best practices for backing up: ghost?

[korkman]

BACKING UP

Power users and pros often advice guys like me to back up both work files and system. I've tried to search the DUC and elsewhere for a nice walkthrough, but questions remain. Is there somewhere a thread or net walkthrough already on best practices with regards to backing up a pro tools 9 system? Anyway: here are the questions that concern me personally the most at the moment.

1) I have run Norton Ghost on a laptop earlier. Starting up was very slow. Also, I tend to use external drives for backup, and disconnect these except when performing the backups. This made Ghost complain and issue warnings that I could not disable regarding backup points that are not available etc. I might have kept Ghost if I could have found a way to tell it to shut up until I call on it, but all I could do to tame it was to completely uninstall. Was it simply me, or is Ghost generally too bulky, slow, and intrusive to be helpful in an audio pc?

2) My plan is to backup my files on two (usb-connected) external drives that I do not use when working on audio. The simplest would be to allow the usb-cables to remain connected but unused in the back sockets of the pc while they are not in use. Is this okay, or will the plugged-in usb 3 or usb 2 cables slow me down even when the drives are not connected or turned off?

3) Is it possible to use Norton Ghost or some other software for ONLY creating an image now and then of my [system + sound banks] drive, and then closing down Ghost completely? I could then back up my PT session file disk contents manually.

with many thanks,

Petter

[cwsand]

Acronis True Image

[korkman]

Originally Posted by cwsand

Acronis True Image

Ok, looks good, not expensive ... of course since I already did buy Ghost a year ago, I'm still interested in hearing if it is possible to get by using Ghost instead.

Also: on my other questions, any views?

Petter

[sunburst79]

I haven't used Ghost in years. Another thumbs up here for Acronis. If your externals are powered off they shouldn't take up any resourses.

I have installed Acronis, made backups and then uninstalled it or disabled any startup services it added using MSconfig. Normally I would only do this if I suspected some type of PT/Acronis interaction. I haven't done that in a long time either. No reason you can't do the same with Ghost

[mlange]

+1 Acronis

It works!

[narapo]

Acronis ruined my PC !

I made an image of my SSD system disk to an external HD with Acronis True image that seemed to work well but upon compltion of the disk image creation, the PC wasn't able to restart because Acronis altered the boot sector of both the system disk and the destination hard drive. None of the utilities I tried was able to reconstruct the boot sector and I was forced to reinstall Windows 7, ProTools, all my plugins and sound librairies ; in fact I'm still in the course of that complete re install of my system.

So Acronis scares me and I will not use it again !

[albee1952]

Originally Posted by narapo

Acronis ruined my PC !

I made an image of my SSD system disk to an external HD with Acronis True image that seemed to work well but upon compltion of the disk image creation, the PC wasn't able to restart because Acronis altered the boot sector of both the system disk and the destination hard drive. None of the utilities I tried was able to reconstruct the boot sector and I was forced to reinstall Windows 7, ProTools, all my plugins and sound librairies ; in fact I'm still in the course of that complete re install of my system.

So Acronis scares me and I will not use it again !

There's an exception to everything. I have used Acronis for better than 5 years and it has never caused a problem(while I certainly have) and it has saved my ***** several times, as well as saving me days of reloading everything. Interestingly enough, I just used Acronis to clone from a 120GB laptop drive(standard 5400 rpm) to a new 60GB SSD and it went without a hitch(laptop has run fine for 2 weeks). As for SSD in a Pro Tools rig, I am still not sold on that

[korkman]

Originally Posted by sunburst79

If your externals are powered off they shouldn't take up any resourses.

So keeping the usb cable plugged does not in itself eat resources? Cool that simplifies things a bit.

Originally Posted by sunburst79

I have installed Acronis, made backups and then uninstalled it or disabled any startup services it added using MSconfig. Normally I would only do this if I suspected some type of PT/Acronis interaction. I haven't done that in a long time either. No reason you can't do the same with Ghost

Ok, I'll try this first on my laptop. Run "msconfig" (I'd forgotten that option so there the fault was my own) and select ghost as one of the things that does not start automatically. Then back up the system disk when it seems stable, and configure some sort of synchronization action for the sessions drive.

Thanks, I'll report back at some point.

Petter

[JMS40]

Originally Posted by narapo

Acronis ruined my PC !

Pilot error.

[Bill Denton]

Keep in mind that you are dealing with two separate issues...

1. Creating an image backup of your OS and program files disk. You only need to update this when you add new software, hardware, or something similar.

2. Creating daily/hourly/weekly/whatever backups of your sessions. Obviously these need to be backed up every time you work on a session. How often you do this is up to you. Some high-end pro studios are probably doing this on an hourly basis, while for the typical project studio an "end-of-workday" backup is probably enough.

Windows 7 has built-in tools (which is what I use) to do both of these types of backups, although they are pretty basic. Some of the guys here can probably recommend some products with more functionality (or just more bells 'n whistles)...