Copying entire hard drive

1) as good a way to back up as any
2) yes it will.

Instead of coping the contents of One HDD to another which Windows will not allow you to do you can use a Program like Ghost and Clone the HDD to the USB drive and that will allow you to recover from a crash or something else.

Just a few things to remember here though

1 [b]DO NOT[/b] leave the USB drive plugged in when not in use as it can be damaged by something going wrong with the system and you'll loose all your DATA.

2 [b]You'll Need[/b] Some form of Cloning software that is capable of being booted from whatever you have available generally this should be a floppy but a lot of new units don't have these and you'll need to be able to use the USB ports when cloning or recovering from something going wrong while still effectively in DOS.

Col ]:)

if your backups are 3 years old you have other problems. good CDs and DVDs run 20 cents, a usb flash drive can hold all your current documents after a week or two toss the contents on a CDR, once a month back up the drive to a USB harddrive and you will never need it. skip the backups and viri and gremlens will hunt you down to screw with your data
big businesses need to backup daily or weekly(bigger systems attract more gremlens)

.. a backup program such as Acronis, Ghost or Stomp. Then separately copy your documents and settings to the same drive and any other user specific folders you have created along the way.

Haasman

I am also aware of the 3-year limit. The only method I know of for long-term storage of digital images is to make a colour print which has a minimum life of 50 years.

After learning this I didn't bother to get my top-end digitial camera out of the box but went on using my film camera.

It is my strong suspicion that basic digital cameras were released purely to con people to spend money to keep up with the times. And a very successful and profitable con it has been.

Not trying to be smart alec about this but I would like to know. Sorry but I haven't heard of the 3 year limit on digital pictures. If a digital picture is made up of 0's and 1's how would that degrade? Wouldn't the same thing happen to any part of data and/or computer images?

I do know that CD's can be damaged but if they are not damaged how would the data degrade?

The CSIRO is asking for copies of pressed Cd's that have been attacked by mold. Apparently the pressed Cd's are being adversely affected and are being destroyed in a much shorter length of time.

According to the Scientists here the humidity is causing the problems and a lot of the problems are coming about because of poor pressing of th currently Cd's and no doubt at some time in the future DVDs.

Col

The WORM drives I speak of are not CDs. They are optical, but they aren't pressed in any way. They are in a protective casing as well. These were out before CDs became popular, but cost wise were very pricey, intended for archiving.

http://www.ezsystems.com/opticaldrives.htm

Corel used to write the drivers for some of the brands.

James

I work at a State Capital.
We need backups, sometimes of the complete
Hard Drive. It has the OS included. If I need
to put a Senator or the Secretary's data back, it
would do no good just to have the data without
the programs. Then I would have to install again
on another PC. And hopefully get it running again.
I use Acronis True Image ***
I was using the Ghost, but found it would not
work with the new double partition on Dells.
Acronis - Works Great !
Plus I can take an image of a hard drive and put
into a data/file format. Then I can put about 10 hard drive backups onto 1 larger hard drive.
When I restore an image I get the drive ready to
put back into the PC, and its up and running with
all of its programs, ready to run with data.
Done...

Thanks for introducing this topic, Col.

For maybe six months or more I drooled (lusted, craved) over what was at the time the top-of-the line digital camera -- Olympus with 10 X optical zoom. But the price was $AU 1,000.

So I waited and I waited and eventually the price came down -- to about $700. I was VERY pleased with my purchase.

However before I had taken it out of the box I overheard a man talking to his friends at the table adjacent to me in a restaurant, and I heard for the first time of the deadly 3 year limit.

So I questioned the man who was doing some repairs on my film cameras and he of course vindicated this alarming piece of information.

You will see in another post that I accused the manufacturers and distributors of digital cameras of working a great con on the general public.

Do you think any salesperson would have notified the purchaser of the impermanence of the images? I very much doubt it and from my experience I would guess most salespersons would be unaware of it themselves.

Forty years and more ago I used to take a lot of my pics on Kodachrome -- especially scenery from trips etc. I was told at the time that the film had a life expectancy of 50 years, but permanent storage could be achieved by separating the primary colours (there were three I think) and making a B & W copy of each of these.

The quality of colour print film at the time was very poor and it was anybody's guess what colours might appear on the prints.

Recently because certain people -- mainly from the USA -- were fascinated by Australia, I took out these slides taken 40 years previously and had some copied onto CD. There was absolutely NO degradation in the original colour slides.

at the particular time, the Olympus was the most expensive model.

I realise that digital cameras with higher specs have become available since that time.

Here in Indianapolis, Fry's Electronics will sell you a GQ (mega generic) PC for $159.

If you already have a keyboard and mouse, just buy a removable drive bay (what $20-$30) and now it is offsite. Take it to work with you every morning.

Problem solved. BTW, NAS Lite is not bad.

Hi,
I know Geelong Grammar well , one of my clients.

