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eftychia at 04:53pm on 2007-11-05For an unknown but probably brief time, I have a computer with a DVD burner in my house (owned by my ex-housemate who wasn't carted it over to his new apartment yet). Despite not having a DVD reader of my own (unless the DVD video player hooked to the telly can be convinced to let a computer access a filesystem on a DVD, which would surprise me), said ex-housemate suggested that since getting a hand-me-down box with a DVD reader in it in the near future wasn't all that unlikely, I should go ahead and back up my computers using his DVD burner while it's still here.
I'm backing up the Linux machines by firing up a Cygwin shell on the ex-housemate's computer, throwing a 'tar' command at the Linux box via ssh, and redirecting the output of the 'ssh' command to a tarfile that'll get burned to DVD.
I don't know how to do the equivalent under Windows.
Maybe it's easier because it's a Windows-to-Windows connection? A built-in Windows tool that I just need to know the name of? Or maybe I can do the exact same trick as for the Linux machines and count on Cygwin's 'tar' to see all the funky sup3r sekrit Windows crap that I'll probably need to get back after a catastrophe? Thing is, being "just a user" when it comes to Windows, and not even a very frequent Windows user these days, I don't really know what 'gotchas' are lurking.
So I beg of the WinAdmins here, a clue or two. How would you do this?
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I think the only way to do a complete backup under windows (including all the system files) is with a 3rd party back up tool.
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You can schedule it with the scheduler too (like you would with cron).
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See http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=9d467a69-57ff-4ae7-96ee-b18c4790cffd&displaylang=en
for details (it's in the Windows 2003 resource kit).
I think versions are available for other Windows versions as well.
What I'd do
Assuming you have more than 4GB of data to back up, you'll have to set up multiple backup files. This means you'll probably have to zip individual folders and move them to a staging area prior to burning. Alternatively you can use the DVD burning software to select which files to back up. You should have enough DVD's ready before you begin. You should also count on having problems with at least 10% of them.
Connect the two computers to the network. Make sure you note the Windows Machine Names of each computer.
Share the drive you wish to back up (Right Click C: and select "Sharing and Security..., then click the "Sharing" tab, make sure "Share this folder" is selected and, if you can, give it a Share Name. Then click "OK").
Then go to My Computer on the machine with the DVD burner. Go to the "Tools" menu and select "Map Network Drive" and selet something like X: or Z: adn type in the \\Server\Share where "Server" is the Windows Machine Name of the machine you want to back up and "Share" is the Share name you assigned the drive when you set up sharing above.
If all goes well you should now be able to access your data from the machine with the DVD burner. You can copy files onto the machine, zip folders, access data from the command line, and eve run applications (although to make them run properly you may have the make changes to the PATH variable).
Running your standard DVD Burning software should now allow you to select the folders on the shared drive to backup just as you would for any local drive.
Selecting folders as opposed to files will pick up any files hidden by the Operating system, although, to be certain, I'd open a folder window, select the "Tools" menu and "Folder Options", click the "View" tab and Under Advances Settings make sure "Show hidden files and folders" is selected and "Hide extensions for known file types" is NOT selected.