Basic backing up

  • Thread starter Thread starter Michael Squires
  • Start date Start date
M

Michael Squires

Hi,

I'm probably looking for some sort of 'simple' commercial or
open source solution. I know that what I'm asking for (mirroring including
Click to expand...

Have you tried Cygwin (Cygnus Tools for Windows, a UN*X shell for MS Windows
computers, www.cygwin.com)? It works pretty well for me (I'm logged into a
Sun server using Cygwin ssh/xterm right now).

Mike Squires
 
For a simple backup Maxtor's One Touch backup external drive works
pretty good. I'm not sure on the encryption end of things however.
Good luck.
 
Hi,

I have a Windows XP computer with an 80GB hard drive.
The documents and other files that I need to backup take about 20GB.
I can't remember if that's compressed or uncompressed - I just tend
to zip or .tar.gz them up.

If possible I'd like to have at least my documents automatically
mirrored during the day onto (at least) one external hard drive.
If the cost isn't too prohibitive, perhaps the whole 80GB hard
drive could be mirrored.

Preferably, I'd also like to be able to do incremental backups
during weekdays (i.e. backup only those files that changed "today").

If I had Linux installed, the 'find' command could easily do incremental
backups at least. But on XP I tried using DJGPP to simulate Unix
commands like these, and I found trying to do things like
find .... | xargs ....
was just too flaky, constantly giving errors.

I'm probably looking for some sort of 'simple' commercial or
open source solution. I know that what I'm asking for (mirroring including
incremental backups of a single hard disk) is not very hard and is
standard, but I just haven't studied backup techniques before.
I hope that I can find something that's fairly low cost.

P.S. Preferably, I would also be able to either password-protect or
encrypt the external hard drive, or the individual files within it.
Something like GPG can very securely encrypt individual files, but
the way it renames the files (to .gpg and deleting the prefix) seems
like it can be hard to restore them to their individual names
(I could be wrong though some someone please set me straight if so).

Thanks very much for any advice that you can provide to me!
 
Ann said:
Hi,

I have a Windows XP computer with an 80GB hard drive.
The documents and other files that I need to backup take about 20GB.
I can't remember if that's compressed or uncompressed - I just tend
to zip or .tar.gz them up.

If possible I'd like to have at least my documents automatically
mirrored during the day onto (at least) one external hard drive.
If the cost isn't too prohibitive, perhaps the whole 80GB hard
drive could be mirrored.

Preferably, I'd also like to be able to do incremental backups
during weekdays (i.e. backup only those files that changed "today").

If I had Linux installed, the 'find' command could easily do incremental
backups at least. But on XP I tried using DJGPP to simulate Unix
commands like these, and I found trying to do things like
find .... | xargs ....
was just too flaky, constantly giving errors.

I'm probably looking for some sort of 'simple' commercial or
open source solution. I know that what I'm asking for (mirroring including
incremental backups of a single hard disk) is not very hard and is
standard, but I just haven't studied backup techniques before.
I hope that I can find something that's fairly low cost.

P.S. Preferably, I would also be able to either password-protect or
encrypt the external hard drive, or the individual files within it.
Something like GPG can very securely encrypt individual files, but
the way it renames the files (to .gpg and deleting the prefix) seems
like it can be hard to restore them to their individual names
(I could be wrong though some someone please set me straight if so).

Thanks very much for any advice that you can provide to me!
Click to expand...

First, if you want something Unix-like try Cygwin <http://www.cygwin.org>.

Next, for the backups, the Windows backup program that comes with Windows
will do what you describe. It backs up to a single file so you could
encrypt that file if you needed to.

Alternatively you could use xcopy or an improved and highly regarded
third-party version called "xxcopy" <http://www.xxcopy.com>.

Also, Windows 2000/XP shell scripting (in Microsoft-speak "batch files") is
worth looking at--the Windows 2K/XP shell is not nearly as capable as the
Unix shells, but it is still much better than the Windows 9x shell.
 
biscayneSix said:
Michael Squires did...
Click to expand...

Oh. I'm logged into a Linux box myself. Yes, there are ways to log in ton
*nix servers other than Cygwin--so what? The original poster wasn't trying
to log into a server and Michael and I are both quite happy with the
methods that we are using, neither of us has asked for an alternative. So
what point did you think that you were making that anybody but you might
care about?
 
You are right, my reply to Michael was offtopic.

It sounded like Machael was stating that he was using Cygwin in order
to run an SSH session to his Sun box.
I was simply stating that it is not neccessary to emulate a Unix
environment just to run an SSH session. I then reccomended PuTTY, a
free and tiny client I use every day to log in to my server.

Forgive me if I have somehow offended, or pissed you off.
 
biscayneSix said:
You are right, my reply to Michael was offtopic.

It sounded like Machael was stating that he was using Cygwin in order
to run an SSH session to his Sun box.
I was simply stating that it is not neccessary to emulate a Unix
environment just to run an SSH session. I then reccomended PuTTY, a
free and tiny client I use every day to log in to my server.

Forgive me if I have somehow offended, or pissed you off.
Click to expand...

Not at all, I was just having trouble figuring out how it related to the
OP's question.

While we're off topic though, do you know of a decent freeware xserver for
the Windows environment other than the one included with Cygwin? The ones
I've tried were an uphill battle--Cygwin's is nice and clean and works like
the docs say it's supposed to.
 
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