Backing up your MAME system?

[Craig Puckett]

Just a general question. I realize that eveyone is speaking of building up MAME systems, but has anyone addressed the issue of backing up ALL of your information...in case your system takes a dirt nap any time soon?

To back up ALL of the MAME information (close to 5gb in my case), I could easily copy portion-by-portion to a CD-RW, but I would rather do it in one process and just switch CDs when needed.

Does anyone know of, or have their favorite method of backing up their MAME systems?

Craig - Atlnata, Ga.

[SteveJ34]

Just a general question. I realize that eveyone is speaking of building up MAME systems, but has anyone addressed the issue of backing up ALL of your information...in case your system takes a dirt nap any time soon?

To back up ALL of the MAME information (close to 5gb in my case), I could easily copy portion-by-portion to a CD-RW, but I would rather do it in one process and just switch CDs when needed.

Does anyone know of, or have their favorite method of backing up their MAME systems?

Craig - Atlnata, Ga.

My approach was to use an EPOX motherboard with an onboard IDE RAID with a second hard drive.

I have a copy of all games on CDR but after spending the time to get my system setup the way I like it, the money and time spent to build my cab, and the cost of the computer that is dedicated to this box....a few extra $ for a second hard drive as constant backup seemed insignificant.

A Fasttrak 66 can be found second hand on Ebay for cheap if you do not wish to invest in a different motherboard with onboard raid.

Steve

[slug54]

I have a spare 20gb Hard drive , so what I do is plug in the drive and run powerquests Drive Image software.
This makes an exact image of my hard drive. I then dis-connect the drive and store it inside my cab. I also back up some other data to my network drive just so I can get at it easy. The drive Image only takes about 6 minutes to complete. After all the hours I've got into configuring this baby ,NO Way I'm re- loadin it from scratch!  
                           Slug54

[SirPoonga]

Get a drive backup util.  NTI makes a util for cd burners.

[Skeleton]

I back up my MAME system with Norton Ghost. I set up my HD with a 1Gig boot partition. This is plenty for Win98SE, all the frontends, and all the emulators. The reason I made it a 1Gig partition is so that when you make a Ghost image it will easily fit on one CD-R. I put the ROMS on a different partition. I already have all the ROMS on CD-R so I could just recopy these if I needed to.

[ddebuss]

I use two methods for backup.

I have multiple control panels and a small cab.  None of my mame stuff sits on the game machines, it's all on a server (360GB of space) protected by raid.  If a drive goes bad on the server, it all keeps working, simply replace the drive and it rebuilds.

Just in case I also have what's called a "mobile rack" on one of my systems.  It's a little hard drive enclosure thing that can be removed and installed into a system without cracking the case.  You can buy several (from $8 each good ones are about $20) and have multiple drives to swap in and out.  I'm only using it for my data, but you could easily do the same with the OS drive.  For example, enclosure 1 is the work drive, tray 2 is the wife's drive, and tray 3 is the mame drive.  You can do a lot of different things with a single system using these racks.

Occasionally I put an extra drive in, copy all the mame stuff (and other important stuff) to the drive, remove it from the sytem, and ship it to my parents.  That way if I have a fire or something else horrible happens, I don't loose all of my data as well.  I always recommend an offsite backup if possible.

[Lilwolf]

if you are running windows....

DONT BACKUP YOUR ENTIRE SYSTEM!!!!!

Everyone who has worked on a windows system for some time should know that you are required to reinstall your OS every 6 months to a year!  MANDITORY!  If you don't, it will crash in ways that will require you to.

If you backup your system, when you restore it, it will have the same time to failure as the system right before you restored it (must be stored in your cmos or something)...

What you want to do... backup your entire mame rom set.  Your configs used.  Your batch files.  Your drivers you used.  Your encoder stuff.  Ect...

Then when your windows system dies  (could the minutes) you will then want to reinstall Windows from scratch, then add the additional files.

This has been a public service message from the good people at the Linux for president councel.

[SirPoonga]

if you are running windows....

DONT BACKUP YOUR ENTIRE SYSTEM!!!!!

