nonpartisan:

I'm mobile now and not going to try to quote just the part I want. I had thought about writing a file system module for Linux that would mount a hive. It is indeed very similar to a file system. However, when I last looked (guessing 2007-ish; definitely before Vista, so probably earlier) the documentation that I could find was incomplete and somewhat scattered. Maybe I'll look into it again. An interesting and enlightening project anyway.

My personal favorite (reasonable current) starting point: http://blogs.technet.com/b/ganand/archive/2008/01/05/internal-structures-of-the-windows-registry.aspx

Jaime:

Windows 7 takes a backup of all of the non-user hives of the registry on every boot. Yes, you just copy them back into place.

So, a lot less involved than the process detailed for XP, then ;-)

Jaime:

BTW, to fix the mouse condition you described, go back to a registry backup and then do a LastKnownGood boot. You've got two problems (mouse and bad registry), so you need two fixes.

It wasn't my PC, but imagine that it was a loose cable. Unfortunately the user's troubleshooting steps resulted in destroying the SYSTEM hive.

morbiuswilters:

When my SSD died without warning I lost a lot of valuable data.

Fearing a catastrophic SSD loss is exactly why I've set up regular backups in the first place (that they helped me when I deleted stuff by accident is just a bonus).

What software do you guys use to do these daily backups/images, stored for a month (for example)? I just leave System Restore enabled and it's worked for me so far, but are these other options preferable?

I don't have a system or method in place, but I'm currently considering just using Total Commander's directory sync. I'm uncertain if it's capable of handling that kind of amounts of files.

My primary unsolved problem with backups in general is that sometimes I change the directory structure at the root or first level. For example, I separated all my drawn work from the generic pictures and renamed and moved folders. Files have not changed a bit, but I imagine any backup software will go apeshit, thinking WELL FUCK ME, EVERYTHING'S DIFFERENT copycopycopycopycopycopycopycopy

But hell, maybe I should just shut up and let it copycopycopycopycopycopycopycopy.

Edit

Oh, maybe since these folder changes are small and rare, I should simply do it manually on the backup drive. Folder changes have pretty much zero drive activity cost!

Wow.

Problem solved.

Thanks TDWTF!

FOR NOTHING.

 

AGAIN.

 

 

*goes sob against morb's fluffy ballsack*

ender:

morbiuswilters:

When my SSD died without warning I lost a lot of valuable data.

Fearing a catastrophic SSD loss is exactly why I've set up regular backups in the first place (that they helped me when I deleted stuff by accident is just a bonus).

Yeah, SSDs are awesome, but after spending a lot of time working with them I can tell you catastrophic failures are far more common than with HDDs.

lettucemode:

What software do you guys use to do these daily backups/images, stored for a month (for example)? I just leave System Restore enabled and it's worked for me so far, but are these other options preferable?

I use a variety of tools. One that I use often, and recommend is "CrashPlan" (Pro)....you can backup to their cloud server, you can backup to another machine (even "make a deal with a friend" and you backup to their house, they backup to yours (be sure you are *good* friends)

For the system level stuff, I do *everything* in Virtual Machines (90%+ Hyper-V). Snapshop the drive(s) nightly then have the snapshots just "treated as files".

dhromed:

Files have not changed a bit, but I imagine any backup software will go apeshit, thinking WELL FUCK ME, EVERYTHING'S DIFFERENT

Depends on the software – AhsayOBM for example is able to detect when a file has been moved, and will simply move it on the backup server accordingly. I don't know whether it uses hashes or file UIDs or what, as it doesn't always work (for example if you get a new PC or new server).

TheCPUWizard:

even "make a deal with a friend" and you backup to their house, they backup to yours (be sure you are *good* friends)

Or encrypt your backups. Which you should be doing anyway.

morbiuswilters:

TheCPUWizard:

even "make a deal with a friend" and you backup to their house, they backup to yours (be sure you are *good* friends)

Or encrypt your backups. Which you should be doing anyway.

That won't help in the case your friend decides he needs the space and delete your backups or you have a falling out or something like that (maybe that was what the TheCPUWizard meant). Besides everybody knows that you should keep your stalker pictures encrypted.

serguey123:

morbiuswilters:

TheCPUWizard:

even "make a deal with a friend" and you backup to their house, they backup to yours (be sure you are *good* friends)

Or encrypt your backups. Which you should be doing anyway.

That won't help in the case your friend decides he needs the space and delete your backups or you have a falling out or something like that (maybe that was what the TheCPUWizard meant). Besides everybody knows that you should keep your stalker pictures encrypted.

Yes, I was refering more to trusting the friend to "keep" the data. But also, every encryption has been broken (or has the ability to be broken) given sufficient computing power and time, so that also plays into it.

serguey123:

morbiuswilters:

TheCPUWizard:

even "make a deal with a friend" and you backup to their house, they backup to yours (be sure you are *good* friends)

Or encrypt your backups. Which you should be doing anyway.

