Le 25/04/2012 14:15, Warp nous fit lire :
> Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
>> UNIX has rsync. Windows has the backup and restore tool. MacOS has time 
>> machine. Which one is the problem?
> 
>   Time Machine is the only one that's actually easy to use and fully
> automatic, and has a good file browser for backed files...
> 

Unix rsync is just fine, using an external usb drive.

It can be interrupted & restarted, it does not copy again files already
copied (default: check timestamp & size; checksum can be also used), and
you can browse with usual program the copy.
Many option also to handle cumulative backup.

My simple copy is : rsync -av /original/location/ /media/storage/usbdisk

No need to compress for a local transfer, and I often do not feel the
need for a checksum (but adding -c can be useful)

When rsync is not available, but ftp is, the clear winner is lftp.
But you have to be very careful about its tunning: a mirroring in the
wrong direction might quickly deletes a waste amount of data.

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On 4/25/2012 6:51, andrel wrote:
> There is a copy of the registry somewhere. So you can reinstall that even if
> the current one is corruct.

Yep. Windows has been making a second copy of the registry on boot since 3.1 
days (or maybe 95 days).  I remember seeing someone get the message "your 
registry is corrupt. Please reboot" and having it use the backup copy, back 
before Windows had logins. :-)

> At least my brother has done that for me once and apparently regularly doing
> it for other people as well.

Yep. But honestly, I'm not sure what you need to rescue from the registry. 
None of your data files should be in your registry.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   "Oh no! We're out of code juice!"
   "Don't panic. There's beans and filters
    in the cabinet."

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On 4/25/2012 5:15, Warp wrote:
> Darren New<dne### [at] sanrrcom>  wrote:
>> UNIX has rsync. Windows has the backup and restore tool. MacOS has time
>> machine. Which one is the problem?
>
>    Time Machine is the only one that's actually easy to use and fully
> automatic, and has a good file browser for backed files...

I disagree. Win7 backup is completely trivial as well.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   "Oh no! We're out of code juice!"
   "Don't panic. There's beans and filters
    in the cabinet."

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On 26-4-2012 5:38, Darren New wrote:
> On 4/25/2012 6:51, andrel wrote:
>> There is a copy of the registry somewhere. So you can reinstall that
>> even if
>> the current one is corruct.
>
> Yep. Windows has been making a second copy of the registry on boot since
> 3.1 days (or maybe 95 days). I remember seeing someone get the message
> "your registry is corrupt. Please reboot" and having it use the backup
> copy, back before Windows had logins. :-)

You might be right (no reason to doubt that), but after a crash and a 
reinstall of windows people tend to write off all programs, and will 
reinstall everything from scratch. Even people that should know better.

>> At least my brother has done that for me once and apparently regularly
>> doing
>> it for other people as well.
>
> Yep. But honestly, I'm not sure what you need to rescue from the
> registry. None of your data files should be in your registry.

No, but if the programs refuse to run, you can still not access your data.


-- 
tip: do not run in an unknown place when it is too dark to see the 
floor, unless you prefer to not use uppercase.

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On 4/26/2012 1:32, andrel wrote:
> You might be right (no reason to doubt that), but after a crash and a
> reinstall of windows people tend to write off all programs, and will
> reinstall everything from scratch. Even people that should know better.

Well, yes. There's little point to keeping the registry around if you're 
going to reinstall programs.

>> Yep. But honestly, I'm not sure what you need to rescue from the
>> registry. None of your data files should be in your registry.
>
> No, but if the programs refuse to run, you can still not access your data.

For what program can you not back up the data separately from the program? 
That sounds rather silly.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   "Oh no! We're out of code juice!"
   "Don't panic. There's beans and filters
    in the cabinet."

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On 4/27/2012 5:36 PM, Darren New wrote:
> On 4/26/2012 1:32, andrel wrote:
>> You might be right (no reason to doubt that), but after a crash and a
>> reinstall of windows people tend to write off all programs, and will
>> reinstall everything from scratch. Even people that should know better.
>
> Well, yes. There's little point to keeping the registry around if you're
> going to reinstall programs.
>
>>> Yep. But honestly, I'm not sure what you need to rescue from the
>>> registry. None of your data files should be in your registry.
>>
>> No, but if the programs refuse to run, you can still not access your
>> data.
>
> For what program can you not back up the data separately from the
> program? That sounds rather silly.
>
Registration keys. You know, those things on the backs of manuals, or CD 
cases, or which you are supposed to be able to get from the people you 
bought the product from, unless its a few years old, or they got bought 
up by someone else. That is the sort of thing that gets lost when you 
lose the registry.

And, yeah, there is a copy on the drive, but you can't read it. Windows 
compresses it, or something, unless you specify otherwise, some place. 
The tools to unpack it either don't exist, are not bothered with, etc.

