i want to mirror my pc as a backup

ruprect

dont know if mirroring is the right term. i want to backup an entire pc on another machine so if one goes down i can stick the other one in its place immediately. it is in a factory controlling other machines but is a standard PC with windows 95 with a 3gb hardrive P2 333. i will post more details when i check it out. it is networked so the second machine must be identical as far as computer ID etc are concerned. i would prefer to have a better machine as the replacement and just toss the other out if it packs in.

is it easy to do myself or would i be better sending it in somewhere to be done? do you know anyplace that would do it all for me?
i know cd software nero has drive imaging functions, but does that really work easy?

WizZard

I would recommend that you clone the hard drive and use a hot swappable bay in your computer. This way you can have the drive in and if it dies, you can just pull out the drive and pop in the new one. All ok!

Alternatively if you wanted to have a similarly specced pc next to it also with a hotswap bay (empty) you could pop in the hard drive if the hardware died in the main machine.

PM me if you want help with it

MarkR

You're talking raid i think, if you want two hard drives whirring away backing up your data. Having a swapable drive is fine, except if the drive itself goes. Cloning the drive would only give you back ups up to the backup point. If you just need third party program data then you should be able to copy over the important data onto cdrw each evening, especially if the entire drive was only 2 gbs in the first place. A cd will hold 650 Mb or so (over a quarter or your current drives capacity)... You have a few choices there. Og yeah, just thought of one more! You can get a hard drive caddy, a spare drive and copy it over whenever you feel like it.:D

Mark

Capt'n Midnight

Try this..

Get a second Hard drive and put in the 95 PC.
Go in to a Command Prompt in Windows

sys
Xcopy C:\*.* d:\*.* /s /h /r /c /d
copies hidden/read only and Continue if error
the /D is for when you do it again ...

When it's finished - shutdown to restart in MSDOs mode
Del Pagefile.sys
Xcopy C:\*.* \*.* /S < \N
N is a text file with ~10,000 lines each with the letter N on them
so the only files copied are the ones in use by windows earlier.

When both machine are networked you can update files between them by using \\Machine2\C$\ instead of

Use ERU and CfgBack to take snapshots of the reg for restoring later on.

If Both machines have Different HW then use the copied drive in the second machine to add drivers for it, then try that drive in the first machine and then back again to verify it autodetects the drivers ok before you do the same with the Original Drive.

I've used this method on Win98 too - tons of "found new hardware" click ok's and a few reboots later...

www.marx-computers.com used to do bays for €18 - don't worry about Hot swap unless you have bought a hardware raid controller - cos 95 needs to be restarted at least once every 49.7 days (it's a bug - there is a win98 patch.!)

WizZard

hot swappable bay

i didn't mean RAID, I meant a drive bay. Maybe hot-swappable is not the right term!! :rolleyes:

Anyway its cheap and effective!

Capt'n Midnight

Ok - you can get IDE cards that mirror drives - eg: PROMISE

Mirroring in Windows
Dos /Win1/2/3/ Win95/98 don't care where their files are and can access the HDD via the BIOS so can just do a flat copy as per my previous post.

WinNT/2K/XP server can mirror as supplied - workstation version is hamstrung so you need to get the resource kit util ftdisk and then lookup the www.sysinternals.com website to get it working.

ruprect

thanks for all the advice guys. the computer is a dumb terminal which reads and outputs info from a remote server and inputs it into a sheet metal machine. therefore the info on the pc will not be changing at all and so wont need daily backing up. if the pc goes down then production comes to a halt so it is essential that it is up and running immediately. i would prefer just the tower unit minus monitor keyboard and mouse. so when it packs in i can install it immediately and fix the broken one in my own time. the room it is in gets very hot at times and the power can be disrupted at times too. i will get a UPS too.

Capt'n Midnight- do i just stick a new HD on the cd IDE cable and set it to slave and boot up and do the XCOPY routine?. then i can stick this new HD in another tower, connect my old mouse and monitor and confirm new hardware as required. would i have to mess around with at all registries this way? i dont think i do since i am not restoring just replacing right?

thanks again

jabaroon

A cheaper option might be Norton Ghost?...

Backup you entire PC onto one (or more) CD's. When (if) the PC goes down, the ghost CD will self boot and recreate the PC in the exact same state as you left it!

If you need total redundancy, you would need to have a second PC ready to go.

Also, there is no need to have the PC in question right beside the machinary. Its obviously risky (am guessing). You might consider investing in a LongView or a Serial Server (assuming connection to machine is through serial port).

The absolute dog's bo**ox solution (IMHO) is to use VMWare on a decent spec PC (with virtual 95 running), long view'd to the workstation. Monitor, KB and mouse are at workstation, but tower is as far away as you want. Running a VMWare image that you can backup as often as you need and will boot immediatley on any PC (regardless of spec)....should you ever need to !!

If you need more details, let me know (I have done stuff like this before for similar situations).

Jab