How I Back Up My Hard Disk

[These are notes handed out by Roger Skidmore for his talk on Backing Up, given on 7th May 2003]

I used to back up my data using either floppies or LS 120 opto-magnetic media and with Windows 3.11 and a tape backup operated from a DOS environment. When Windows 95 came along with long file names it became impossible to backup from DOS. The problem is not so much of backing up data but of backing up the operating system because in the event of a total crash it takes too long to put everything back and then you are for weeks discovering things you've forgotten to reload.

So I thought that the only way to do this is to produce a complete replica of the whole hard disk. So that's what I do. I don't use any fancy programs which only work through Windows (when you have to reload Windows to run them anyway) or dedicated floppies with special operating systems - just the tools that come with your normal setup. And hard disks are very cheap now.

You have two IDE connectors on the motherboard each of which can run two IDE devices - typically hard disks and CDROM drives. Each IDE device can be jumpered to "Master" or "Slave". CDROMs are easy to jumper, hard disks can be a bit fiddly, so I only ever use hard disks as Master. You don't have to use caddies to do this but it makes life easier - I have two caddies, one for my main hard disk and one for my backup hard disk. My CDROM is set as slave to either. I only put the backup hard drive in the second caddy when backing up (remember you must never "hot swap" hard drives).

If you only have one partition on your main hard drive life is simpler, because multiple drive letters are allocated in an odd way. Your main hard drive will be seen as Drive C: and the backup hard drive as Drive D:. Follow the following instructions - (i) format Drive D: with system files, (ii) open up a DOS prompt and type the following magical command:

XCOPY  C:\.  D:  /h/i/c/k/e/r/y

It seems necessary to clear the recipient drive but you could try without. The XCOPY command says "copy everything on Drive C: onto Drive D: regardless of anything" (copying the swap file would cause an error message).

This will produce a replica hard disk - well it's worked for me for two years and saved a number of total re-installations. I do it every two weeks minimum. I occasionally validate the backup by testing the backup drive in the main hard drive caddy. So far it has proved faultless.

Remember you have to FDISK (setting the new hard disk "Active") and FORMAT your new hard drive first.

So far I have only used this procedure under Windows 95 and 98, but see addendum below...

Roger Skidmore
7th May 2003

ADDENDUM: I have had the programs XXCOPY (for all Windows platforms), and ROBOCOPY (for XP, NT and 2000 only) brought to my attention. Visit the site http://www.xxcopy.com for more details and free download. These programs can do the same as XCOPY, but copying only changed files, and also purge the destination drive of files which no longer exist on the source drive, thus rendering the initial format procedure unnecessary. The support documentation also describes the FDISK and FORMAT procedure in detail.