Got a fair number of games that flat won't run without those keys, and 
not all of them are recoverable from the sites they originally got 
registered to. All of which makes things a massive pain in the ass.

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On 4/24/2012 10:30 PM, Darren New wrote:
>> there was never any practical way to do a complete backup.
>
> If you buy a USB drive, it's pretty trivial. You might have to cough up
> $100 for one tho.
>
> Tell me what system you have, and I'll tell you how to do it. I never
> work on a system I haven't already backed up, wiped, and restored at
> least once.
>
Yeah, have an external USB drive, which I got due to running out of 
space on the other two drives. Its just one of those things.. 1) its the 
same sort of media, to similarly volatile, 2) unless it stays connected, 
and automatic backups happen, its not a certain solution, 3) if you do 
keep in connected, to do that, then some of the stuff that can kill the 
main drive *will* also kill the backup (like power surges).

Practical to me means that at least 2 out of the 3 problem above are 
removed from the list of risks (with the, "it dies if the machine does", 
being one of the two in any case).

There are a lot of poor backup solutions, and many of them come with 
idiot problems, like the OS whining about not letting you copy certain 
files, to back them up, which make full restoration a problem, even 
without the other issues above.

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Note, once I do have things where I need them, and junk stuff removed, I 
will probably use the external 1TB drive I already got to do backups, 
presuming I can get the backup software to do a decent job. Some where 
between Onetouch 3 and Onetouch 4, they completely screwed the software 
that drive came with, so that it refused to update files in certain 
folders, at all, and restricted what you could backup to specific types. 
Needless to say, since I don't run a damn office, I found the idea that 
it would backup .xls files, but not say .pov, for example, to be 
complete idiocy.

I doubt Windows 7's new backup thing is that stupid, but since I never 
got a version of it to work on prior machines (bloody XP version thought 
"floppies" where the way to do things, and didn't know what to do with 
the CD drive, never mind a DVD drive...), I am not going to assume that 
it will work perfectly. lol

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On 4/28/2012 4:05, Patrick Elliott wrote:
> Got a fair number of games that flat won't run without those keys, and not
> all of them are recoverable from the sites they originally got registered
> to. All of which makes things a massive pain in the ass.

Fair enough. I'd count that as installation materials, which you'd need to 
have to reinstall.  Of course, the worst are when you get such a key, and it 
dials out to their server to verify it, and their server is toast after a 
few years. I've had a couple like that.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   "Oh no! We're out of code juice!"
   "Don't panic. There's beans and filters
    in the cabinet."

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On 4/28/2012 4:12, Patrick Elliott wrote:
> Yeah, have an external USB drive, which I got due to running out of space on
> the other two drives. Its just one of those things.. 1) its the same sort of
> media, to similarly volatile,

All backups are volatile to one extent or another.

 > 2) unless it stays connected, and automatic backups happen, its not a 
certain solution,

Well, yes, you have to run the backups. Hard to blame the technology on 
that. Otherwise, get a second computer and do network backups to it on a 
schedule or something.

3) if you do keep in connected,
> to do that, then some of the stuff that can kill the main drive *will* also
> kill the backup (like power surges).

Sure. Why would you keep your backups connected instead of in a fireproof safe?

> Practical to me means that at least 2 out of the 3 problem above are removed
> from the list of risks (with the, "it dies if the machine does", being one
> of the two in any case).

I think you have an implicit #4 there, which is "it's cheap". Because all 
those problems are pretty easy to solve with a bit of money thrown at the 
problem.

> There are a lot of poor backup solutions, and many of them come with idiot
> problems, like the OS whining about not letting you copy certain files, to
> back them up, which make full restoration a problem, even without the other
> issues above.

Sure. But say you have Win7.  You buy a USB drive, and plug it in. The 
autoplay pops up, and says "Hey, you want to use this as a backup drive?" 
You say yes. It spins around for an hour. It says "OK, all done." You put it 
in the safe.

It also offers to make a bootable CD to use in case of disaster to restore 
what it just made. Make one of those, and put it in the safe also.

Next week, or whenever you get a new program installed, or whenever you copy 
a bunch of vacation photos off your camera, or whatever, plug the drive in. 
It says "Hey, you want to freshen your backup?" You say "Yes." It spins 
aorund for 15 minutes, and then you unplug the drive and put it back in the 
safe.

If you can't trust yourself to make backups when you've just done a whole 
bunch of work on your machine, then the data just isn't worth it to you. I'd 
like a car that doesn't run out of gas if I don't bother to stop at the gas 
station too, but that's not available either.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   "Oh no! We're out of code juice!"
   "Don't panic. There's beans and filters
    in the cabinet."

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