Back-up software

Try VMware... Yes I know it's not a backup tool but after a string of PC rebuilds that wasted days of my time I started using it and it's saved me so much time it's insane. I have base XP image with all drivers and my usual set of programs installed. That's my fallback. My main working machine is also a VM. I can take nightly snapshots and copy the whole thing. Granted it currently runs to about 30gb but with 1TB hdd's it's not really a drama to keep 2 weeks history.

If I lose my data I have two choices. Just start up yesterdays VM snapshot, or mount the snapshot's drive onto another VM and copy what I want off it. If everything goes to hell I can revert to my base install and copy all the data from one of the snapshot images. Rather than installing OS and going through hours of updates etc it takes as long as booting a PC.

As a side effect I can run a new machine anytime I need to. If I want a dedicated test server for something, no problem. If I want to install dodgy virus ridden software just clone a VM and run it in that then delete the image when I'm done with it...

With latest version of VMWare you can run multiple monitors, even run 3d games inside it. Very hard to tell you're in a VM rather than on the host. The only extra expense it cost me was a bit of extra RAM. I'm using 8 gb and allowing 3gb for my main workstation I've been able run up to 10 other VMs at once without any problems.

oh and while I'm spouting it's virtues perhaps the best one is that when I have to travel I can just copy the VM image onto my laptop, lower the amount of RAM it's allocated a bit and I've got my entire workstation on the road exactly as it is at home...
 
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Moxxy said:
Try VMware... Yes I know it's not a backup tool but after a string of PC rebuilds that wasted days of my time I started using it and it's saved me so much time it's insane. I have base XP image with all drivers and my usual set of programs installed. That's my fallback. My main working machine is also a VM. I can take nightly snapshots and copy the whole thing. Granted it currently runs to about 30gb but with 1TB hdd's it's not really a drama to keep 2 weeks history.

If I lose my data I have two choices. Just start up yesterdays VM snapshot, or mount the snapshot's drive onto another VM and copy what I want off it. If everything goes to hell I can revert to my base install and copy all the data from one of the snapshot images. Rather than installing OS and going through hours of updates etc it takes as long as booting a PC.

As a side effect I can run a new machine anytime I need to. If I want a dedicated test server for something, no problem. If I want to install dodgy virus ridden software just clone a VM and run it in that then delete the image when I'm done with it...

With latest version of VMWare you can run multiple monitors, even run 3d games inside it. Very hard to tell you're in a VM rather than on the host. The only extra expense it cost me was a bit of extra RAM. I'm using 8 gb and allowing 3gb for my main workstation I've been able run up to 10 other VMs at once without any problems.

oh and while I'm spouting it's virtues perhaps the best one is that when I have to travel I can just copy the VM image onto my laptop, lower the amount of RAM it's allocated a bit and I've got my entire workstation on the road exactly as it is at home...
Click to expand...
This is exactly what I'm planning to do.
Thanks for answering a couple of questions I had with this post! I wasn't sure if it'll work with several monitors.

+rep
 
I use CrashPlan for backup. It can save backup files to an external HDD, to a friend (I use sister), and to its own datacenter at the same time. So if I need a quick restore, I can restore from my USB HDD, and if a comet hits my house, I'll buy a new computer and restore from my sister. Oh, and it's cross-platform (Java).

Dropbox is good for syncing. I sync Windows at home with Ubuntu at work. Works fine. Installation process is really neat as well.
 
Feedback: I started using dropbox and really like it. It's clever at managing moving folders, deleted files and you can look at incremental file changes. So I'll stick with that for file back-ups. Thanks for the suggestion.

For drive imaging, I have an external 1TB drive and I'll look into one of the drive image suggestions here.

Thanks again.

Wez.
 
phrench said:
This is exactly what I'm planning to do.
Thanks for answering a couple of questions I had with this post! I wasn't sure if it'll work with several monitors.

+rep
Click to expand...

No worries a quick tip if you're going to try a similr setup... Install your host OS (I use XP 64 for the host OS so I can use more than 4gb RAM) + VMWare and then use something like DriveXML to take an image of your host BEFORE you start building your VM's... I discovered after the fact that most free imaging tools won't let you exclude files/folders from the partition image so getting an image was a right pain in the arse moving all my VM files off the drive to take the image then back on again...

Easiest part of the migration was the nifty import tool. Allows you to convert a real physical machine into a VM and switches all the drivers etc for you. It took about two hours and my original machine was virtualised... Could then run it side by side with my fresh install (one on each monitor) to easily migrate everything over while still having my original machine available for any work I needed to do...

BTW I don't work for vmware even if I sound like it... I just think it's the IT equivilent of finding jesus....
 
+1 for Jungledisk. I had never heard of them until a few weeks ago, but I really like them. You can set auto-backups, use it as a network drive accessible anywhere, and it's decently priced I think.

Just wish I would have found them before I lost 3 of my most important harddrives recently.. :( Some lessons are best learned the hard way.
 
@Moxxy:
Not sure why I should take an image of my host system at all. I'm planning to create a new VM from scratch. I assume this is possible, because this is what I did when playing around with Virtual Box?
Can I create and run VMs with the free VMware server edition or do I need VMware workstation for running VMs on the host?

Thanks
 
phrench said:
@Moxxy:
Not sure why I should take an image of my host system at all. I'm planning to create a new VM from scratch. I assume this is possible, because this is what I did when playing around with Virtual Box?
Can I create and run VMs with the free VMware server edition or do I need VMware workstation for running VMs on the host?

Thanks
Click to expand...

I haven't used the server edition. The multiple monitor and 3d acceleration features are only available in workstation (and it's also more generally optimised for better desktop performance than server) so I've never tried using it. You can run workstation images in the free vmware player but you need workstation to create them. I think you can run image created with server in the free player but it's a different image format so I'm not sure if you'd get to use the advanced workstation features. It's about $130... or there's a torrent on 6.5.1 floating around if you're so inclined.

The image of the host system is simply for quick recovery. Because I never use the host for anything except moving VM images around it's a very basic install of XP 64/service packs/Vmware, the image is about 2gb and restores in a few minutes in case my whole machine ever blows up. Of course I've got copies of the VM images stored off the host machine as well...

The point of it all is to remove as much dependency as possible from the physical machine as it's the single point of failure and also the most painful bit to rebuild since it's got driver dependencies etc...
 
On the "do not try" list: Toucan. Don't. I've been looking for a good solution as well but didn't have the time to sift through all that's out there. Toucan I tried - it doesn't work, it produces errors over errors, it freezes, it doesn't do a thing. Fin.

Sometime soon I'm gonna look at all the other gazillion solutions everyone posted here.
 
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