not far into the process.  The initial problem was creating a boot CD but there were other factors.  So I gave up on it.  Again.  Maybe I'm lazy - but my policy is not to persevere with software that won't do it's job easily and efficiently in a way that I can understand.
>
>I mean - why bother with stuff that doesn't work properly?  There's too much software out there to waste time with badly constructed programs.  How do YOU know if it's badly constructed?  Answer - if it won't work for YOU.  Simple.
>
>This might sound unduly harsh but I've experimented with a LOT of software.  And I've tried and discarded mountains of incredible rubbish.  But, every so often I've run across applications that were an absolute DREAM to use, often enough to know that they're out there if you can only find them.
>
>End of rant and back to the matter of backups.  Drive Image 7 is supposed to be pretty good but I haven't used it.  I DID try Drive Image 6 but XP didn't seem to agree with it so Flipendo.
>
>Finally, after trying a couple more abortive and unsuccessful applications, I ran across Acronis True Image 7.
>
>This backup app is truly excellent - as far as I'm concerned it qualifies for DREAM status.  It's intelligent enough to be able to work entirely from Windows so you don't need to worry about working in DOS (or what passes for DOS in XP).
>
>And in my case, it enabled me to backup my system to a USB drive, which I believe should be the simplest way of doing the job, as I can leave the disk shut down for 99% of the time.  However, I haven't done a restore yet so I've yet to test it.
>
>Still, I'd venture to suggest that many of us have a backup system that's used frequently to create a backup  - but has never been restored from.
>
>Backup systems are probably a bit like lottery tickets - their main function is to provide hope:--))
>
>
>

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