John K Posted April 10, 2015 Share Posted April 10, 2015 John, would you mind posting the name of that software please? I have a couple of terabytes manually backed up and it's a sod keeping track of it all. Didn't know you could differentially backup but sounds like just what I need. I'll take one of those WD drives off you as well if that's OK? I'm in Worcester so could have a drive over in the Westy and pick it up perhaps. "Free File Sync" You can get it from http://sourceforge.netrojects/freefilesync/ It can be a bit when you first fire it up, but stick with it. Its rediculously powerful (or can be if you want to fiddle with parameters) I can suggest a few settings and share screenshots to get you started. One of the WD HDDs now has your name on it..! Only charge is to be allowed to make cooing noises over your Westie... Depending on how quick you want it, I'm only home this weekend but totally free if you are about. After that it all gets a bit vague cos of work. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John K Posted April 10, 2015 Share Posted April 10, 2015 If folk are having trouble sleeping, reading up about RAID is a good way to cure that. RAID can come in almost as many combinations as Webber jets and chokes. But the real nub of it is... RAID 0 or striping is only used for performance. The data is split up and each bit is written to multiple disks at the same time. Very popular with big databases. Problem is if you lose one of the disks in the set (or array) you lose everything RAID 1 or mirroring is the most resilient but wasteful of disks. Basically all the data is written to both disks so you have a mirror copy on two disks RAID 5 is a good compromise in that the data is striped over multiple disks, but the information about the data is also distributed over the disks. If you have 5 x 1tb disks you will only have 4tb of available storage as 1tb will be given over to redundancy. You can lose 1 disk and it still keeps going, but lose another disk and its curtains. RAID 5+1 is the same as RAID 5 but there is a spare disk in the array. If you lose a disk the array automatically redustributes to the spare disk so you can still lose another disk. There are loads of other RAIDS but they are variations on a theme invented to make companies spend money. We used to do things like mirror a RAID 0, So you striped 6 disks (for example) for speed, but then mirrored to another 6 disks. Rediculously wasteful of disks, but quite resilient. Anybody still awake..? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stuart Posted April 11, 2015 Share Posted April 11, 2015 Thanks John. Will PM you Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wackydo Posted April 11, 2015 Share Posted April 11, 2015 "Free File Sync" You can get it from http://sourceforge.netrojects/freefilesync/ Best place for this is actually here: http://www.freefilesync.org/ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lyonspride Posted April 11, 2015 Share Posted April 11, 2015 John, would you mind posting the name of that software please? I have a couple of terabytes manually backed up and it's a sod keeping track of it all. Didn't know you could differentially backup but sounds like just what I need. I'll take one of those WD drives off you as well if that's OK? I'm in Worcester so could have a drive over in the Westy and pick it up perhaps. You can do this using the windows xcopy command, for example: xcopy "C:\My Data\*.*" "G:\My Backup Data\" /s /c /d /h /i /r /y /v *.* means any and all files/filetypes *.pdf would means only copy .pdf files *.jpg would copy only .jpg files etc etc etc The command switches there are: S - Copy directories and subdirectories except empty ones C - Continue copying even if errors occur D - Copies files changed on or after the specified date mm-dd-yy (if no date give, then only copy newer files) H - Also copy hidden and system files (in the directories specified) I - If destination does not exist and copying more than one file, then assume destination is a directory R - Overwrite even read only files (in the destination directory) Y - Supress prompts to confirm overwrites V - Verify the size of each new file (to ensure data has been copied correctly) Paste into a new text file, replace the file paths with your own, rename the file to something.bat (instead of .txt) and simply run it. (id recommend testing it by first manually copying a folder and testing it on the copy to ensure it works). This is basically what all the fancy backup software does, it acts as a fluffy bunny interface for good the old command line. Last place I worked at, they'd had some salesman come in to sell them backup software for the logs files on the automated production and test equipment, the software license was £35'000, the suits were close to paying it, but in the end I saved them that money by basically doing what you see above, then going back and saying "yeah we don't need that stuff, it's sorted". 3 months of waiting, meetings and bureaucracy ended with 5 minutes and 7 lines of text Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John Williams (Panda) - Joint Manchester AO Posted April 11, 2015 Share Posted April 11, 2015 You can do this using the windows xcopy command, for example: xcopy "C:\My Data\*.*" "G:\My Backup Data\" /s /c /d /h /i /r /y /v *.* means any and all files/filetypes *.pdf would means only copy .pdf files *.jpg would copy only .jpg files etc etc etc The command switches there are: S - Copy directories and subdirectories except empty ones C - Continue copying even if errors occur D - Copies files changed on or after the specified date mm-dd-yy (if no date give, then only copy newer files) H - Also copy hidden and system files (in the directories specified) I - If destination does not exist and copying more than one file, then assume destination is a directory R - Overwrite even read only files (in the destination directory) Y - Supress prompts to confirm overwrites V - Verify the size of each new file (to ensure data has been copied correctly) Paste into a new text file, replace the file paths with your own, rename the file to something.bat (instead of .txt) and simply run it. (id recommend testing it by first manually copying a folder and testing it on the copy to ensure it works). This is basically what all the fancy backup software does, it acts as a fluffy bunny interface for good the old command line. Last place I worked at, they'd had some salesman come in to sell them backup software for the logs files on the automated production and test equipment, the software license was £35'000, the suits were close to paying it, but in the end I saved them that money by basically doing what you see above, then going back and saying "yeah we don't need that stuff, it's sorted". 