That won't help in the case your friend decides he needs the space and delete your backups or you have a falling out or something like that (maybe that was what the TheCPUWizard meant). Besides everybody knows that you should expose your stalker pictures to the internet via some file-sharing service or image gallery.

FTFY.

TheCPUWizard:

every encryption has been broken (or has the ability to be broken) given sufficient computing power and time, so that also plays into it.

Yes, but I'm guessing that you don't keep really important data on your computer, also think of the cost/benefits, encryption algorithms don't have to be unbeatable, they only need to be good enough (pre-empting pedantic dickweeds, some data requires more protection than other so it depends

serguey123:

TheCPUWizard:

every encryption has been broken (or has the ability to be broken) given sufficient computing power and time, so that also plays into it.

Yes, but I'm guessing that you don't keep really important data on your computer, also think of the cost/benefits, encryption algorithms don't have to be unbeatable, they only need to be good enough (pre-empting pedantic dickweeds, some data requires more protection than other so it depends

I guess it depends on the definition of "important"....I have plenty of confidential data, with severe (ie. would cause bankruptcy) consequences if the data leaked [violating NDA/confidentially agreements]...

serguey123:

some data requires more protection than other so it depends

I'm sorry, I seemed to have missed something here....what are we protecting against?

I thought we were talking about protection against failure (backups) - not about protection against disclosure (confidentiality).

Cassidy:

I thought we were talking about protection against failure (backups) - not about protection against disclosure (confidentiality).

Thread derailment is a time honored and well stablished TDWTF forum's tradition.

TheCPUWizard:

I have plenty of confidential data, with severe (ie. would cause bankruptcy) consequences if the data leaked [violating NDA/confidentially agreements]...

Then don't send that information to your buddy, I'm confident (perhaps wrongly so) that you are a competent person and can do a simple task like correctly backing your data without losing confidential information because you sent it to your "buddy".BTW, I tend to assume that almost every person in this forum is a profesional IT person capable of using his\her brain, perhaps I should'nt assume that much

serguey123:

BTW, I tend to assume that almost every person in this forum is a profesional IT person capable of using his\her brain, perhaps I should'nt assume that much

All pigs refueled and ready to fly...

TheCPUWizard:

But also, every encryption has been broken (or has the ability to be broken) given sufficient computing power and time, so that also plays into it.

What? No it doesn't. Given sufficient key length, many ciphers are practically unbreakable. I'm not going to hand someone AES-256 encrypted data and be concerned that they will be able to crack it. (Also, the pedantic dickweed in me feels the need to point out that your statement about the strength of encryption is wrong: one-time pads aren't breakable, no matter how much computing power you throw at them.)

Cassidy:

I thought we were talking about protection against failure (backups) - not about protection against disclosure (confidentiality).

I'd say those are closely-related concerns. My data is already encrypted on my hard drive but if I make a backup I need to be sure it's securely encrypted, as well.

morbiuswilters:

I'd say those are closely-related concerns. My data is already encrypted on my hard drive but if I make a backup I need to be sure it's securely encrypted, as well.

Agree on the closely-related, but they have different objectives and therefore different methods:

- your data is backed up for continuity reasons

- your data (live or backup) is encrypted for confidentiality reasons

A tool to do encryption won't do backups. A tool to do backups may (or may not) encrypt.

lettucemode:

What software do you guys use to do these daily backups/images, stored for a month (for example)?

Acronis TrueImage Home. It's the least bad of the programs I tried that fit my needs (backup to network, incremental/differential support, able to do bare metal recovery or individual file recovery).

You know you're in a winning industry when the quality of a product is described as "least bad".

blakeyrat:

You know you're in a winning industry when the quality of a product is described as "least bad".

Everything else I tried was either too slow, couldn't handle storing increments and/or network, didn't pass restore test or all of the above.
TrueImage has it's quirks: running it under my account would forcefully disconnect all network drives and close all files I had opened from the network, so at first I just used it's built-in FTP upload functionality. This stopped working after some update (it changed all slashes to backslashes, then complained that the path is invalid) I was at first able to correct this by editing the configuration file manually, but they later broke it even more, so now I'm simply running it under a different user account (and storing directly to UNC path), which seems to leave my network connections alone. It still complains every morning that backup failed, but the backups are fine.

ender:

blakeyrat:

You know you're in a winning industry when the quality of a product is described as "least bad".

Everything else I tried was either too slow, couldn't handle storing increments and/or network, didn't pass restore test or all of the above.
TrueImage has it's quirks: running it under my account would forcefully disconnect all network drives and close all files I had opened from the network, so at first I just used it's built-in FTP upload functionality. This stopped working after some update (it changed all slashes to backslashes, then complained that the path is invalid) I was at first able to correct this by editing the configuration file manually, but they later broke it even more, so now I'm simply running it under a different user account (and storing directly to UNC path), which seems to leave my network connections alone. It still complains every morning that backup failed, but the backups are fine.

There are a few which will meet all of those *better* then TrueImage, but they all tend to fail the "wallet test" as they are priced for DataCenter usage...