Duplicate Backups on Separate External Hard Drives?

Hello All

 

I think this question has been answered, but not quite sure....

 

Norton Ghost v 15.0.1.36526

Win 7 Prof SP1 32bit

2 Internal Hard Drives

 

I have been backing up a Full System on the first Sunday of the month, then incrementals for the remainder Sundays of the month. This is for my 2 internal hard drives ('C' - OS and programs and 'D' - Data). So far I have been backing up to one External Hard Drive.

 

What I want to do is: Backup Full System on first Sunday twice, to 2 separate external hard drives; thus giving me 2 separate but identical backups. These backup drives would be called something like Ext 1 and Ext 2, backing up months Jan, Mar, May, etc. And of course, the same for the weekly incrementals.

 

Also would like to do same for months Feb, Apr, June, etc. to another 2 external hard drives (Ext 3 and Ext 4). This would give me 4 separate external hard drives with 2 of them always identical. I'm paranoid, drives don't last forever, so better to be save than sorry.

 

Now comes my question: Am I able to setup 4 separate backup jobs in Ghost's 'Run or Manage Backups'? Each pointing to a different external hard drive backup location? I know to keep the base backup and incrementals on the same external drive but will Ghost let me backup the same internal drives to multiple external drives; without confusing Ghost or myself LOL.

 

Thanks in advance for help and advise.

Barb

Hello All

 

I think this question has been answered, but not quite sure....

 

Norton Ghost v 15.0.1.36526

Win 7 Prof SP1 32bit

2 Internal Hard Drives

 

I have been backing up a Full System on the first Sunday of the month, then incrementals for the remainder Sundays of the month. This is for my 2 internal hard drives ('C' - OS and programs and 'D' - Data). So far I have been backing up to one External Hard Drive.

 

What I want to do is: Backup Full System on first Sunday twice, to 2 separate external hard drives; thus giving me 2 separate but identical backups. These backup drives would be called something like Ext 1 and Ext 2, backing up months Jan, Mar, May, etc. And of course, the same for the weekly incrementals.

 

Also would like to do same for months Feb, Apr, June, etc. to another 2 external hard drives (Ext 3 and Ext 4). This would give me 4 separate external hard drives with 2 of them always identical. I'm paranoid, drives don't last forever, so better to be save than sorry.

 

Now comes my question: Am I able to setup 4 separate backup jobs in Ghost's 'Run or Manage Backups'? Each pointing to a different external hard drive backup location? I know to keep the base backup and incrementals on the same external drive but will Ghost let me backup the same internal drives to multiple external drives; without confusing Ghost or myself LOL.

 

Thanks in advance for help and advise.

Barb

Thanks redk9258 for the info.

OK, I've read the User Manual for Offsite Copy....if I understand correctly, this gives me a duplicate of either the Full Backup or the Incremental, whichever was run that particular day. Someone, correct me if I'm wrong but is this what I have to do:

 

1. go into 'Run/Manage Backups' and edit the backup job (I only have one backup job set to do a Full Backup (restore point set) first time run in a month...then I manually evoke Incrementals every other time) to perform a Copy Offsite.

 

2. Run my backup as normal to my external hard drive (let's call it Barb 1); once the backup is complete I unplug Barb 1 from the computer and plug in the second external hard drive (let's call this one Barb 2). NG will automatically start the Offsite Copy? Is there something I have to do to Barb 2 so NG will know that's where the Offsite Copy should be?

 

Offsite Copy will work for both Full Backups and Incrementals?

 

My Backup Job is set for 3 Recovery Sets (this would be 3 months worth of Full & Incremental Backups). Does Offsite Copy work the same? Come the 4th month, will the oldest recovery set on the Offsite Copy be deleted automatically?

 

Say I wanted to use Barb1 & Barb 2 in Jan; Mar; May; etc. and then use Barb 3 & Barb 4 for Feb; Apr; June; etc is this possible? Or would that just be overkill? Granted I would have to lose the Computer, Barb 1 & Barb 2 ALL at the same time, so maybe it is overkill on my part and just having Offsite Copy would achieve what I'm looking for. But, I can also have 2 separate Offsite Copy external hard drives at the same time, correct?

 

I may sound paranoid about losing info, but I have lost all the contents of a computer in the past....NO FUN....this is why I now backup. Sort of like 'shutting the barn door after the cows have all left' LOL. Just don't want to go through all that hassle again!

 

Anyhow, thanks for any and all advise.

Barb

I'm guessing on this, but I think I am correct... For Offsite Copy to work, I think you have to have both backup drives connected. Once the backup is made, it is transferred in the background (synced) to the second drive, probably when there is low PC usage or at idle.

