Hello,

I just finished putting in new computers here; 4 PCs.  I purchased True
Image v 9? a couple of months ago but we never got around to using it fully
since the cd-drive was acting up on the machine the software is installed
on.  These computers are hooked up via a network throughout the shop and all
have access to each other.

New computers have 180gb drives in them and after the fresh install of all
used programs, each computer is probably using about 10gb or so of it's hard
drive.

Here is what I was thinking, but would like to ask others who might already
be doing something similiar; and find out if True Image can do this.

Have the OFFICE (the machine with True Image on it and the person who will
be in charge of doing the backups) machine go out to each machine and do
some kind of IMAGE of each computer in the network and save the image under
C:\Backups on the OFFICE machine.  This would probably take about 30gb
accounting for 3 machines with about 10gb each.

INSERTED AFTERWARDS
Have the OFFICE computer do an image of it's own drive first so it is saved
under C:\Backups.  This may be preferable so that the image is that of the
hard drive as it is now; not after there are 3 more full system images on
it.  Is this the correct thinking.

Then somehow just copy those images to CD's as the official start CD's for
an emergency backup.

From there, I don't know if the images can be erased from the physical hard
drive or not.

I would need to create an auto routine within True Image to do a weekly
backup to the C:\Backups directory.  I think I would want Incremental so
that only what has changed will be saved.  After True Image goes out and
checks all 4 (3 external and the OFFICE machine) for the files to back up
and brings them to C:\Backups, these would go to a CD.  Whether or not an
erase of these now that they are on CD is required and/or preferred, I don't
know.

If anyone has suggestions, I am open to those ideas.  The goal of course is
to have some way to reliably backup the computers so if the need ever
arises, we can just reinstall and 'exact?' image of how we had them setup
from Day 1.

Thank you,


Tim




--


Tim Fierro
Parts Manager
Howard Moe Enterprises, Inc.
(360) 538-1622

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"Tim Fierro" <tim@littlehoquiamshipyard.com> wrote in message
 news:bdydnbopSpdExLPYnZ2dnUVZ_qydnZ2d@co
mcast.com...
> Hello,
>
> I just finished putting in new computers here; 4 PCs.  I purchased True
> Image v 9? a couple of months ago but we never got around to using it
> fully since the cd-drive was acting up on the machine the software is
> installed on.  These computers are hooked up via a network throughout the
> shop and all have access to each other.
>
Snipped

The logic of putting your Backup on C: has always puzzled me.
If the hard drive goes kaput, then so does your Backup.
Surely a better approach would be to consider an External
hard drive\s.(USB)
One drive could be transported to each machine, or, for very
good security, each machine could have its own drive.
Hope this helps.

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"beenthere" wrote in message
> The logic of putting your Backup on C: has always puzzled me.
> If the hard drive goes kaput, then so does your Backup.
> Surely a better approach would be to consider an External
> hard drive\s.(USB)
> One drive could be transported to each machine, or, for very
> good security, each machine could have its own drive.
> Hope this helps.

The way I see it was that the machine doing the backups for the network is
OFFICE.  It would go out and get images of the other computer's in the
network and place them into it' own C:\Backups.  But this is used as a
TEMPORARY stage; not permanent storage.

Then the OFFICE machine doing the backups can make a CD from it's own local
drive of every machines backup to the CD.

Are you advocating instead to go straight from a networked machine right
into the CD drive located on the OFFICE machine?

I thought grabbing data over a network and storing temporarily on the local
computer, would be faster of getting the data to backup, than to try to go
straight to a writing device on the OFFICE machine.

So to answer your puzzle in this instance, I am not worried about the drive
going kaput right this minute as I am doing the backup and the storage
locally is for a short period of time; not a permanent archive.

I have not priced external USB drives, but I will today.  Maybe it would be
an easier situation.  Thank you.

Tim

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