I did fail some years ago with the backup and that was a rather expensive experience as I had a hard disk crash, that hard disk contained ALL our family photos. So we had it restored at one of the few companies that takes the drive apart and replaces any mechanical parts. I hope that this will never happen again as that money could have been spent on many other things (Such as a good backup system).

I have been through several phases: I bought a DVD burner when they where expensive, used a noisy tape streamer, I used the 100 MB ZIP disks, CD backups and of course backup on floppy disks.

I’m now using external hard drives and DVD for backups but my problem was always to find the perfect software for it. I tested many, bought some and ended up with a few programs. So let me go over the ones I’m using at the moment. This will not be any in depth review but will just go over the software quickly.

All the software mentioned here is for Windows, I will cover Mac backup at a later stage. The plan is also to write about online backup another day.

OutBack Plus 6 (Web site)

This backup software is mainly for Microsoft Outlook files, so the .pst files (holding all emails), signatures, Rules, accounts… It can also backup other data, such as Internet Explore favorites and settings, My Documents, My Desktop and also FireFox bookmarks and settings.

When doing a backup of .pst files it will backup the files that are added to Outlook, so if you got .pst files that you closed then do not expect them to be backed up.

I use OutBack Plus more than the other backup programs as my emails are very important, at the same time my email collection is several gigabytes big, as I seldom delete emails (except spam).

So with a few clicks and my backup is running.

Backup Plus (Web site)

This is a simple but effective backup system, where you need to define what have to be backed up and what not. It is possible to define several backup sets, where each backup set can include a list of files/folders/drives to be backed up; it is also possible to exclude files/folders.

Example: You can setup a set called “Games” and then add all the game folders to it. When you then start Backup Plus you will get a list of the backup sets, including dates of the last backup. So easy to select the oldest and do a backup.

The files generated are less than 2.1 GB so two of them fit perfectly to a DVD.

Norton Ghost (Web site)

I run Norton Ghost from time to time, so I can create a full image of my hard drive. This is a time consuming task so I don’t run it that often. But it sure feels good when it is done as it gives a good feeling of having the drive stored in away where I can restore it all in one go. To be honest, I’m not sure if I can do a full restore over the network.

The latest version of Norton Ghost is version 12 and I just realized that I’m using version 10, so I better check for an upgrade.

Backup destination

All backup is done to a NAS drive (Network Attached Storage), bought a nice Synology CubeStation CS407e earlier this year, with 4 hard drives, each 500 GB running in a RAID 5 setup for extra protection, so this gives me a total of 1.5 TG (1371 GB formatted) which is mainly used for backup.

The backup files are copied to DVD from time to time (Not often enough) for extra protection. I fail in doing this on a regular basis as it is rather slow.

I have been considering getting a Blu-Ray external drive for backup (Don’t care about Blu-Ray movies) as been able to backup 50 GB to a single disc got some charm. No more DVD swapping, just select all backup files and let the copy happen when you are not around.

Scheduled / Automatic backup

I never used any scheduled or automatic backup, as I want to control the resources of the system. I used to have tasks in Outlook that would remind me when to do backups but for some reason I don’t have that any more. Not even sure why this stopped but I just decided to add such tasks again.

New manual schedule

My future plans will be to do backups like:

• Every 3rd day do a backup with OutBack, include copy to DVD.
• Every week do a backup of my development setup, bought software and my documents. Copy backup to DVD.
• Every second week do a backup for the whole C drive using Norton Ghost & also with Backup Plus. Copy the files from Backup Plus to DVD.

One note, always do a backup of your Backup software, so you can install it easy in case you need to restore files to a clean system.

To make it all more perfect for me I just need to have the backup stored somewhere not local. I would be in serious problems in case I had a fire here or if all my equipment got stolen. So the next plan is to setup a system for having the DVD’s at another location.

Finally

I’m not using the backup software to their full extend but I do believe that I’m doing a lot better than most people. I recently read that around 80% of Mac users knew they should do backup, not saying that they do. This is scary; everybody should know about it and everybody who got data that is important for them SHOULD do backups.

So this leaves us with one question: Did YOU do your backup today?

