To image or not that's the ? : POLL

OK....I know that all of you overclockers backup your hard drives...right? If you don't, then you spend a lot of time restoring lots of software every time you screw up while tweaking your overclock...LOL

The questions I would like to have answered are:

1. How do you back up?
A. Imaging software to a second hard disk?
B. Imaging software to CD-R?
C. Imaging software to CD-RW?
D. Tape drive?
E. I don't back up?

2. How often do you back up?
A. Once per week?
B. Once per month?
C. Once per quarter?
D. Never?

3. How often do you have to do a restore from the backup?
A. Once per week?
B. Once per month?
C. Once per quarter?
D. Once per year?
E. Never? (do you lie much?)

4. For those of you answered 1.E., or 2.D., how much time do
you spend restoring software when you screw something up?
A. 0-4 hours?
B. 4-8 hours?
C. 8-16 hours?
D. I never screw up? (do you lie to yourself?)

1. B - ONLY select software/files however. 80GB on CD-R is a few too many CDs
2. D - Very rare that I actually make a backup of stuff
3. E - Through the past 5 years and 3 computers, I've only wanted a full backup once. And that was when my HP died...
4. D - Like I said, I've only needed it once in the past 5 years.

Also, if my HD dies a soft death (meaning it still runs, but nothing is seen by windows), I've got some file recovery software that restored my 10GB HD (the once I would have liked a backup of) in a few hours. I rarely spend more than 4 hours even just reinstalling programs from a format

JigPu

knock on wood...I've never lost any data.

I don't do imaging, but I have all of my data (music files, etc) on a second hard drive so that backups are unneccessary during reformats. And most of my data is backed up on CDR's.

I game a lot, so it's a bit of a nuisance to reinstall all of my games at every reformat. So I try to time reformats for when I've just finished a long game that I've been playing so that I don't have to worry about backups for game files.

Reformatting and reinstalling windows updates, drivers, programs, etc is time consuming, but I don't mind doing it twice a year or so, because it's SOOO nice to have a squeaky-clean pristine reformatted drive once in a while.

I only back up my MP3's and DIVX files to my brother's computer.

When my computer crashes, i probably spend a good 6 hours installing drivers and all that good stuff.

I have a ghost CD, but its not from a fresh installation, and that was back in the Direct X 8.1 days with old drivers and such.

Next time i reinstall, which may be soon, i will make a backup.

On my Windows machine, I backup my system partition to another hard drive. I plan to do this every week, but its been a while (maybe every month).

The only time I've ever restored a backup is when I'm changing hard drives or motherboards. Backup everything (Microsoft Backup), install Win2k, restore backup. This generally works, but the last time I did it, it didn't work perfectly (issues with drivers and other things), so I had to re-install all my software. I have a list of all the software I have installed. Also, I have made a CD which contains all the drivers for all the hardware in all my PCs, and also contains most of the software I typically install. I can have everything I want loaded from scratch in about 4 hours. When Microsoft Backup actually works (I don't trust it much anymore), I can completely restore my system in 1-2 hours.

1. A D(bootable recovery) Also specific files and data to CDR/DVDR and LAN storage
2. Daily A B
3. As little as possible. Several times during test/deploy then once due to a hardware crash.
4. Time to restore depends on which machine and how much data needs to be restored and from which media.

If you're using imaging software and using NT/2K/XP, don't forget to make an updated ERD when you image. If something goes wrong, it may help you recover.

1)A, occaisionally B also.

2)A, unless I'm making some major change in which case I image just prior to the change.

3)B to C.

4)Fresh install with all apps is 8-10hrs for me.

a,a,b,a

E,D,E,D Funnily enough the more I know about hardware the less I backup, when I was a n00b, I had 3 copies of everything on floppy , I'm probably secretly hoping for massive data loss to save me cleaning up my harddrive, or a chance to prove my 1337ness in getting it all back with a drive rebuild/platter-swap/freezer-trick/ and sector editor.

Hmmmm.....is there a lack of reality among overclockers or is it they just don't have enough to do so reinstalling tons of software is a project?

E, D, E, A
I never bother to back up, and since I don't back up I can't restore from the backup .
It doesn't actually take that long to set everything back up. I just play a game on one comp, and install software on the other one (multitasking is a wonderful thing)

1. A

2. Once every other week i do a backup of my system state

3. Whenever something goes screwy. It depends on if I installed important stuff and if it's really worth it having to re-install it, or try harder to fix the current problem i'm having.

1. How do you back up?
A. Imaging software to a second hard disk?
B. Imaging software to CD-R?
C. Imaging software to CD-RW?
A,B,&C I have 4 partitions on my main drive, Windows, My Documents, Programs, and Bulk. I copy My Documents and certain folders from Programs to a removable drive every month or so. I also back up certain folders to CD.

2. How often do you back up?
B. Once per month

3. How often do you have to do a restore from the backup?
When needed, usually whenever I get a new hard drive. I haven't had a critical harddrive problem yet.

4. For those
NA, but it usually takes about 4 hours to reload whatever programs need a full install to register. PS the only reason I ever need to do this is I usually wind up reinstalling Windows every 3-4 months. I like a very clean system! Note that even a full reinstall of Windows (even a full reformat of that partition) leaves all the other partitions intact.

formerly i didnt backup at all-i just said blah but im getting fed up with it so im going to make a nero CD with a boot sector and all my drivers aswell as proggies i cant live without (trillian, windowblinds, winamp, skins for eaach, firebird, etc. Im gonna try to recover but i think im in for a night of formatting BAH! (also gonna backup important files into a second HDD (i think i can spare some of the 3 gig muisc drive considering i will never have that much music-im too cheep and too lazy if ya know what i mean)

P.S. Anyone know how to recover from a windows protection error? I can boot to safe mode so im holding out some hope that i didnt completly hose the install? Will simply reinstalling windows over the other thru DOS(or safe mode) work?

Deleting the swap file often cures that one.

hrm how would i do this in 98? just go into dos and kill the file? What is the dlete command (deltree...something-im crap with dos)

bah im already regretting flipping my flopy around-o well that will soon be taken care of (i plan on getting some fusion this week and coloring my drives and keyboard-i might go after my mx500 but its already sexy and looks good. I need to drop a coat over my case sides-somehow i scratched em up-i need to be more carefull! But thats off topic-sheesh im glad i have a case with a latch side and not a screw on.

bump