Hmmm, guess you haven't heard of ghost huh?
Just ghost a drive right after you install windows and all your important software.

[x-wing]

..it handles ext2 too!

Don't be so excited, ext2 sucks... move to ext3.  A journaling file system is far superior.  No more "wondering" in case of an accidental power loss or shutdown.

[SirPoonga]

Don't be so excited, ext2 sucks... move to ext3.

[x-wing]

first off, what file system one uses isn;t the point of this thread:)

Oh, I thought this thread was about data management and integrity, in which my advice to use an ext3 fs would be perfectly valid.  Sorry if I read into it too much.  

Hmm, ext3 wasn;t really around then.  jfs was though:)

No kidding?  Since you mentioned an ext fs, I just thought I would mention one worth using.  

[SirPoonga]

No kidding?

[Howard_Casto]

My advice, don't backup, just partiton wisely.  Sp is right in that ghost makes a snapshot in time of your system and does restore it EXACTLY as it was when you made the image in no time at all.  BUT, windows and emulation are both evolving entities.  Unless you want to do a mandatory bi-weekly backup (which is annoying and time-consuming.)  your ghost image is going to be out of date and you'll still have to add/tweak things once you get it setup.  That is unless your one of those guys who doesn't upgrade your emus/roms as they become available.  (Shame on you for being behind the times. )

What I do is as suggested above.  I make a windows partition (10 gig for me as I need space for development tools and plugins)  and I put ONLY windows on it. I use tweak ui to re-route the program files folder, my music, my pictures, my documents everything but the registry (which is what usually screws up when windows dies anyway.) on another seperate harddrive.  When windows fails (lilwolf was right)  I just pop in the windows cd format the windows partition and re-install.  Once installation is complete i pop open tweak ui, re-route all of my folders and re-boot.  Presto, my setup is exactly as I left it and I have a fresh, clean registry to boot.  Of couse a few of the traditional apps might need to be re-installed, but not for mamecab use as all emulators bypass the registry.  (thank god)

Btw I can't stress enough the robustness of windows xp.  Right now I'm typing to you on a FAILING  harddrive.  Literally, my windows harddrive is biting the big one as we speak, but good-ole xp is able to repair itself upon bootup if I leave the cd in the drive.  You've gotta love that.  In 98 I wouldn't be able to type to you right now.  Luckily my new harddrive should be in any day now.  And all of my settings and programs are safely tucked away on my other hd thanks to planning ahead.  

[x-wing]

Does ghost support it?

No clue, I've never used ghost.  The reason is, I wouldn't use a Windows app to backup my linux box anyway....  

Check out http://freshmeat.net, you will find plenty of backup and recovery utilities for ext3.  Everything from bootable repair cd's to total system backups.

[Howard_Casto]

No clue, I've never used ghost.

[Trenchbroom]

My cabinet computer's registry is unmolested after initial install.   In other words I've loaded Win98 minimal install, Mame, roms and other goodies and that is it.

Since nothing else will be installed, no internet usage, etc. on this computer, will Windows still take a BSOD kill shot to the back of the head in 6 mos. to a year or will it soldier on indefinitely like a real OS?

[Howard_Casto]

My cabinet computer's registry is unmolested after initial install.

[Trenchbroom]

If it weren't such a resource hog it would be the perfect os.

[Howard_Casto]

Exactly why Win98 is in my Celeron 400 MAME box instead of XP.

[StephenH]

Some Ideas:

CD-R
CD-RW
DVD-RAM, RW
Tape
File share to a Raid or another HD Via Network

[Tiger-Heli]

What I do is as suggested above.

[SirPoonga]

No clue, I've never used ghost.

[Tiger-Heli]

Ok, here's my question in simpler format:

I saw how to redirect everything to D: in Tweak UI.

Let's say I install only Windows to C:  I set Tweak UI up to reference everything to D:  I install Word to D:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Word.

I run Ghost on the C: drive.  Now Window dies and I reformat C and restore from the Ghost Image.  Do I have to tell Windows to look on D for the menu folders?  Will Word work immediately (since it's files on D:\ weren't changed?, or do I need to reinstall it)?

