System Back-up

sweetnsssharon (51) on 04/12/99 at 14:21:48 PDT

Good Afternoon Everyone!...I need to know what kind of "multiple media" DOS and windows based back-up software to turn all the files on my hard drive into image files and compress them so I can copy them onto CD's.......I have a SONY CRX 100E CD ReWritable recorder, the software that came with is "CD Right!"

captain-kirk (168) on 04/12/99 at 14:34:51 PDT

sweet: are you trying to back up everything...or just "data" type files? It sounds like you are trying to do "everything". If you absolutely have to do that, assuming your "CD right" doesn't do anything in regards to this problem, one solution is to compress, via something like Winzip, multiple directories onto CD-ROM-sized zip files, and then just write the file(s) to the CD-ROM. You'll have to manually go through your directories, clumping groups of them together. Not too bad for a "do it once" kind of effort, sort of tedious for a weekly backup though.

Presumably backup software might actually have a more intelligent and elegant means to do this.

Yes I want to back-up my entire system....The CD-right does not do that of course, I would really rather get a program that will be easier to use than trying to get the files done with Win-Zip...I have 5 gigs that I'd like to back up and I want to do it the easy way....( if there is such a thing )...

sharon: check out, for example, Norton Ghost (free trial available), which claims to do backup to Cd-ROMs. (and probably does). I've used it before, it seems to do well (but haven't used it for your purpose).

tjcc (414) on 04/12/99 at 14:55:24 PDT

Sharon - My CD-RW came with BackupExec for CD-RW from Arcada Software. It's nice, but it's slow. It wasn't readily available previously because it only works with certain drives. Might be something to look into though.

Prepare for possible future PC catastrophes by regularly copying the following files to a second hard drive, removable hard disk or diskette; especially if you frequently install and uninstall applications.
From your root directory (you may find only some of these), back up AUTOEXEC.BAT, AUTOEXEC.DOS, CONFIG.SYS, CONFIG.DOS and MSDOS.SYS.
From your Windows folder, back up CONTROL.INI, SYSTEM.INI and WIN.INI, as well as the SYSTEM.DAT and USER.DAT Registry files (SYSTEM.DAT probably won't fit on a floppy disk, to save there might try one of those programs that splits large files up).

..back..