| reply to keith2468
Re: Proposed FAQ: Backups said by keith2468:
9. Periodically test that your backups are working. Make sure they are readable.
If you are using a special backup utility, periodically test to make sure that it can restore to another computer. (Sometimes they quietly stop working due to operating system or hardware upgrades.)
Both of these are good points. But I think #9 needs stronger wording. It isn't just good enough to see if the backups are readable and if the software used for backup works on the system (or another one).
A person should actually test a complete restore to a wiped disk. I just got burned by some software that was not backing up all the Windows critical files. The software did give warnings on some files it could not backup, unfortunately it was not reporting it had missed several critical ones. I had previously tried a restore to a partially erased disk and it worked; the critical files were still in place....
A complete test is the only way to be sure. |
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| said by astirusty:
A person should actually test a complete restore to a wiped disk. I just got burned by some software that was not backing up all the Windows critical files. The software did give warnings on some files it could not backup, unfortunately it was not reporting it had missed several critical ones. I had previously tried a restore to a partially erased disk and it worked; the critical files were still in place.... A complete test is the only way to be sure.
That is why a program like Norton Ghost is so useful: it uses PCDOS, outside of Windows, to backup an exact image of an NTFS or FAT32 partition. You can also do an integrity-restore test of the image in Ghost, which takes about the same time as the backup does, to verify the absolute integrity of the image. 
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"But now abide faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love." (1 Cor. 13:13) |
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| I have never used Norton Ghost and having nothing against it. With that said:
Regardless of the Backup/Restore program; I would still highly suggest doing at least one complete restore test. Besides making sure the program works, the backup sets are usable, you have all the software/tools you need; it also makes sure you know how to do a recovery - in the thick of things.
Two prior stories on backup/restore failures:
I have seen an Image restore problem using a professional program (competitor to Norton Ghost) that was caused by the fact the image was perfect (of all things).
Windows XP would nearly boot to the Login prompt and then go no further. The problem turned out to be the fact Windows XP was checking the disk header on the drive and since it matched another disk's header, XP would not startup. The solution was to use an old MS-Dos boot floppy and do a fdisk /mbr to create a new disk header on the restored drive. (Very few people keep one of those around.)
I have also seen a totally different backup program, backup all the data, then successfully verify the data was backed up correctly. Unfortunately this program didn't put the backup catalog on the backup media or on the system drive. Instead it kept it cached. On reboot the backup was worthless (the catalog could not be recreated). BTW: From testing it seemed that the catalog caching problem was a random problem. |
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