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3 tips for disaster recovery: Backup, backup, backup

ghostly apparition

Resident gadget guru and reviewer for The Times Jim Hatley shares some invaluable advice on disaster recovery for freelancers. If you have a home office and don’t have an IT helpdesk…

Who you gonna call?

If your entire operating system went belly-up on the first day of an important contract, how would you deal with it? Apologise, insert your Windows XP disc and begin a complete re-installation that is likely to set you back 3 hours? Or, suggest a quick team meeting while your system completely reinstalls itself in about 15 minutes? Say hello to Norton Ghost.

Norton Ghost, now in its 14th version, has been the backup and disaster recovery tool of choice for IT professionals since its original release in 1997. And yet, it’s still relatively unknown and unused.

Read on for some advice on how the freelancer and homeworker can benefit from backup and recovery using Ghost.

So how does it work? Well, quite simply, Ghost takes a snapshot of every single bit of data on the hard drive and saves the whole lot as a single file in a nice, safe location elsewhere in the machine. Then, if the system becomes unstable, simply boot into the included recovery environment and restore the system to the exact state that it was when the snapshot was taken. Pure magic.

There are a number of advantages to having an easily accessible, perfect backup. For instance; you want to try a bit of software out but don’t want to worry about residue clogging up the registry when you un-install it? No problem, just wipe the system clean when you’re done. Do you want to give your computer a complete security clean-out every week? Easy!

Ghost is pretty much the most essential piece of software in my toolkit; quite simply, it may revolutionise the way that you think about your entire system. Given the amount that you can do with Ghost, I can’t hope to cover its entire functionality here. What I can do, however, is give you a quick introduction that will enable you to set up a near-bulletproof computer system, and as such avoid any embarrassing computer catastrophes.

Protect your income

From here on in it gets a little technical, but get through this and you can kiss a huge number of your computer worries goodbye.

So, let’s start at the beginning. Firstly, you will need to re-install your OS (remembering, of course, to backup any personal data first). Don’t worry, it’s the last time you’ll ever need to do a complete system install on the machine in question. During a Windows installation you are given the opportunity to set up partitions. Create a partition that is roughly what your total system installation will occupy, with a little extra for headroom. I use Adobe CS and a few heavyweight 3D programs, so my full installation comes to about 15Gb. I feel comfortable with 5Gb of headroom, so as a result my system partition is set 20Gb.

If this is all going over your head a little then relax, take a deep breath and call that friend of yours who doesn’t see a whole lot of sunlight for some friendly words of advice.

Ok, Windows has finished installing. Allow it to perform updates, or kick-start the process by opening Internet Explorer and selecting ‘Windows Update’ from the tools menu. This ensures that your system is as secure as possible. Next up, get all your system’s drivers loaded, and check everything is running smoothly. Feel free to customise your Windows environment at this point. Then, load all the software applications that you need, and configure them to your tastes.

At this point, you should have something close to a perfect system. Now, to capture the moment for all time.

Minimise interruptions

Install Norton Ghost, and take a look around it. There are a lot of options on offer, but what you want to do is select ‘manage backups’ then define a new backup. Ghost will walk you through a series of options regarding your backup, and you need to choose the following: The drive to backup should be your system drive, The backup type should be an independent recovery point and the location should be on a different drive to the system you are backing up. Then, go ahead and run the backup you just defined. This is the process that safeguards your system for good.

Once the backup is complete you are done! Now, whenever you feel the need to freshen up your system, just pop the recovery disc in and reboot. Select the backup you created and Ghost rewrites your system back to its perfect state.

And that’s it. You are now safeguarded against many of the perils that face those who depend on their computer for their livelihood. I cannot tell you how many times Norton Ghost has saved my bacon when the heat has been on, or how many hours, if not days of my life it has rescued by saving me from having to reinstall and configure my system from scratch whenever it’s getting a little buggy.

One final note: This method wipes the entire system drive, which Windows, in its infinite wisdom, sets as the default location for files on the desktop and the My Documents folder. As such, I advise that you keep all personal documents in folders on another partition, shortcuts to which you can leave on the desktop if you wish. There is a clever way round this slight inconvenience, and I will be going into detail on that issue next week.

Until then, enjoy your new-found security and peace of mind.