Hi, internets!
I hope you had a fine weekend. We sure did, thanks for asking.
Anyway, I have a conundrum, and for some reason I haven’t figured it out yet, so I figured I’d ask just in case one of y’all have already figured it out.
I have an old computer at my house; “old” meaning “six or seven years old.” Yes, it has a color screen and runs on electricity. Other than that, not much in common with these newfangled things you kids use nowadays.
Anyway, said computer has information on it that I don’t really want to lose, but that I don’t access very often. So I’d like to backup the computer and remove it from my sight.
The thing has a CD burner, and here’s my question: What is a good program to a) create a backup and 2) burn the backup on CDs? It would be awesome if it would store it in a way that I could read the CD on another (less ancient) computer and cherry pick files I may need, but that isn’t a deal breaker.
Any thoughts?
My hubs is the techie in my house, so I’ll consult with him and get back with ya. :$
Many people forget, or do not realize, that CDs purchased through a store are pressed in the same way that record albums were pressed. A mold is pressed into hot plastic to form higher and lower spots on the cd that cause the laser on the cd reader to reflect differently giving the ability to have a 1 or a 0 state no that itty bitty part of the compact disc. Those professionally pressed cds can last a very long time.
A CD that you “burn” is a chemical process and subject to age. If you leave a burned CD in the sunlight (say on your dashboard), you will lose your data rapidly. Expect a burned CD to be reliable no more than 5 years although you may get lucky and be able to read it for 20. This is bad news for people who unwittingly backup their family photo albums to CD.
Since you still want access to the data, options are:
1) to burn the data to a CD for access purposes but save the harddrive as your true backup (ie. do not destory, reformat, or get it near magnets).
2) use an online backup service
3) use an online data storage service such as Amazon’s S3 service ( http://www.amazon.com/gp/browse.html?node=16427261 )
4) (my recommendation) put the harddrive into the computer you regularly use. Your computer probably only has one harddrive in it but can support several. Turn the power off. Open your case, find the harddrive and note that it is connected to the motherboard with an ide cable. That cable should have an extra connector that has nothing plugged into it. This is where you will plug in your old hard drive. On your old harddrive, there will be a jumper (little piece of plastic that connects two metal pins) on the drive for CS, Slave, or Master. CS stands for cable select and means that if it is at the end of your cable rather than in the middle that it is the master and intended for booting or if it is in the middle of the ide cable then it is a slave-this is typically the default setting. You want to switch that jumper to slave (sl) for good measure. Upon rebooting you may have to tell the CMOS about the new drive but more than likely will not. When Windows finishes booting you will have a new harddrive letter that contains all the data on your old harddrive.
A final note. A true backup is stored offsight. A business that regular backups data but stores them on location still loses everything when their building burns to the ground. Businesses that store backups at a remote location can quickly recover from a disaster. Families can do the same by storing backups in a safe deposit box or at a friend or relative’s house.
Doug has some good points (but spent a long time getting there). Depending on the type of information that you are looking to save (i.e. pictures, old documents… or a “real” backup (meaning restoring applications, etc)), if you are looking for “LONG TERM” storage here is what I suggest.
It really doesn’t matter what application you use, you should have software that came with your CD Burner, but barring that, you can download several for free.
Use that program to burn a copy of the files (not doing a “Backup) to the CD, then (assuming you new machine has oodles of space), copy the contents of the CD to the hard drive. (Does not need to be done immediately obviously). THis is a bit easier than going through the hoops of moving the hard drive to the new machine. (And lets be honest, when you eliminate the OS and applications (which you do NOT need to back up), you probably (on an ancient machine) don’t have much more than a couple of CDs worth of information to “burn off” and save, so this will be far less time consuming that juggling (sorry Doug) the hard drives.
I agree with Latte Man, unless you really do have multi-gigabytes of stuff that must be INSTANTLY available at all times, don’t bother to juggle the hard disks around.
Don’t use “backup software” as this is usually written in a proprietary format that only that programme can read, and when the company goes broke in 2008 you’ll be sunk.
The CD and/or DVD burner in your new computer (I’m guessing it has one, most do) probably came bundled with Nero cd-burning software (again, most do). Copy this (or equivalent) from the new machine onto the old, and use it to copy the files onto CD. The format you want is formally called ISO-9660, it may also be called “data cd” or similar. In any case NOT “backup.”
Latte Man makes an exceptional point. He knows I rarely take the simpliest path 🙂