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So he introduced me to DOSBox which I gave it a try with the old BrainBug demo I did many years ago. Actually the file I got here is from 1993 which sounds pretty correct, amazing that the date survived after been copied around between so many PC’s.

Here is a screen shot from it (Half size)

So what is DOSBox? As they write on the website:

DOSBox emulates an Intel x86 PC, complete with sound, graphics, mouse, modem, etc., necessary for running many old DOS games that simply cannot be run on modern PCs and operating systems, such as Microsoft Windows2000, Windows XP, Linux and FreeBSD.

To most people this might not sound exciting at all, but from us who lived through that time and even developed games for DOS it is impressive. At that time people did not use DirectX (Hell, it was before Windows 95) but programmed directly to the hardware. So we had no fancy libraries to create graphics and sound. At the same time we had very special memory limitations, split up in normal memory, extended memory and so forth. We knew how to edit and configure config.sys and autoexce.bat, using various memory managers or just himem.sys and emm386.exe to gain the few extra kilo bytes.

So when I ran the old BrainBug demo I was smiling, good old memories coming back. Sure the demo didn’t run as smooth as it used to but it worked. It was running nicely in a window but can also run full screen. Some might ask ‘oh, was it running 1280×1024 in true color’ and I will laugh. It was running in the none-standard mode X (320×240 pixels and 256 colors) and as far as I remember a special tweaked version that changed the frequency of the display. Actually one of the games I worked on allowed the display refresh to be set by the user with any frequency of 50 to 60 Hz and NO I’m not talking about just making the game run faster or slower but I’m talking about the physical refresh rate of the CRT monitor. Sure these things do not work with the modern LCD TFT screens. But it does not matter for DOSBox, it runs it anyway.

What even surprise me more was to hear the good old AdLib music, never thought that would happen again.

Enough talk, time for some action. In case you want to check it out and see how it was in the old days then I suggest you download the DOSBox from their site then install it (of course), create a folder (or as we used to say ‘directory’) for the dos programs, I suggest “c:\Dos”. Then copy the brainbug.exe (download here BrainBug demo 19 kb or as ZIP BrainBug demo (ZIP) ) into that directory.

Start the DOSBox and at the prompt type (press enter after each line)

mount c: c:\Dos\

c:

brainbug

Sit back and enjoy…

It might be possible to change some settings so that the demo runs in the correct resolution (320×240 pixels) but I have not spent that much time on it yet. It will also be worth to check if there are parameters that can optimize the demo. After all, it just takes a few % of CPU here for me. I even tried to run two of them at the same time, worked fine.

There is also a Mac OSX version which I will give a try later, I also plan to try out some of the old games/demos we did (LollyPop, Super Star Wars…) I will also check if I can find the old Turrican promotions we did back in the old days.

Memories…..

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Name: Diskeeper 2007 Professional
Usage: Disk de-fragmentation
Platform: Windows 200, XP, Vista
Company: Diskeeper Corporation
Verdict: Highly recommendable

What is Disk fragmentation and do we care?

Due to the Windows file system a file might be broken up in to blocks that are stored scattered around the disk. When a file is scattered we say the file is fragmented. When accessing fragmented files the speed is reduced as the hard drive will need to use several disk accesses to get the data from the disk. Having all data contiguous (defragmented) will allow faster access to the data. When a fragmented file is deleted it will leave ‘holes’ so creating new files will be slower and again the access will be slow. When using Windows many files will be used all the time; this might be files for Windows or user files; so it is VERY likely that files will get fragmented and if no defragmentation happens it will only get worse over time. Another issue with very fragmented files is that it can in theory reduce the life-span of the hard drive as the heads inside the hard drive will have to move a lot more than if all files where defragmented.

So the main goal with a disk defragmentation program is to remove all fragments and make sure all files are stored contiguous; at the same time making sure new files got space to be created without fragments. This will have a big impact on the performance of the whole PC.

The Past

In the old DOS days I was a big fan of Norton’s Speed Disk. Not that it was the only disk fragmentation program but it was the one I had most trust to. Things changed when I moved to Windows; didn’t really trust or feel that any of the disk fragmentation programs worked as I wanted. The build-in from Windows worked okay as long as you didn’t use the PC while it was working… So for many years I didn’t use disk fragmentation programs as often as I should.