 

Do you have a Desktop or Laptop PC? If you have a Desktop, you could put a second hard drive for holding your backups and then set up Offsite Copy to copy the backup files to the External HDD.

 

I'm a little fussy about keeping backups too. Not so much having them in triplicate, but I do keep quite a few months worth. I backup to a second internal hard drive. This is fastest, but eSATA would be the same. Then when my backup drive gets kind of full, I move the files to an external hard drive. When that is full, I delete the oldest files. Right now, I have 6 months backups. Good to know in case I accidentally deleted a file and didn't realize for 4 months!

Redk - it is soooo easy to accidently delete file/folder and not realize it! BTW, I have 2 internal hard drives...'C' for OS / programs and 'D' for data only.

 

So I've been doing some more User Manual reading....what is the difference between 'Offsite Copy' and 'Making Copies of Recovery Points' (pg 139 of manual)? Can both be used using 2 external hard drives? ie. plug both drives into USB ports then Offsite Copy or Make Copy. On the subject of Copy...would Win Explorer copy/paste / drag/drop work to create a workable backup?

 

My biggest fear is losing the computer then plugging in the external hard drive to restore only to discover that the external had picked that particular time to go 'south'. Hence my want for a second external backup. While researching different makes/models of external drives I've read many many posts from people who have had a good working external one minute, then a dead external the next time it was going to be used. Those folks now have redundant backups; just in case.

Well, I'm not sure what to think about Offsite Copy. I set my Ghost to use Offsite Copy yesterday and it has yet to copy anything. There was a setting that said something about asking to copy missed Recovery Points when the drive is plugged in. I set it to yes and Ghost hasn't asked yet. I have unplugged / plugged in in several times. Last night my incremental backup was getting ready to run and a message popped up complaining about not having enough space on the external drive. I think there was plenty of room. I made more room and nothing has transferred yet.

 

I'm wondering if the Microsoft Sync Toy may not be a better choice than Offsite Copy.

Well, here's what I found out about Offsite Backup...

 

- I was never asked to copy backups when my external drive was disconnected / connected. Maybe this is because a backup was not run yet with this setting? I'll disconnect my external drive a let Ghost run tomorrow night's backup, then reconnect it. We'll see if it asks to transfer the files then.

- After the Ghost ran an incremental backup tonight, all of the .v2i and .iv2i files were copied to the specified folder on external drive.

- It looks like you can actually have more then 1 offsite location.

 

To be honest, I think I would rather use Windows Explorer to copy the files manually or possibly the Microsoft SyncToy that I linked above. Another tool that would work for this is to schedule a task to copy the files with RoboCopy. RoboCopy is a command line tool that is included with Windows Vista and Windows 7.

I think you'll find the offsite copy feature works fine.

But you may have problems trying to do an offsite copy from one external drive to another because neither are fixed drives.

 

Since you have 2 hard drives, I think you should consider imaging the C drive onto the D drive and then using the offsite copy to backup the images from the D drive to an external drive.

 

Then if you really want an extra copy on the second external drive you can periodically manually copy a current image set from the D drive to the second external drive.  Or as Red suggested, use a sync tool or other other program to keep the second external drive updated.

 

The big advantage of using an internal drive to hold the images is that the drive is always availible and attached, has better performance, and is eaiser to access without having your external plugged in all the time.

 

Dave

Question red:

Were you rebooting between the connect/disconnects of the USB? I have one that is very lazy and needs to be reminded when it's time to work. Sometimes just turning it off and then on again will do the trick. Other times I need to reboot to get everything back in good working order.

Thanks

No, I didn't reboot. But I could see the files in Windows Explorer so it was awake. I even noticed the Ghost tray icon say it was scanning drives shortly after I plugged it in. We'll see what happens tomorrow night. I'll leave it unplugged until after the incremental backup runs. Then I'll plug it in after it is done.

First off, Thanks everyone and please forgive my ignorance with Ghost and computers in general

 

Dave....you said "imagine the C drive onto the D drive"....do you mean perform my Full Backup and Incrementals onto the D drive instead of my external drive like I'm doing now? And then use Offsite Copy to an external for a backup of the backup?

 

"periodically manually copy a current image set from the D drive to the second external drive"....what exactly is meant by manually coping? Is this the same as Making copies of Recovery Points as I've read pg 139 of the manual? Or is this a Windows drag/drop thing? Or something completely different?

 

I do apologize for not completely understanding, but I'm trying to learn how to do things properly.

 

Barb

 

 

_______________________________________________________________________________

 

Dave....you said "imagine the C drive onto the D drive"....do you mean perform my Full Backup and Incrementals onto the D drive instead of my external drive like I'm doing now? And then use Offsite Copy to an external for a backup of the backup?

_______________________________________________________________________________

 

 

Correct.

