Vista - Vista backup best practice?

I have been using Vista backup for a year and have 12 dvds from it. Can any
of these be tossed? Do I have to manually do a full backup every so often?
Thank you

Tony,

There are several type of backups:

* The backup of the operating system when you get a new PC (so you can reload)
* Complete PC backup – This is a disk image of he PC so in case of a disaster you can recover easily
* Data Files – What files you save depends on how you set it up.

As far as throwing them away! Why don't you want to protect against a data loss?

For some comments on Vista image backup see San Diego CIO - Business Edition

Also see my comments on data backup
Stu

You can safely toss all but the last backup.

You can schedule Vista to automatically backup. Frequency would depend on
how often you add or edit whatever.

"Tony Linguini" <tonysoprano@xxxxxx> wrote in message
news:uLjFh0WUIHA.5980@xxxxxx

HI

I would sya that there is two process involve from what i read of your
comment..

Backup Issue

Archive issue

It is very important that you make the difference between those two. Most of
the poeple mix the two, both have different point of view for the way we
handel the information.

If you talk about twele DVD i assume you are talking about backup. This
action is to recover from a crash of the hardware. So their is no need to to
keep them. Only the most recent is essential.

On the other hand if you want to keep information on the long run we talk
Archive, this mean we want to save information for the long run.

If we whant to go depther their is a third process betwwen those two that is
Storage. Meaning that it is intent to give acess ( live acess) over a certain
period of time (ex 3 month, 6 month one year etc...) Once the time delay is
pass file/information is store in a place where if informatin is not acess
anymore it will be archive.

Live acess equal usually a hard drive direcly connet to the network that you
can acess easily.

The contrary of that will be offline acess that could be on cd/dvd/tape or a
in betwwen stage that will be USB hard drive not connect to the network. So
on a per base usage we connect harddrive to gain acess to information but
eventually information on that USB drive will be transfert fo a longterm
storage to another media that is usually DVD.


P.S. Do not forget to rewrite your dvd one every two to five year to keep
the integrety of the information on the dvd. (depending of the importance of
the data this ould be done evry 10 year also). This process is call
refreshing archive.


Little more that what was ask but i thing this could be a nice to take a
peak at the process..

Here a brief resume of the lifecycle data. Time for each stage of the life
cycle will vary for each individual and organisation.

creation of the data----> acess on a period of time to work with data--->
backup data ( on one day, week or monthly basis)---->store data (usually we
look at the legal time we must keep data like credit card bill we keep it one
or two year)---->archive data (long periode of time)---->Delete the data (
this part involve some sentimental attachement )

Be very careful if you only keep one backup copy. If you buy crap media the chance that the backup is corrupted can be high and some media with degrade in a year or less.

If your data is important use quality media like Verbatim or Taiyo Yuden or use both.

I don't trust backing up directly to DVD to many chances of problems later on, I use Acronus and store a extra copy on a USB hard drive.

Just something to think about.