Backup and Clone My Entire Windows and File Posted: August 27th, 2009 1:44 pm (Thu) by Divine Fang Last Edited: August 27th, 2009 1:59 pm (Thu) Views: 790 [Permalink] Tag: Tech, Backup, Clone, Windows
	How many of you actually backup your files periodically? Honestly, I am an extremely lazy person to burn or backup my files to CD/DVDs. In fact, I have never actually burned a single CD/DVD for backup purpose LOL! I buy hard disk drives, slap them in as slaves and manually copy important files to the new drive. Of course, a RAID 1 configuration would be ideal but I never bother messing my motherboard RAID controller nor getting two identical hard disk drives. I'd prefer the conventional method, but with the help of GFI Backup and Macrium Reflect (both with VSS). And today's post shall feature both these useful freewares. Above: Screenshot of my desktop with Macrium Reflect and GFI Backup. Before you proceed, you should be aware that Windows XP has a built-in backup software out of the box to backup personal files and some Windows settings. GFI Backup basically accomplish similar task but with better and more attractive user interface. Above: GFI Backup Interface The GFI Backup interface is pretty much straight forward. You will navigate throught the tabs as seen below which work like a wizard. First of all, you name your task and then select desired files and folders to backup in a treeview. The next tab will prompt you to select the backup destination, may it be a local drive, USB drive, network folder or an optical drive. The following Options tab allows you select ZIP compression or maintain original directory structure as well as making multiple revisions of your backup. In this tab, I find the "Differencial Backup" feature particularly useful as it will delete files in the backup folder if they no longer exist anymore in the source folder. Finally, save your task and schedule it to run periodically, or execute it immediately. Above: GFI Backup Interface With the ability to create and save multiple tasks, you can repeat the above steps to create different backups with different files, destination and schedule. Once you are set you can simply right-click on GFI Backup tray icon and run all tasks in a single click. Above: GFI Backup Interface GFI Backup however, do not support cloning of hard drives. This is where Macrium's Reflect Free Edition comes in handy when big disaster strikes. (Reflect actually does what GFI Backup does but you will need to upgrade the free version to its paid version). Cloning of hard drive is essential when your Windows is unable to boot properly and you want to save time from doing a clean Windows install. Cloning will backup the entire partition as an image file (something like a CD or DVD ISO image) and allow you to restore Windows along with your settings and installed programs identical to the point when the clone is created. Above: Macrium Reflect Interface In order to clone (backup) your Windows partition, simply launch the Wizard and select the drive letter where you installed Windows (normally C:). Then select the destination for the clone image and you will be on your way to perform a full backup while running Windows and without restarting, thanks to its VSS support. Similar to many backup programs out there, Reflect allows you to save the task performed and schedule it for automatic execution in the future. Above: Macrium Reflect Interface Above: Macrium Reflect Interface Finally, to restore a crashed Windows, you will need to create a Rescue CD so that you can boot up Reflect's recovery interface with the CD. The best thing I really liked about Reflect is that the Create Rescue CD window actually provide an option to just write the ISO image of the Rescue CD to a local hard drive instead of burning to an actual CD. With the ISO (a Linux bootable disc image) you can install it to a USB flash drive using UNetbootin and perform the recovery using the USB flash drive, provided that your PC is capable of booting via USB. Above: Macrium Reflect Interface That's all for today! I hope you will find this entry useful :) Omake Desktop wallpaper of the day: Akane-Iro ni Somaru Saka's girls! Above: Wallpaper of the day
Read or post comment (3 Otaku comments) Quick Star (Philippines) Posted August 31st, 2009 1:20 am (Mon)   Hello shin? am I ryt? Are you a programmer and do you host your site at home? I noticed that you got a XAMPP folder in one the images in this post. Your site is very customized and I rarely see this kind of layout. If you're a programmer I'm totally impressed I've been learning php for a couple of weeks and I'm inspired of your blog. Divine Fang (Kuala Lumpur, MY) Posted September 1st, 2009 1:08 am (Tue)   @ Quick Star, Divine Fang here (^_^)! No, I'm not really a programmer but I do code a bit of PHP during my free time. The XAMPP folder over there is where I do my site testing before I upload anything to my host. Not "customized", in fact everything here started from Notepad scratch. The layout (back-end) of this site is outdated, if you look at the HTML source, you will see no CSS stylesheet, just tons of tables. Never make it as a reference LOL! Quick Star (Philippines) Posted September 1st, 2009 5:35 am (Tue)   Wow! that's definitely cool men. I've been studying clean php here. I know php but I have to learn those advance stuffs, I can code a site but I doubt that I'll make a secure one. Anyway I've sent you an email regarding link exchanges I hope I can be in your blog roll. I've already added you in my blog list though Your Thoughts <b>bold</b>, <i>italic</i>, <a href="http://...">Click</a> tags supported.   Nickname     Location e.g. Tokyo, Japan     Gravatar email (optional)     Website (optional)   Pick an avatar if you do not have a Gravatar email: Do this math: 46+9 =

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