External hard drive? Ghosts? back up - help?

[rojo]

Hi everyone

Have just had help on another forum to clear up virus. thought i would seek further advice. think this is the right place.

i have an IBM think pad T40. I use it for storing data relating to a small business - I have been backing up date to CD but have become aware that really I should have a back up of my whole system - that is operating system as well as data and i believe this is called a Ghost?

From what i can see that means purchasing a an external hard drive.

My questions are:
how do i determine how big a hard drive to buy to do this?
will I be able then to keep updating data regularly to it without having to do full back up each time of everything?
What about if i add new software?
should i also - for added protection back up to an online data storage site - found one for $2 per month per GB is this good or bad price?
Do i also need some software to allow me to ghost?
any thoughts on available external hard drives or is anything new about to come on to market and wait for it
how do i ensure my laptop is running its best before doing the ghost?

Thanks for your patience. If you need me to give any further info then you need to tell me how to get it off my computer!!

Rosie

[Gizmokid2005]

Rosie,

To determine the size of the drive that you will need, you need to figure out how big your current hard drive is, and then calculate how many concurrent backups you may want. If you have an 80GB hard drive, and you want to keep 2 backups, get a hard drive that is at least 200GB. It is highly recommended that you get more than you think you'll need to leave for overhead on the drive and possible expansion.

Depending on the software that you use, you may or may not be able to backup just the changed files every time that you backup.

If you add new software, you will need to backup again to include the new software.

I can't say much for online storage. You have to calculate that it will take many hours to upload a backup of your data to an online site. If you have a standard DSL connection, your upload speed is probably 384kb/sec which means it will take ~6 hours to upload just 1GB worth of data. Most computers with a standard installation of Windows XP and some programs will have roughly 15-20GB worth of data.

You will need software to allow yourself to make an image of your hard drive. There are some free programs out there as well as Norton Ghost. Personally I use DriveImageXML to backup my computer every night. It's a very small free utility that creates a complete image of your computer that you can restore fully or browse to pull off just individual files if you need them.

There are many good external hard drives out currently, most notably by Seagate and Western Digital.

I hope this information helps. Let us know if we can be of more assistance.

[rojo]

Hi have added ram memory so now at 1GB - also just bought WD My Book essential editions 500GB external hard drive for my back ups. Have read about other people partitioning the external drive - does this mean I can then alternate my back ups to different drives? If so what does primary, extended partitions mean and should I just divide the external drive in two? I have downloaded the DriveimageXML as mentioned above and intend to use this as I would like a complete back up of operating system. Have also come across something called Syncback which sounds good?
Once I have OS backed up do I need to keep updating this or only when I add new software? should i just do a back up of everything else on a weekly basis.

Thanks for any suggestions.

PS which format should partition be in and will this all take long to do?