I need to back up our home computers and am trying to determine whether to buy individual external hard drives for each computer or buy a network external hard drive and backup to that. If I buy a single external network hard drive is it possible to backup all the computers so that if a computer won't reboot, you can restore it completely from the network hard drive? Anyway, what is the best way to go? I am a novice at backing things up properly and it would be nice to be able to just use software that automatically backs everything up nightly.
I'm not an expert, but you have a couple different things that might have to be addressed separately: 1. Automatic backup of multiple computers - Two choices are a dedicated drives for each computer or Networked Attached Storage (NAS) that can handle all of them. NAS is more convenient but also more vulnerable. Regardless of which route you go software will need to be installed on the computers for the automated backup. make sure the backup is of the data only and not your programs. My NAS has print server support so all my computers share the same printer. Some newer printers have this built in but mine are old. 2. Emergency boot capability - You would need to create something with the ability to boot the operating system to get at your drive if the boot sectors are corrupted either physically or by virus. Usually this is with a boot CD that you put in only when you have to. How you go about doing it will depend on your operating system. 3. System restore - this is when you want all your programs put back on. Some Dell and HP systems have a restore partition on them that will only put back what was on it from the factory. Anything you added either programs or data will not be restored. You would get your data back from your back up drives (#1). If it was me I would probably do a new install on a replacement hard drive with fresh install of OS and applications instead of trying to restore all my applications from a backup. Too many things can change over time.
If you have Macs, just get external drives and use Time Machine included with every Mac. It's also a good idea to occasionally make a bootable copy with the free SuperDuper software. Another solution is Crash Plan which allows you to back up from one computer to another whether in your house or elsewhere for free. A NAS is not really necessary and external drives are cheaper.
norton ghost for pc. backup the entire disk image to an external hard drive, be it network or usb. if the system wont boot, plug in the ghost bootup cd and let it do its thing. itll write the backuped image to the original drive and itll be like nothing ever happened.
Windows 7 can create both drive images (ala Ghost) and restore DVDs. I have not tested the restore functionality of either, though. An NAS is a good choice for backing up files on multiple computers, but it won't help you boot your computer if your hard drive dies and it will be useless in a doomsday scenario (theft, fire, flood, etc.). If I may expand on TexasEd's post, to completely cover all the bases you will want all of the following: 1. File backup for the everyday "oops I deleted a file" scenario. The NAS takes care of this. 2. Recovery DVD and/or system image if everything goes haywire. 3. Online/offsite backup for catastrophies (theft, fire, flood, etc.). As I said, Windows 7 can take care of #2 (as can other programs), and for #1 and #3 I recently found a cool program called CrashPlan that can simultaneously backup to external storage and/or online storage. The program itself is free, and their online storage is priced pretty competitively with Mozy, Carbonite, etc.
Great info. Thanks for the help. My follow-up, though, is I am still using Vista on all the computers. I haven't had any problems with it so I am reluctant to switch to Windows 7. Although, I have had Firefox freeze a lot lately. Anyway, does Vista have the same feature that you described for Windows 7?
Remote booting over the network is beyond the capabilities of most people. Creating a CD ROM boot disk is easier to do and easier to boot from in an emergency.