[Howard_Casto]

Ok finally a question I know something about (I spent the better part of 4 years doing nothing but backup and restoring the University's pcs)  

What you want to do is ghost only the partition and not the entire drive.  All ghost does is copy byte by btye contents of a drive, it's doesn't give a rat's arse what's on it.  So what you do is install windows from scratch, setup all of these folders, ect how you want them, and then ghost immediately, before windoze screws up.  Then when windoze fails you simply upload the partition image and verythign is EXACTLY how you left it when you made the image but all of your extras files and programs are on the other partiton.  Does this mean that the programs are fine?  NO only those programs you had installed when you made the image are restored, the others are there, but if they had windoze dependancies they will be lost, unless the registry is stored on the other partition, in which case you are as good as gold.  

I hope that makes some sense, because it's hard for me to explain things that I am really familiar with.  

[SirPoonga]

I hope that makes some sense, because it's hard for me to explain things that I am really familiar with.  

actually, you hit it perfectly.

Think of ghost as this, an exact snapshot of the partition or drive (whatever you made an image of) at that time you made the image.
then you wonder why it makes a difference what format the drive is, why ghost only handles certain file formats.  Well, the answer to that involves knowing how hard drives work, NOT just IDE but also SCSI.  ghost was made to support as much as possible.  The way different buses, different file formats handle MBR, and other variables makes it very hard to copy a partition byte for byte as a partition may not cover an entire drive.  
You could do a byte for byte copy of an entire drive, but you could only restore it to that drive.  In actuallity every hard drive is slightly different.  due to manufacturer defects there are some bad sections on an HD, those are predetermined and programmed into the HD before it is shipped.  Those small differences are the main reason you don't find a true byte for byte hard drive copy software.  So the best thing to do is copy partitions.  Due to factors I mentioned above you need to know the format of that partition.  If you did a true byte for byte from the physical hd instead of the formatting you would be recording the bad sections too so you would intruduce that bad section on another hd if you restore the image.  So you use byte for byte of the formatting of the drive because the formatting of the drive goes around the bad sections.  That's the jist of it, I could get more technical about it, but I think I already have been

I believve what I said is true, but it's been awhile since I took my computer hardware class.

[Howard_Casto]

yeah what you said is true, I just wanted to keep it simple cause it's a wierd process.  Symantec does some goofy things to ease the pain of harddrive problems, but it's not for the timid and requiers a buttload of knowledge of the program.   (Which I don't have btw)    Anyway, ghost is your friend but only if you use it often or setup the registry elsewhere.   Else you will be re-installing all of the programs you installed since you took the last image.  

[Lilwolf]

btw, troubles with ghost.

Only good for a few uses.  You loose all your data (and all updated roms for intstance)

If you update your ghost often, then it takes with it all your crap that !@#!@ing up your system.  

Getting your system up to a base install is VERY easy.  Takes a few hours with configuration.  This is all that ghost saves you (and it takes a huge chunk of space).

There are programs that will sync directories only from two drives, where you can specify the locations or files.  This would work for mame (dont' backup mame itself, just your artwork, roms, cabinets, snap directories ect.   And where you save all your personal files (.doc ect).  I also backup my drivers directory so I always have the latest files (since it can be hard to get on the internet when you cant find your network card drivers)

So when your system dies... you get it back up to base, and copy all the files you need over.  

Windows is MUCH MORE stable after a reinstall if it hasn't happened in 6 months.  Really...

Doing more then this is probably wasting more time then to recreate your drive...

[Howard_Casto]

btw, troubles with ghost.

Only good for a few uses.  You loose all your data (and all updated roms for intstance)

If you update your ghost often, then it takes with it all your crap that !@#!@ing up your system.  

Getting your system up to a base install is VERY easy.  Takes a few hours with configuration.  This is all that ghost saves you (and it takes a huge chunk of space).

There are programs that will sync directories only from two drives, where you can specify the locations or files.  This would work for mame (dont' backup mame itself, just your artwork, roms, cabinets, snap directories ect.   And where you save all your personal files (.doc ect).  I also backup my drivers directory so I always have the latest files (since it can be hard to get on the internet when you cant find your network card drivers)

So when your system dies... you get it back up to base, and copy all the files you need over.  

