Best Backup Option?

[The Texan]

Hi, as some of you know I have been having pc's issues lately. I figure its time to back up before its to late. I have Norton Ghost and 1 80 gig hard drive that needs to be backed up. What is the most cost effective way of backing it up? I would like to just create an "image" of the whole disk but, if worst comes to worst all I REALLY need to save is my around 7-8 gigs of music.

[bagggi]

i have been reading about this "gmail drive" thing. havent tried it yet

was originally posted by "unhappy"

here's the link "http://www.viksoe.dk/code/gmail.htm"

[Striek]

The Texan,

If it's just 7 or 8 gigs of music you really need to back up, a DVD backup would certainly be your best option, you wouldn't need more than 3 (assuming you have a dvd burner, of course)

As for the rest of the drive, it really depends on how much of the drive is actually used. If you're ghosting it, you can usually count on the ghost image size being half the size of all your data, once the music is left out (mp3's are already compressed upt he wazoo).

I would suggest burning all the music to a dvd, deleting it (if it's not on a seperate partition) and then making a ghost image. I'm just guessing here, but I imagine the image could be easily burned on 5 dvd's or less. Then you can copy the music back.

I'd do it this way because the mp3 files will not be compressed enough in the image to make any difference, and will signifigantly reduce the size of the image file, while at the same time allowing you easy access to the music backup.

Bottom line though, the most cost effective way to back up your data is essectially dependent on how much data you have.

[Ghost_25inf]

If you are dealing with that much data maybe a second HD or even a third is the way to go. If you dont know how to setup raid then, look into a removable drive bay. these are great when you have data you need to store and swap drives quickly. Only bad thing about the internal bays are that you need to shutdown before you remove or install a drive. USB are cool but they tend to overheat ( or atleast the ones I had). I ripped one apart and made it into a hotswappable drive.

[Agent_Steal]

I was just about to ask the same question .. Not to hijack the thread or anything .. But any external hard drives that you guys would recommend ?? Price doesn't matter .. Just want something realiable ..

The amount of data that I would like to back-up is just 75 gigs of music to be precise ..

I am all ears ..

[Striek]

If you're look for something hotswappable, I would recommend a usb mobile rack instead, that can handle either serial or parallel ata. That way you can plug any normal hard drive you like in there while the machine is running. I've done this before and it works great.

You plug a standard IDE drive into the mobile rack, which is connected to the USB bus on the motherboard, and you can activate/deactivate/hotswap them just like a USB flash drive. It's worked for me with forensic analysis, I never had any problems with that setup.

Can't really recommenc any external hard drives, though, as I've never used them.