Walter R. said:
I want to back up, not only my data, but also my basic software disks, like
Windows XP, MS Office 2007 etc.. I am backing everything up on a spare 80
GB hard drive which I will keep at a location separate from my computer.
If I lose my computer and my original disks, lets say in a fire at my
home, can I restore the programs from my hard drive? If so, can I install
the programs on a new computer directly off my saved hard drive, or do I
need to burn the programs back from the hard drives onto CDs before I can
install them again?
Thank you
I'm not sure, but I think US law allows you to make backups of your original
software, whether it came on CDs, DVDs, or on the hard drive of a new
computer.
Doing it 'right' takes time. If you just copy an install CD, how do you
know that every file and every folder, even empty ones that may be necessary
for a proper install, are on your duplicate? If the OS is preinstalled on
the computer's hard drive, but no CD/DVD is provided for reinstallation,
then after you boot up the system there is usually an option to make
recovery CD/DVD. Here again, you just have to take it on faith that the
recover CD/DVD will work properly if and when you ever need it. I am still
wrestling with this problem.
Here is what I currently do:
For CDs and DVDs that are not bootable, I make a drag and drop copy of
everthing on the original CD/DVD to an empty folder on my hard drive. I put
a copy of DVDSig.exe (from
http://members.ozemail.com.au/~nulifetv/freezip/freeware/index.html) into
the folder, and then run it, and click the scan menu item, which reads every
non-zero-byte file in the folder and all levels of subfolders, and creates
an MD5 checksum for it, storing the relative file path and checksum in a
file named DVDSig.MD5. I then do a verify, but I hold down the control
button when clicking the verify menu item, allowing me to specify the .MD5
file and the folder to be verified; I choose the .MD5 file just created and
the original CD/DVD drive that I just copied from.
If there are no invalid checksums and no missing files, then I know that the
folder on the hard drive contains a valid copy of the original CD/DVD, with
some exceptions:
1) The scan process displays an 'invalid data' message for every zero-byte
file encountered, and no entry for these is put in the .MD5 file.
2) Empty folders are ignored by the scan process.
3) Unicode file names are not handled well - I haven't figured out exactly
what is happening, but I have only run into one situation that had Unicode
in any file names.
In any case, I use DVDSig for this because the price is right (free), it is
very small, about 10K, and it is fast in scanning and even faster in
verifying. DVDSig is a windows program, but it can run under BartPE booted
from a CD if you include one relatively small file from Windows. I can't
remember the name of that required DLL.
I then write the contents of the folder to CD/DVD, meaning that the CD/DVD
contains everything from the original CD/DVD plus DVDSig.exe and DVDSig.MD5.
Any time I want to verify the validity of this backup, I just run DVDSig
from the CD/DVD, click Verify, and within a few minutes I know whether the
CD/DVD is still valid.
I have been able to make backups of bootable CD/DVDs with DVDSig.exe and
DVDSig.md5 included, but I'm not ready to explain the process. Having
DVDSig there makes validation very easy any time in the future. (I include
DVDSig on backups of the movie DVDs that I can legally copy too.)
For a new computer, I back up the hard drive prior to booting it from the
hard drive. This ensures that on restoration, the system will be identical
to how it was when I purchased the computer. I typically use Norton Ghost
to do the backup. I'm still working on the details of what type of Ghost
image mode will give me a relatively small but relatively fast
backup/restore. I also use DVDSig to ensure validity. For WXP Home
laptops, I have been able to use Nero to create a bootable DVD-DL with all
the Ghost files and the DOS versions of Gdisk and Ghost and DVDSig and have
tested it by:
1) Installing a new hard drive
2) Booting from the DVD-DL
3) Running Ghost, restoring from the DVD to the new hard drive
4) Booting from the restored hard drive to verifying it actualy boots up
like it did on original boot up.
Of course, it goes without saying, a CD/DVD without the serial numbers is
kind of worthless. So I write the serial numbers on my original and backup
CD/DVDs.
-Paul Randall