3 months of waiting, meetings and bureaucracy ended with 5 minutes and 7 lines of text Can a suggest robocopy instead of xcopy (written by the microsoft team; it can skip files in use, and also only do the files that have changed) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John K Posted April 11, 2015 Share Posted April 11, 2015 You can do this using the windows xcopy command, ... This is basically what all the fancy backup software does, it acts as a fluffy bunny interface for good the old command line. Last place I worked at, they'd had some salesman come in to sell them backup software for the logs files on the automated production and test equipment, the software license was £35'000, the suits were close to paying it, but in the end I saved them that money by basically doing what you see above, then going back and saying "yeah we don't need that stuff, it's sorted". 3 months of waiting, meetings and bureaucracy ended with 5 minutes and 7 lines of text You are basically correct, you can do everything via the CLI (and I used to be a UNIX sys admin so hold no fears for me), however things like Free File will...Allow you to to resolve conflicts, what if source and target have both been modified, what do you want the backup to do? Drag and drop folder selections for the source, it is easy for CLIophobes to accidentally copy the root downwards Gives a preview of what it is about to copy, if you have only added 5 pictures, why is it forecasting 33,000 files will be backed up Gives a log file of the result (yes you can pipe to a txt file) And some people just like fluffy bunnies..! @lyonspride, please be very careful in taking responsibilty for production data backups for commercial organisations. Sure £35k was probably way OTT, but a home grown batch file for commercial data? Where is the historical audit trail Where are the email alerts if the backup does not complete Where is the offsiting schedule Where is the media retention plan Where is the daily, weekly, monthly cycle If the backup does not run right, I promise that will also be the day the place burns down. Will you be liable for explaining why the company cannot recover its data. Putting in place a commercial backup plan is not just copying files... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stuart Posted April 11, 2015 Share Posted April 11, 2015 Well I've fallen at the first hurdle. I've downloaded the Free File Sync files expecting there to be an installer or setup file, but there isn't - so I can't even figure out how to open it! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John K Posted April 11, 2015 Share Posted April 11, 2015 Best place for this is actually here: http://www.freefilesync.org/ @ Stuart... sorry I posted a link to the source code, please use wackydo's link... You should end up here... http://www.fosshub.com/FreeFileSync.html Then pick your flavour of OS Apologies Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lyonspride Posted April 11, 2015 Share Posted April 11, 2015 Can a suggest robocopy instead of xcopy (written by the microsoft team; it can skip files in use, and also only do the files that have changed) Robocopy is pretty good, though personally I prefer xxcopy. xcopy does actually do what you mention, but it's big disadvantage is there's a character limit to the directory+filename and it doesn't like special characters, it's rare to ever come across these issues, but it does happen on occasion. The real beauty is that by using the windows task scheduler, batch files can be setup to run at any time one desires. Personally my primary backup is done at 11:30 each night, to a HDD attached to my Asus router and then my PC shuts down automatically using the "shutdown -s -t 300" command in the same batch file as the backup command. Whatever people are comfortable with really, I just don't like seeing people wasting money or accidentally downloading malware in trying to download software that does nothing you can't do in a command window. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rhett Turner - Black Country AO Posted April 11, 2015 Share Posted April 11, 2015 Another product to look at is syncback by 2brightsparks, I've been using the free version for a number of years without any issues. I uses it for backups i.e. copy from location a to location b and to keep some folders in sync where I may change files at either end and the changes are replicated. It's got a gui front end and integrates into Windows scheduler. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TableLeg Posted April 11, 2015 Author Share Posted April 11, 2015 Thanks all for the input. Can anybody offer any advice with my recovery attempts? Tried Testdisk and many many other pieces of recovery software and I get very intermittent results. Initially it looked like the data was there during scanning but kept stopping and then ending. Other times I get errors saying the disk in a RAW format, and now it seems to say each time there is no partition. Testdisk is not finding any partitions. Any thoughts before I concede the data is beyond recovery? I'd happily pay to have the data recovered with a trial type software being the best option so I could ensure that the data is retreavable before forking out £££'s. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John K Posted April 11, 2015 Share Posted April 11, 2015 Sorry for taking the thread off topic... The problem you have is with the proprietary RAID. It may be striping the data in some weird way. Have you tried joining, posting on the Netgear forum. http://forum1.netgear.com/ There are some super boffins on that place. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TableLeg Posted April 11, 2015 Author Share Posted April 11, 2015 John, Was your last response to me? The reference to Netgear has confused me somewhat. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TableLeg Posted April 11, 2015 Author Share Posted April 11, 2015 Just to clarify the disk in question was/is a single SATA HDD 500Gb connected via Windows 7. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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