03-21-06 07:55 AM
"La Tercia Real" <LaTerciaRealNoSpam@yahoo.co.uk> wrote in message
news:1142588748.730289.89990@j33g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
> Hi,
>
> I am running XP and use Norton Ghost (7 or 8?) to backup the entire
> drive to an image on an external drive. I always boot into the supplied
> DOS utility to do the backup.
>
> My question is, with most modern backup software, they claim to be able
> to backup while Windows is running; is this fool-proof? Even if you
> close all applications and don't use the machine, there are always
> processes running which may be writing to files. If, by co-incidence,
> the backup software is accessing the same files at the same time, it
> may copy files which are inconsistent with each other.
>
> This may seem trivial but if you ever needed to restore from an image,
> it might just cause problems in some critical files. Any thoughts?
>
> La Tercia Real
> *Leave* NoSpam in e-mail to reply.
Any BACKUP is no more than a snapshot of a system at a point in time.
Obviously, if one backs up while the OS, or apps, are running, NO backup can
have the latest files, as some file WILL have changed since the backup
started and was first copied.
In a normal circumstance, thou shalt not run ANY apps whilst a backup is
running.
In general, all one needs to do is disable the auntie virus program and not
run any apps that do not normally run in the background, such as in the
system tray.
The files that are continuously/periodically being updated would not
normally cause a problem if the latest version is not backed up.
Some programs doallow you to boot to a recovery disk and backup from a
temporary OS built by the recovery disk, but then you might also end up
backing up the temporay OS.
>
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