Windows is MUCH MORE stable after a reinstall if it hasn't happened in 6 months.  Really...

Doing more then this is probably wasting more time then to recreate your drive...

Sorry man but I've got to disagree on every single point.

 Ghost is useless if you only have one harddrive partition.  If you only have one harddrive partition then you know nothing about windows so you have other problems.  You keep data on one partition, programs on another, and windoze on the third.  This way you can backup what is most important to you seperately from all of the other junk on your computer.

If you update ghost very often and don't keep the previous image then you may be in trouble, but not if you keep backups.  Also you keep three running ghost images for each of your partitons....  one of windoze with drivers and crucial programs on it that you NEVER touch. You make another with your program files and windows registry (moved to the program files partiton via tweak ui)  which you update whenever you add any major programs and since their registry entries are on the same drive 90% of the time the programs will still run even if you ve uploaded your base windoze image.  And a third that has files and ONLY files and non resigtering programs.  You back this one up a LOT.  

Also getting back to base is easy on a simple system but not on the average power user's system.  Prior to when I used smarter partitioning methods it took me an average of 3 days to get all of my junk back up to specs after a major re-install.  Why?  Well first off all of my drivers have to be re-installed.  If you use the drivers on the windoze cd or on the disc that came with the cards then that is half of your problems.  Video card and sound card drivers are updated about every 3 months.  So when your system goes down the best bet is to get on the net and upgrade your drivers while your at it.  Then you have to deal with printers, scanners, that goofy game controller that never works, ect. That step usually took me the better part of 8 hours.    Next is programs.....   Now mame and non registering programs are easy, but the others aren't.....  Almost every program I use has various ui settings and upgarade patches and such and I want my program associations to be right, so It takes me days to get this in line.  

(continued on next long post  )

[Howard_Casto]

Those drive backup programs you mentioned quite frankly, suck.  Why?  Well granted they do a great job of backing stuff up but they use next to no compression and thus you need to save half of your storage space for backups.  

Which brings me to my final point....  It sounds like you aren't too familiar with how ghost works so let me explain (i thought i did)  When you put a back up image back on your computer it is BETTER than formatting the drive.  Why?  Because it is just as stable as the instant in time at which you made the image and you don't have to set crap back up.  If you keep your windoze image from the very day you formatted the partition and installed a fresh copy of windows then that's how it's going to be every time you use that image.  Also I don't know how many people out there are familiar with ghost but it takes on average about 30 secs to 5 minutes to restore a drive.  A new install with all of your programs in 5 minutes.  How can you say that it's faster to manually install the programs?

Secondly a ghost backup image takes up next to no storage space realitively speaking.  If made correctly it is HIGHLY compressed.  How compressed is it?  (insert bad joke here)  It's so compressed that we managed to backup upwards of 40 to 60 computers on a modest 10 gig harddrive and still have space to spare.  Now granted these weren't the 80 gig monsters that we have today (they were about 10 gig drives)  but if we could backup 40 then surely a person could spare enough space to backup one monster drive.  

Oh and for the record there are different companys that make a product called "ghost"  although they are all similar the symantec corporate edition is the only one I would reccomend.  

I'm not disagreeing with your suggestion, In fact I partially agree,  I just don't want people to have any mis-conceptions about ghost.  It's quite frankly the best tool ever developed for i.t. professionals and it also comes in handy at home if your willing to invest the time in the initial setup.  

In reality you shouldn't need to backup your arcade pc (only if it's a dedicated pc)  at all.  Your roms should be on a seperate partition, you shouldn't have any registering programs installed so they can be kept with the roms, and as all you should be doing is running the same programs over and over (this is assuming you aren't going to be installing/uninstalling a bunch of programs that effect the registry)  the os won't fail for a good, long, time, and when it does it's probably time to upgrade the os as a new one will be out.    

So save a harddrive failure, your roms will be safe if they are on a files only partition and that's the only thing that's hard to replace.  