My personal feelings are that external drives should not be connected all the time unless absolutly necessary.

Imaging the system partition onto another internal hard drive has several advantages.  The main one being that the internal hard drive is always availible and has better performance than an external drive.

 

In my opinion, the most common reasons for needing to restore the operating system partition is from problems caused by  problems whith software being installed or removed, infection from a virus, user error, or other windows problems.

 

The second most common reason is hard drive problems or failure.  Imaging a system partition onto a second hard drive protects against that because both hard drives will not fail at the same time unless it's a system failure rather than a hard drive failure.

If the first hard drive fails your protected because you have system images on the second hard drive.  If the second hard drive fails it's no big deal because your first hard drive with the operating system is still working.

 

In all the above examples, making images onto the second hard drive will protect the operating system partition and all the user data if that is where it is stored.

 

The main reason for an "offsite copy"  or images on an external drive is to hold all the backups "outside" the computer.

That protects you from complete system failure like a motherboard going bad or power problems like a surge or lighting strike in the neighborhood that can "fry" your system.

 

If the external drive is stored "offsite" in another location, then your protected against theft of the system or (heaven forbid) if your house gets damaged by fire, flood, or earthquake.

 

So yes, storing copies of images provides redundancy but the most common reasons for restoring an image are covered by having the main images on another internal drive.

The "offsite copy" feature of Ghost provides "local redundancy" by automatically copying the images onto an external drive.

 

Manually copying images or manually making "one time backups" onto the second external drive provides more redundancy and allows for a true offsite copy if that drive is kept elsewhere.

I use an external drive to keep images of my home system in my office at work, and to bring copies of my office systems images so I can store them on my home computer.

 

Depending on the size of your second hard drive and the amount of data you already store on it, it would actually be better to partition that drive so you can have a dedicated partitio for the images and then be able to backup the data partition as well.

 

But thats just how I would do it, trying to do everything with external drives my cause problems when the first external isn't connected at the time of the scheduled backup, and it's going to require both being connected at the time of the offsite copy.

 

__________________________________________________________

periodically manually copy a current image set from the D drive to the second external drive"....what exactly is meant by manually coping? Is this the same as Making copies of Recovery Points as I've read pg 139 of the manual? Or is this a Windows drag/drop thing? Or something completely different?

_____________________________________________________________

 

Either way or whatever is eaiser.

If they are single image files without incrementals, I right click on them and select: Send to > external drive

A little eaiser than a windows drag and drop.  Red also suggested using a sync program to keep the second external drive updated like the other, or the internal drive.

 

The feature you ask about "making copies of recovery points" will also work and has an advantage if your copying an image that consists of a base image and incrementals.  By opening the last incremental, Ghost will turn the whole backup set into one image file and write that image to another location (copy it).

 

Dave

WOW.....Thanks very much for the detailed and informative reply Dave....so much to digest and think about!

 

Thanks also to you Red for the suggestion of using a sync program...that's food for thought also!

 

Since I'm not so computer literate, I'll have to do some research on partitioning a drive or go back to school and take a computer course (or get my brother's kids to help me). But I do see the logic behind that method.

 

So until I gain more computer knowledge (and feel confident about playing around with the drives inside it) I'm just going to keep backing up to the one external and hope nothing goes wrong. Floods - don't have to worry until Spring; Earthquakes - luckily we don't live in a quake area; Fire - that's another matter and we're in the country so by time the volunteer fire fighters get here.....; Lighting - I unplug the computer (& peripherals)  when they predict a storm coming (I don't trust our surge protectors, though the hubby says not to worry about that); computer virus - I just hope Norton 360 and Malwarebytes are doing their jobs.

 

But, my goal is to have redundant backups and be prepared for any worst case scenario.

 

Thanks again for all the suggestions and help and your time and patience....once I've got my backup plan working, I'll let you all know how it goes.

 

Barb

 

 I just hope Norton 360 and Malwarebytes are doing their jobs.

 

 

Barb


Barb,

Please confirm that your copy of the Malwarebytes scanner is the FREE one. If not there will be conflicts and that means there will be problems.

Thanks

Dick

 

Yes, it is the Free version of Malwarebytes that I have installed; Thanks to the gurus on the N360 forum.

 

Barb

 

 

All is well then

I will sleep in peace tonight :smileyhappy:

Just to follow up on the Offsite Copy... I came home and tonight's incremental backup ran while I was gone. I plugged in the external drive and Ghost said it was scanning disks. The external drive then showed up in the Ghost GUI (Advanced Tab > Drives). Nothing popped up asking if I wanted to copy the backups to the offsite drive. It seems to only do this immediately after a backup runs.

 

And yes I do have the box checked to ask me if I want to copy when the drive is connected...

 

offsite.png

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