I meant to say "the cloning procedure *I use* involves removable drive
bays." I want the backup clones out of the computer so they will be
safe.
I dont bother with disk trays.
Then you run the risk, however small, that something can happen to the
backup images.
That's because you are running XP and I am running 2K.
I remember once trying an eval copy of an application which the
developers claimed ran on 2K. It crashed immediately. I wrote them and
they replied that they had to do some work on it and would get back to
me if I was willing to do beta test. Three months later they sent me a
new version, which I binned because I had given up on them. Three
months to get it running on 2K.
There are problems with using XP apps on 2K.
I don't think it is foolish. I am certainly not the only one using
removable drives to do archive clones. I could say it is foolish to
leave your backups in the computer where something can destroy them.
It makes a lot more sense to use incremental images instead
for a variety of reasons, so you should have worked out how to do that.
Incremental images make you fish around too much. I use differential
since only a small number of files get changed after I do a clone -
something like about 177 files. That's trivial for NTBackup.
Between clones I use NTBackup to make differential images each morning
at 4:00 am and lay the backup file on D: drive. That way I can recover
if I have to go back to a previous disk. In fact I had to do that this
morning since Acronis Disk Director has a very serious bug and I lost
my boot disk.
In the forst place Disk Director won't convert NTFS to FAT32. When it
found I had NTFS it greyed out the Convert. So I decided to uninstall
it and when I rebooted it, the OS Director that got installed fussed
about not having the proper files. Obviously the uninstall did not
remove the OS Director call. It said to push the "OK" button to
continue, but when I did, it shut the computer off. ****ing idiots.
So I got a clone I had made yesterday and restored all the files that
had been backed up to D: at 4:00 am. The clone disk was now like new.
If I am in the middle of the day and plan a major undertaking that
could result in an unusable disk, I make a clone if it has been a
while or I force a backup so I can use the clone I made recently.
Nope, the clone has to be local.
That is not an issue for me. Both my children have graduated and are
now living in their own houses, so there is only my wife and me with
computers. I have no need to backup her machine.
Not if the disks are on other PC on the lan. You
can have that in a fireproof safe etc if you want to.
I am not worried about that kind of disaster. I am more concerned with
either something happening with the computer to corrupt the disks. By
keeping the archive clones out of the machine, I circumvent that
possibility. Plus I want to keep three disks and rotate them. If I
mounted them internally I would only have one IDE channel left which I
would use for the DVD burner - so I would be maxed out. Then I would
not have a channel for the backup disk - the one I keep the
differential archive on. I suppose I could use one of the clone disks
but then I can't keep a copy outside the machine.
I just feel better having the clones out of the computer. I have close
to 100 applications installed over a 10 year period (I started with
NT4 in 1996 and used IPU to migrate to Win2K). I do not want to
rebuild that boot disk from scratch, even though I have carefully
archived every application I ever loaded so I could if forced to.
There are numerous UNIX machines that still have the original install
of the operating system. It is absurd to have to rebuild an OS from
scratch every year or two. Even VAX/VMS - from which NT was stolen -
did not need periodic reinstalls.
--
"Nothing in the world can take the place of perseverence. Talent
will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent.
Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education
will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and
determination alone are omnipotent."
--Calvin Coolidge