Personally I don't use ghost or ANY backup method other than partitioning my files wisely.  Instead of running my pc until it crashes I plan on re-installing the os about once a year.  I also upgrade my harddrives about every 3 years (the average harddrive lifespan is about 5 years) and rotate my less critical files onto the older hardrive(s).  

With that being said, I have been running xp for quite a while though, and so far I haven't needed to re-install.  I think the real key to proper backup is to install xp, it doesn't crash.  

[Smittydc]

If you've got the cash, I recommend either a RAID setup; or just for tough to replace data files, a DVD writer.

Neither are really worth the expense for an older MAME-dedicated machine, but something to keep in mind for future computers.  

Also, while doing cost/benefit realize you can replace most Roms through Tombstone for ~$20.

[BASSOFeeSH]

Is 1Gig really big enough for a WinXP partition?

[SirPoonga]

btw, troubles with ghost.

Only good for a few uses.  You loose all your data (and all updated roms for intstance)

If you update your ghost often, then it takes with it all your crap that !@#!@ing up your system.  

Getting your system up to a base install is VERY easy.  Takes a few hours with configuration.  This is all that ghost saves you (and it takes a huge chunk of space).

Here's what I do with ghost.  One, the newer versions of ghost support writing to cd drives.  Your arguement about ghost image taking up alot of space is a mute point then.  1) you write your backup to CD, 2) backing up your systemtakes space anyway.

Here's what I suggest you do if you want data security.  It will involve multiple partitions.  Here's how I setup my computer.

partition 1) windows and main program install.  windows, office, visual studio, other programs I use daily that I couldn't imagine a computer without.  Then I ghost that partition.  That way I can always get a fresh windows install just by restoring that partition.

partition 2) data files.  Like word documents, resumes, checkbook info, other home office type stuff.  I also backup my registry to that partition

partition 3) games.

partition 4) programming projects

Now, I don't ghost partition 2 through 4 as there is no reason to ghost those.  I just make a cd copy every month of partition 2 and 4.  I will include saved games (maybe) from partition 3.

As for my mame stuff.  I burn all that to CDs.  As a new mame comes out I just remaster the final CD with the new stuff.

But as lilwolf says, reinstalling windows every 6 months is a good idea.  Hence I can save time with ghost since I just ghost partition 1 in 5 mnutes and I have a fresh install of windows with the prgrams I use daily.  Just need to reinstall games or just restore the registry info needed from the registry backup.  Remember, you just can't reinstall windows, you need too run windows update to to get the security updates and such.

Lilwolf is correct that in the consumer market ghost really just saves you time.  Instead of format c: then reinstalling windows which takes alot of time ghosting will take only 5-10 minutes and you get the same result.  Sometimes time is more important that space.  Frankly, I don't want to waste an entire saturday reinstalling windows and everything else important on my machine.  Within an hour I can reghost my computer and have a fresh computer that is productive.

If you setup your computer well you really don't need backup software, just a cdr drive.  

Hehe, my mame machine is quite different though.  I store the roms on my main machine and just map a network drive.  So I just have 1 partition on my mame machine with one ghost image.  All the data that machine uses is not on that machine.  It will probably not get ghosted that often as it doesn't change that often.

Hehe, as smitty pointed out, if happen to have a system that supports raid no backup software needed.  Setting up a redundant system is cool.  If oyu get something that supports hot swappable drives is even cooler!

[Tiger-Heli]

Is 1Gig really big enough for a WinXP partition?

Assume this was to me (I mentioned 1Gig).  I am using Win'98, not XP.

[Lilwolf]

Howard, you missed my point.  Ghost sucks (ima) because it does exactly what you said.  

windows needs to be reset from scratch.  Ghost is only as stable as the point you saved it.  And my point is windows is constantly going downhill until the point you need to reinstall it.

It has all the extra crap you don't really want.  The extra crap that stays behind when you uninstall something.  The registry 10mg+.  The corrupted files.  All viruses..

IE the trouble with it is exactly what you are says is the positives.  

It would be good if you did a fresh install... then install your programs... then do it... but then you are missing all your data files created from that point on.