As I stated a few days ago AGFA has gone belly up, now Konica Minokta is shutting down their camera and film manufacturing. See the story at

http://news.techrepublic.com.com/clickthru.aspx?typeid=30&part=rss&tag=rss&siteid=2&orgid=&storyid=1061982

About 20 years ago I pulled out some Reel to Reel Audio Tape and it was actually breaking up and this was the cheap no name stuff but that Ampex Brand which was at the time supposed to be the best. :(

It actually cost me a Reel to Reel Tape player as the capstan motor burnt out and when it was replaced it didn't work so I returned it to the QLD suppliers who promptly fixed the thing and it worked for 20 minuter on a 3,600 foot tape so it didn't get too fat into the tape and died again. Apparently the electronics driving the capstan motor where burning out so I sent it to the AU suppliers who claimed that they could fix anything well 6 months latter it arrived back here with no bill 3 capstan motors all in new boxes and still not working with an apology for not being able to repair the professional piece of equipment. Well I never really needed a 16 Track Player anyway. :(

But for Audio Tape the rules are run them through at least once a year to prevent [b]print through[/b] that is where the magnetic storage prints through the actual tape and messes up the rest of the layers that are wound around it. Always check for the tape becoming messy and if it does never put it into a player [b]I learned that one the hard way and am still paying for it.[/b]:(

If the tape has melted together throw it out. Incidentally that particular reel of Ampex was only 5 years old and had been run through the tape player less than 12 months previously so when it does go off it goes quickly.

I've never actually seen any mold on any VHS tape but then again I haven't been using it all that long so given enough time that may change. I've only really been collecting VHS for about 8 years and treat them the same as Audio Tape always stand them on their side in a well venerated cabinet in an Air Conditioned room and away from magnetic fields so far so good [b]Touch Wood[/b] and also hose hold wiring as they have a low intensity EM Field surrounding them. I never got involved in the Beta Max VS VHS argument of the time as I still believe that the Open Reel Video is far Superior to any form of Cassette but then again I was working with the high end professional stuff of the day and everything else looks like rubbish in comparison so I never really say any great difference between Beta and VHS except for the fact that all the Professional Tape Cameras in the field where Beta Max at the time but I though that Sony Licensing was way over the top and would cause the alternative format to win.

But to be on the safe side I've transfered all my important VHS off to DVD as even with the best brands of Cassette the tape isn't that good a quality and it's very thin in comparison to the professional tape that used to be used so it is more susceptible to print through and breakage.

Col ]:)

You can never have to much [b]BACKUP[/b] ever!

Col ]:)

Your dirty mitts on a H2 Blad. I was loaned one and got into all sorts of trouble as She Who Must be Obeyed thought that I had gone out and bought one but I had it for 2 weeks all 22 MEG Pixel of it and loved it to death. What made it even better is that all my Blad lenses fitted the body so I could switch from a Fish Eye to a 1200 mm Telephoto and everything in between but I'll guess that I'll stick with my 500 ELM's for the time being and allow She Who Must Be Obeyed to buy me a H2. :D

Col ]:)

Hi Col

You wouldn't have found mould on your tapes in an 8 year period, but many of mine are much older than that. In the case of Betamax they would of necessity be probably as much as 20 years old because Betamax was already in its death throes by then.

I cannot determine any difference in reproductive quality between my old Betamax tapes and quite new VHS tapes.

However all my tapes are second-hand (mostly ex-rental) but in the case of the Betamax I purchased about two years ago at a garage sale a high quality Sony Betamax player and about 100 tapes for a total price of $20.

Quite a lot of the tapes were already mouldy by then and I chucked quite a few out. As for the ones which I checked yesterday, I had not previously taken most of these out of their cardboard cases so I cannot say whether they were already mouldy or not.

I learnt to my disadvantage that VHS tapes can also become mouldy. I placed a tape in my machine without inspecting it and when I saw all the fuzz on the screen I removed it and found there was a large amount of mould.

In my attempts to clean the tape I stuffed the VHS player and had to buy a new one.

Now I ALWAYS check for mould before inserting a tape and if there is any at all I ditch the tape immediately.

Well I guess it won't bother me for a while.

My main camera is a Minolta 101 which I have recently had completely overhauled. I have a Rokkor 50 mm Macro lens that goes down to 1:1 with an attachment fitted between the camera and lens. The Macro focuses down to 2:1 on its own.

I also have a Rokkor 1:1.7 50 mm, a 28 mm and a couple of macro zoom lenses.

Primarily I am using the Macro to take photos of flowers for my gardening website:

http://www.gardening4pleasure.com

To take photos. You should be using a fixed focal length Lens with Diopters in place generally a conventional or what passes as a [b]Standard[/b] lens that originally came with the camera body. By using a Macro Zoom you loose [b]Depth Of Field[/b] and with pictures of flowers this can be really important particularly with the bigger ones. Even a Scarracenia Flower which is far from big has a noticeable lack of a depth of field when using a Macro Zoom to take a photo of the flower while you can pick up one petal perfectly everything else is out of focus.

Diopters or a bellows with a movable Focal Length give a much better result particularly when used close up and do not suffer from a lack of depth of field like a Macro Zoom does.

See I did learn something from my dearly departed brother before he died even if I do find it hard to carry his cameras. :p

Col ]:)

As far as I know, Windows XP will not boot from an external drive (Micro$oft designed it that way.)

Hard drives are still very cheap these days. If it were me, I'd buy a new internal HDD and clone the old one to it using the free version of XXClone. That program will clone everything from your old drive to the new one (including your XP installation) AND make it self-bootable.

You can do just about the whole lot while you're still using Windows! (No need for boring re-boots, etc.) And no need to change jumper settings or physically change drives around.

An added bonus is that it defragments your source drive on-the-fly (again, no need for re-boots). It can also mix and match different file systems, such as FAT, FAT32, NTFS.

I've used it and in my case, it worked superbly. It's a small download (1.2MB) from www.xxclone.com

Runs rings around the often bloated, expensive and flaky alternatives out there.

Enjoy. (Did I mention that you don't have to be a rocket scientist to use it?)