Time changed and trust came back

So time changed and Diskeeper took over (for me at least). I’m not 100% sure when Diskeeper appeared for the first time; I first saw it when it was at version 6 or so, so several years ago. I did try the trail versions but never really decided if it was what I wanted. I was close to buying it when they got to version 9 and 10 but first bought it when it reached version 2007.

I mentioned trust several times already; the reason for this is that I MUST be able to trust programs that work on the hard drive in a way as Diskeeper does. It does after all go directly to the file system on a lower level than most programs does. This is specially the case when a defragmentation happens at boot time. It gets even more interesting when the program works on the disk WHILE the user is working. After evaluating and testing the trail version of Diskeeper 2007 Professional I felt good enough about the software and bought it.

Diskeeper 2007

The edition of Diskeeper that I bought was the 2007 Professional one. They do offer several other editions for home use and some for servers. For me I had to choose between Diskeeper 2007 Home, Diskeeper 2007 Professional and finally Diskeeper 2007 Pro Premier. The reason I decided for the Professional edition was the features it offered that was missing in the Home edition. These are “Automatic Directory Consolidation” and “FragShield™”. FragShield™ guards against fragmentation of system files; the “Automatic Directory Consolidation” makes file searching and access faster which also helps for backups and virus checks.

The Pro Premier edition offers all the features of the Professional edition but also “I-FAAST™ 2.0″ which I didn’t feel I needed, it also supports larger than 768 GB drives which I don’t have any way. Who knows; maybe I will end up investing in this version when I upgrade to a new PC. Just a word about I-FAAST 2.0 (Intelligent File Access Acceleration Sequencing Technology), it is used to monitor file access and reorganize files for fastest possible access. So files that are often used will be faster to access.

So let me mention some of the features that made me decide for Diskeeper 2007.

• Running in the background (InvisiTasking™).
  This was one of the main reasons for me to choose Diskeeper. It is possible to have Diskeeper running in the background without it taking any CPU time from other programs. So it will NOT slow down the PC. Often when you work with the PC there will be idle time; this is when the CPU is not working at full power. Example: While you are reading this text the CPU is not doing much but when you open an application or if you are playing a game it will be busy. So the system will use idle time for disk defragmentation. I had a funny experience with this: I had some issues with other programs that slowed the PC down; so I was watching what tasks was running and how much CPU they used. Then suddenly 25% of the CPU was used; I quickly checked what program it was: Diskeeper. Made me laugh a bit as it proved that their system is working. So now I have Diskeeper running ALL the time but it never disturbs me; actually I don’t even think about having it running at all.

• Simple to use.
  Start it, configure it… Forget about it. This is the simplest way to use Diskeeper, let it do the work in the background. Of course you can analyze a drive and see the stats of it and force a defragmentation; but you don’t really have to do so.

• Multiple drives.
  I have several hard drives with multiple partitions and I have defined them all to be automatic defragged in the background. Works without any problems. Only problem is if a drive is larger than 768 GB then the Pro Premier version is needed.

• Boot-time mode.
  This allows Diskeeper to run at the very start of the booting of the PC making it possible to defrag important system files; such as paging file; Master File Table…

• Defragmentation when having low free space.
  The system does not require a lot of free space on a drive for defragmentation. The Microsoft defragmentation program has failed to work for me several times as I was low on space. So I had to move data between the drives before I could defrag.

The Future (Windows Vista)

Good news here. Diskeeper Corp announced yesterday in a newsletter that Windows Vista is now supported by Diskeeper. (Not really a surprise that they would). They even offer a free upgrade to people who already bought Diskeeper 2007. I have not tested how well it works with Vista as I do not have Vista installed on any of my PCs.

Verdict

My experience with Diskeeper has only been positive; I never had lost files; broken files or crashes because of Diskeeper. If I had then I would not have done the review. What I have gained from Diskeeper is hard to say; did the PC become faster… my feeling is yes but I can not say how much faster. Just knowing that it is defragged is enough. I fully trust Diskeeper and will continue to run it; also on all future PC’s. Only regret is that I didn’t get the software earlier.

So if you are a PC user running Windows; if you got a hard drive (I know… you do) and would like the hard drive to work with optimal performance then I recommend you to get Diskeeper.

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