Haven't you all noticed that windows installs seem to go downhill???  They start having problems more and more often untill you finally just reinstall?  They hardly ever go from working great to dead without hardware problems or user error.  

[Tiger-Heli]

Ghost is useless if you only have one harddrive partition.  If you only have one harddrive partition then you know nothing about windows so you have other problems.  You keep data on one partition, programs on another, and windoze on the third.  This way you can backup what is most important to you seperately from all of the other junk on your computer.

First off, I agree with Howard on the usefullness of Ghost.  Reloading Windows is pretty simple, but updating all the tweaks and settings and customizations and reloading all the programs takes forever and that's where a ghost of the C:drive will be helpful.  I like the suggestion of C:Windows, D:\Programs, etc.  Personally, I don't plan to have E:\data as I can just mark these directories from the D:drive and back them up to the CD-recorder.

I also like the suggestion of moving the Start Menu files to the D:\ partition, as this way I can blow away the C:\Windows partition and still know what WAS installed on the PC.

One thing I am not sure I agree with (but this is new to me) is putting the registry on the D:\ partition.  It has been my experience that the registry is what usually causes me problems, so I would just as soon have it replaced when I re-image my C:\ partition.  Or am I missing something?

What I propose to do is install Windoze to C: with all drivers, tweaks, and with all updates.  Then ghost the C:\partition.  Then, install all my programs to D:, and then Ghost my C:\ partition with all programs installed.

Then if I really wanted to stay on the safe side, if I found I new program to add, I could reinstall Windows from the previous ghost image, add the new program, and ghost C:\ again.

The primary problem is if I decided to stop using a program or if I updated some hardware.  It's much cleaner to add this to a fresh install rather than removing the existing items and installing new, but I don't see a way to avoid this easily.

Comments?

[Silverwind]

if you are running windows....

DONT BACKUP YOUR ENTIRE SYSTEM!!!!!

Hmmm, guess you haven't heard of ghost huh?
Just ghost a drive right after you install windows and all your important software.

[Silverwind]

Ghost is excellent.. i've not used anything that can compare for a single system backup..

been using it for 5+ years in work environment on 100's of PC's..

[SirPoonga]

we use ghost extensively at work..

Hehe, do did I when I worked at IBM.  Network ghosted 40 test client machines.  Had different images for different tests we would run.

[mrhowell]

If you just want a backup of your mame machine, buy another HD and use Ghost to image the entire HD.  For those people that use Ghost at work and image many different types of computers (Dell GX1, GX100, GX150, etc), I use a program called Power Menu.  It is great for making a Ghost boot diskette.  Our diskette has about 22 menu items on it with about 400k left over.  BTW, I work in a K-12 environment and most teachers and office staff don't know the term "backup".  I ask the users, " Is it important?"  I hear "Yes!"  "Is it backed up?" I hear "No!"  I say "It wasn't important then".  

[Howard_Casto]

One thing I am not sure I agree with (but this is new to me) is putting the registry on the D:\ partition.  It has been my experience that the registry is what usually causes me problems, so I would just as soon have it replaced when I re-image my C:\ partition.  Or am I missing something?

Well ya gotta remember, I eat registrys for breakfast so I can usually manually fix invalid entries unless it gets totally hosed (with never happens in xp)

But remember where I said to move the registry using tweakui after you've made your clean install.  Well when you do that  what it actually does is copy the registry to d:  not move it and point to it.  I usually manually make yet another copy of the registry after this and leave this untainted copy on the windoze partition.  Then if by some chance the registry starts giving you hell you can run tweakui in safe mode and return back to the original registry on c:  This particular step is rather unconventional, but it's worked well for me in the past.  

[Chris]

My cabinet is running DOS, so I don't have to worry about OS crashing or registry corruption.  I am, however, worried about hard disk failure.  My company just junked a perfectly good 5 GB tape backup drive, and I just located its DOS software, so I'm going to install that and just back up the drives to tape.  Once I get a spare 4 GB hard disk, I'll probably get rid of the tape backup and just ghost onto the spare periodically.

--Chris