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Backing up configurations.

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by macros

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I have everything I might need again (eg drivers and downloaded stuff etc.) all in one folder all in relevant subdirectories so I can save them onto a CD.
But what I would like to know is how do I back up my WinWord customisations, and IE favourites, and Outlook addresses, and game configurations and so forth. Is there a function in backup that will do all this?
Do I need to save the relevant folders all individually with links to auto update when it changes. How do I know the folder I presume has all the data in it is the only one I need to back up/save? I've given this a lot of points for a thorough answer. And obviously will do my best to distribute the points if I get the answers from various sources.

11 replies

by lizzy

A thorough way to back up your drive would be to add a slave hard drive to your system of about 3GB (a formatted partitian can also hold the image, but if the drive goes bad, there goes your image too) and use Ghost to image the whole boot drive onto the slave. You can put the image onto CD(s). Span the image to the CD's using the Span command when you create the image--you specify the size of each image file (about 600MB to easily fit onto a CD). Symantec has the exact syntax for doing this. You can export your IE favorites to a bookmark.htm file and add that to your other backup files. Export your Address or Contacts to files also. I am not sure what the file is that has Word's custom dictionary, but I'm sure someone will come up with that. You can also copy the C:\Windows\Favorites\ to a disk or CD and use it at other PC's. Hope this helps. Best wishes.

by lizzy

Tim is right in that 20GB HDD's are rather cumbersome, but say you only have about 2GB of used space or even 3GB. If you create a spanned image w\ Ghost using High Compression, you should be able to contain the image on two maybe three CD's. Read Only CD's are cheap enough and this has been a great way for me to create backups on user systems where the user likes to play around sometimes causing the system to die. I use it on classroom PC's that have both MS and Corel Office Suites installedas well as many other software packages. It is much faster to restore to the backup image than to spend a few hours or days trying to figure out what the user did. If users are on a server, make sure that the default file (save) location is located on the home drive so that their data gets backed up on the server. It works great for me and saves me a lot of time. In regards to different configurations, try to create a standard computer configuration for the workgroup. This is easier if you're in a large office environment where, as the life cycle ends, you try to purchase PC's all at once for the group\room\office. Smaller businesses may not have this luxury, so Ghost which is relatively inexpensive and CD-R's which are inexpensive can save both your time and the company money by not having you work forever trying to figure out what caused the system to die. Of course, you should always try to boot the PC and see what's wrong with it, but the more you work on PC's, the easier it is to tell if a problem is simple or deep. Having an image backup has saved me and my users much time and they are always happier to get their machine working again in a few minutes rather than waiting a few days... Problems always seem to occur when reports are due tomorrow or the classroom is full next period!

by lizzy

OTL is correct in that some PC's are very picky about their own hard drives. This is yet another reason for using Ghost because you can create and save to CD(s) images of your PC's and file them by computer name, room, workgroup, user, etc. As I said before, CD-R's are inexpensive and time is money! If the configuration changes significantly, you can always create a new image backup. Having to backup separate files such as dictionaries, address books, etc. can be more time consuming and subject to "Oh, did I do the dictionary on so-and-so's PC?" Teach your users to save to their home drive on the server that's backed up regularly. Advanced users can learn how to back up dictionaries and such to their home drives also. Lost data can be a powerful motivator!

by shanghai sam

Hi,

Lizzy's answer is obviously the best. You can never back up too much and by backing up the WHOLE configuration, you cant go wrong. But that wont fit one one CD and if you have a 20Gb+ drive that is close to full, then its not practical.

Unfortunately you didn't mention which OS you're using. It makes a bit of a difference in some areas.

Backup allows you to drill down into folders and pick individual files for backup or select the whole folder. You need to hunt around for the things you want and "Tick" all the relevent files for backup.

I'll try to look at each part of what you're backing up here...

Obviously you've got the drivers and downloads covered...add that folder to the back up.

I presume this also includes all your work... like your word documents etc.

You can simply add the whole user profile to the backup. That includes your IE favorites. I'd untick the temporary internet files folder, though. They're unnecessary and can be huge.

The registry is an important thing to backup as it contains many many customisations from most Microsoft software and many games too.

See the following article on how to export it...and add that exported file to the things to be backed up...

http://www.speedguide.net/Cable_modems/cable_faq_registry.shtml

(remove spaces from the above URL)

Next come the individual game's configurations...anything that doesn't get covered in the registry. You'll just have to hunt around for this. Look in each game's folders for .ini files. Often these are used to store configuration information. Tick these files on your backup if they seem to have changed since you installed the game.

Hopefully you'll have less that one CD's worth in the end. Keep the backup configuration so you can run it when you feel you need to.

The backup will create one file - a .bkf file I think. Stick that on the CD and you're done.

Cheers,
Tim.

by timthetoolman

Hi,

Lizzy's answer is obviously the best. You can never back up too much and by backing up the WHOLE configuration, you cant go wrong. But that wont fit one one CD and if you have a 20Gb+ drive that is close to full, then its not practical.

Unfortunately you didn't mention which OS you're using. It makes a bit of a difference in some areas.

Backup allows you to drill down into folders and pick individual files for backup or select the whole folder. You need to hunt around for the things you want and "Tick" all the relevent files for backup.

I'll try to look at each part of what you're backing up here...

Obviously you've got the drivers and downloads covered...add that folder to the back up.

I presume this also includes all your work... like your word documents etc.

You can simply add the whole user profile to the backup. That includes your IE favorites. I'd untick the temporary internet files folder, though. They're unnecessary and can be huge.

The registry is an important thing to backup as it contains many many customisations from most Microsoft software and many games too.

See the following article on how to export it...and add that exported file to the things to be backed up...

http://www.speedguide.net/Cable_modems/cable_faq_registr y.shtml

(remove spaces from the above URL)

Next come the individual game's configurations...anything that doesn't get covered in the registry. You'll just have to hunt around for this. Look in each game's folders for .ini files. Often these are used to store configuration information. Tick these files on your backup if they seem to have changed since you installed the game.

Hopefully you'll have less that one CD's worth in the end. Keep the backup configuration so you can run it when you feel you need to.

The backup will create one file - a .bkf file I think. Put that on the CD and you're done.

continued

by timthetoolman

Sorry about the double posting. TechRepulic lost my ID...

Anyway... continued.

I have set up a backup to run at 10pm every night to create this file and I'm luck to have another machine that it gets copied off to.

All my previous assumptions were that you'd be using "backup" to do this work. If you simply want to copy all the relevent things to CD, then its generally easiest to create a backup folder and copy everything into it prior to backing it up.

Do the copy and blow the whole thing away. Actually if you can afford the space, its useful to keep it there.... a quick way to get stuff back in the case of mistaken deletion. Not so good for a corrupt drive, though...

Hope all this helps,
Cheers,
Tim.

by otl

The above answers are great if you have a generic computer or an exact replica of the one you are using. Have seen extremely propritary systems (one HD will not work in another).

There should be an option to save most dictionaries or address to afile (normally a *.txt file) in most programs. Then you can easily back up and import them in the next generation.

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