Hence my question some posts back: is it just data you're worrying about, or the ability to restore a hosed system (hosed either through hardware failure [disc drive being the commonest I think], or - as seems more likely here - user action)? Though it seems from subsequent discussion, though the OP hasn't actually said, that either it's only data, or that that's the best he's going to get from those involved (making a Macrium image or similar being beyond them).
Mainly the data. TBH I think the whole machine is on it's last legs which is why I have already imaged all the valuable data I could see.
But I'll be happier once I have imaged the whole disk once to grab everything. I failed last time because downloading software there was so hopelessly unreliable due to poor internet service.
I can't imagine finding a modern machine that the disk image could be restored onto or being able to find Vista video drivers for new hardware. They will be forced kicking and screaming to upgrade to Win10 when it expires. BTW Thanks to everyone for their suggestions.
It has clarified a few points and made me think a lot harder about exactly what they need, some solutions I hadn't considered and how to make it easy for it to get done reliably. That may be the hardest part.
In this case I can pretty much guarantee it will happen at least once a month now - when I visit (even if no other backups occur).
Indeed. I was once bitten by reliable tested backup software which failed on our codebase because the total volume size on our server had gone above 2GB - only the first 2GB was recoverable after a crash.
Thankfully it wasn't over by a large amount and only a small amount of recent work and new builds were lost. But it still hurt to redo work.
The software vendors admitted that they hadn't run into the problem as their own codebase was smaller (signed vs unsigned longint bug).
Similar problem with a 2GB card in a Pentax istD - only the first GB was usable and the camera would keep taking pictures but not storing them - no idea how they mucked that up. Firmware update fixed it.
In this instance I envisage directory mirroring with verify (and excluding a handful of large transient useless windows files).
You should take a look at Bvckup, then. Once it's created the original backup, it backs up subsequent changes using incremental delta copying so it is bloody quick. It can be set to mirror the source or to archive backup copies of deleted files.
It backs up 3.2TB of data daily at 3am from my PC to a NAS running Linux. It only takes 3m
18s to process and write the changes. That's 1,176,710 files in 27,709 folders.
2017.07.15 02:18:18.311 (UTC+0) 2 1 Completed in 3 min 18 sec with no errors
2017.07.15 02:18:18.311 (UTC+0) 3 2 Read 1.20 GB, wrote 225.64 MB, throughput 94.58 MBps / 99173219 bps
Another nice thing is that the target backup retains the filesystem structure and is browseable - no horrible proprietary monolithic files that you need a separate app for.
At work I used 5 different colour floppy disks for each working day for incremental backups.At the end of each day, I ran the Microsoft Backup Utility which came with W95 ; msbackup I think . On Friday I ran a full-backup onto a couple of other floppies. Files were smaller in those days ;-)
Doing this saved me a great deal of grief as W95 was rather flaky. I think I used a similar one when we went to NT . I don't think MS supplied a decent built-in backup utility after NT. At work we went over to network drives and the IT department looked after backup and restore, but was less convenient.
NTbackup might work on Vista , if you can find a copy. Incidentally I still run Winfile (remember it ?) on Windows XP, W7 and W 10.
SyncToy does incremental delta copying - I rotate around three copies; once the base copy (for each) exists, subsequent backups just involve copying over what's new or changed, and deleting what's been deleted. (You can make it not do that last, too, if you wish.) [Despite the name, it's not a toy; it's from the people inside Microsoft who make good utilities. IIRR, this one's from Mark Russinovitch.)
There were (are) several make-the-ribbon-go-away utilities out there: the one I liked best was a Swiss (.ch) one, free for home use. Gave you the original menu bar back (in Word and Excel anyway), without losing new facilities.
At 10:18:00 on Thu, 13 Jul 2017, Mike Tomlinson wrote in :
[On return from a couple of weeks away] Strongly agree (except that it's Bvckup, not Bvckyp. The URL is correct.). It is totally trustworthy, faultless, and - which is crucial - it is easy to restore one or more files from the backup.
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