Safe Speed Forums

Has anyone got any good programs to work with back up hard drives ?

I have now had 5 spurious crashes this morning and the back up is out of sync. As soon as I try to copy / paste whole drives and it reaches a files that it cannot read it stops then I have to go in and go folder by folder which is a massive waste of time to say the least ! ?

There is a sync feature but you have to go and buy the software which I think is utterly immoral frankly! <grr>
So what does everyone else do to resolve this ?

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Safe Speed for Intelligent Road Safety through proper research, experience & guidance.

When I've had to resume a manual backup, I normally try to recopy everything, then when it asks "Do you want to replace the existing file?" just hold down the N key.
Holding down keys probably isn't for everyone.

If it helps, here's a photo I took of someone permanently running an Excel macro using small weights on the assigned macro key:

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Views expressed are personal opinions and are not necessarily shared by the Safe Speed campaign

Yep Thanks - yep got various little weights but they are magnets - suppose I could go to a fishing store and buy some lead !

On the C Drive copy there are window apps - like the Hib ?? file (had fun with that one before for getting into Gb size !) eventually managed to delete it with no adverse effects that I know of!
But as it reads it only it then stops copying the rest of the files and then I am left (& esp since that is near the start of the drive) copying over everything individually as I have never found a way to copy all the folders over in 'one go'. I suppose I perhaps have just found a solution copy all those directories over to one other then I can copy then all over in one go and just have a few odd one's which is easier to cope with.
I wonder if that will effect FTP transfers - hummm have to think about that one.

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Safe Speed for Intelligent Road Safety through proper research, experience & guidance.

Do you actually want to make a copy or an actual backup (i.e. a compressed file including system state etc)?

The Windows provided backup program will run to an external USB drive. On restore you can choose whether or not to overwrite files automatically.

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Malcolm W.
The views expressed in this post are personal opinions and do not represent the views of Safespeed.

The hiberfil.sys file is used by the hibernation function, it will be about the same size as your RAM, if you have hibernation switched on it will just come back.

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Driving fast is for a particular time and place, I can do it I just only do it occasionally because I am a gentleman.
- James May

Well it start off as ensuring that if my laptop had a problem of any kind I would know that I had all my files backed up.
Now I am wondering if it were a restore backup then all windows will be backed up too and this is maybe a better plan. I have all of Paul's laptop on it too as a separate section that is mostly untouched.
When I update or add files I want to ideally hit the 'sync' button and have it just update the files that need updating to ensure I have a fully working up to date back up.
Files are more important than windows set up, but if I can do both that maybe more prudent. I do have a snag however, in that I (nor AVG) cannot access the file that seems to old a worm bugbear and so this is being frustratingly copied too.

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Safe Speed for Intelligent Road Safety through proper research, experience & guidance.

There is a nice free program called YCopy which skips files it cannot read, making a note in the log file. http://www.ruahine.com/download.html

To keep backups in sync I use Goodsynch http://www.goodsync.com which is well worth the $30 it costs as it can also be used for synchronising folders between differant machines.

For making disk images True image is very good http://www.acronis.co.uk/homecomputing/products/trueimage/?source=uk_google&ad=ati&c=4378971294&k=true%20image&gclid=CLegs5mHg6ACFVcB4wodZUdviQ but it costs £40

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When I see an adult on a bicycle, I do not despair for the future of the human race. H.G. Wells
When I see a youth in a motor car I do d.c.brown

I use Karen's Replicator for making direct copies, AFAIK it will skip any files it can't read.

It can also be set to only copy files which have changed.

Ping the penguin

http://ping.windowsdream.com/

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The Box said "Windows XP or better" ... So I installed Ubuntu

Claire - if you can identify said worm - try http://www.symantec.com/business/securi ... ltools.jsp

to look for a removal tool .

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lets bring sanity back to speed limits.
Drivers are like donkeys -they respond best to a carrot, not a stick .Road safety experts are like Asses - best kept covered up ,or sat on

Thanks for the advice, will look into those ...

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Safe Speed for Intelligent Road Safety through proper research, experience & guidance.

It's funny you mention this topic Claire because I am in the throws of swapping my hard drive for a bigger one I have been given. Once I installed Office I was left with about 27 Gig which I think is slowing everything down. The hard drive never stops chuntering

We use Drive Image at work but I notice there's a free edition of an old favourite which used to work well

I'll try it ASAP and see if it's any good, that's if someone hasn't already beaten me to it...

EDIT: Just noticed it doesn't support Vista and the reviews aren't favourable either I wonder if PKZip are still going

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The views expressed in this post are personal opinions and do not necessarily represent the views of Safe Speed.
You will be branded a threat to society by going over a speed limit where it is safe to do so, and suffer the consequences of your actions in a way criminals do not, more so than someone who is a real threat to our society.

It's not the system restore file is it?

Try turning system restore off and back on, this will have the effect of removing the file.

Interesting but no - thankfully as I wouldn't know how to turn the system restore off and on ... anyway ! Unless I think that it is more complicated that I imagine ...
I believe it is in the main inbox as that is where it resolves to ...
I am a bit reluctant to mess with anything while things work albeit it with an 'issue'.
I do want it resolved, but I'd feel more comfortable with a solution that was fully tried and tested and preferably 'people happy with' solution ..... I hope anyway !

I have looked at the other option links - thank chaps - I may well have a go at one or another of them ... for the back up - it needs to run like a Hot Sync system if this helps.

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Safe Speed for Intelligent Road Safety through proper research, experience & guidance.

May I quickly ask something on software which others may have wondered please..

I’ve just renewed my Kasperski and it gives me three licences. Are my sister and friend who live elsewhere allowed to use my purchase, effectively getting it for free, or is it restricted just to my house or something?

I only have the one pc in my house. It’s probably in small print somewhere but I have an allergy to font size six or less.

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The views expressed in this post are personal opinions and do not necessarily represent the views of Safe Speed.
You will be branded a threat to society by going over a speed limit where it is safe to do so, and suffer the consequences of your actions in a way criminals do not, more so than someone who is a real threat to our society.

If you're on Vista or Win7 the provided backup utility is actually pretty good. Mine automatically backs up to my NAS every sunday at 7pm, only copies over the changes to save space/time. It works just fine.

For XP I'd just use the free Robocopy utility and set it to zero retries upon failure.

For copying/cloning a disc, Seagate have made a cut down version of Acronis avaliable. It's called Disc Wizard

A good, free synchronising programme with plenty of options is called Pure Sync Personal Edition

I've used them both and find them quite useful.

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Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.