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| Backing up Arcade Hard Drives |
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| DeLuSioNal29:
--- Quote from: BobA on September 09, 2012, 10:38:15 am ---I would use a backup program that creates an exact image of your hard drive. This would save all settings and all work you have put into getting the emulators to function properly. You can create an exact image on a larger hard drive and the extra space will be added to the drive as useable disk space. --- End quote --- Ouch! Sore subject for me! I actually did this many times (cloning) and it works great. However, the last time I did it, I used the same exact drive brand/model and size for the back-up. You can guess what I accidentally did when trying to clone it. My "Ultra Arcade" is dead... for now, until I find time to put into re-doing everything. My advice is to get a different sized hard drive for your backup. NEVER the same size. However, that said: When I did back it up successfully it was very handy! I once had my arcade hard drive die on me on the day of my Superbowl party and all I did was grab the spare, swap it out and I was back up within minutes. I then cloned it again the next day and put the new clone on a shelf somewhere. P.S. - No need to buy Acronis. I use the FREE bootable CD-Roms that come with hard drives to clone them. (Max Blast, Seagate Tools, Western Digital , etc) They work great. If your HDD didn't come with one, simply download the ISO free from your hard drive manufacturer. DeLuSioNaL29 |
| mgb:
This is a good subject. its a topic I have thought much about but for some dumb reason, I haven't fully understood. When talking about Acronis, I assumeticular product from them that you all are referring to is True Image. I'm a little confused about why different size drives. And I've also heard that when you buy a western digital hard drive, it comes with a version of acronis but for recovering the image, it must be used on another western digital hd? My Mame cab is real easy to back up. I have one hard drive for the os and system files and then another hard drive with mame and mala on it plus a few utilities such as ledblinky and mame res tool so I can just copy the files and all form there especially because mame is the only emulator running on it. The computer I'm currently building will have much more with multiple emulators, Hyperspin and home theater stuff, so I plan on doing some good backing up on that. |
| Diet_Pepsi:
For backups I have another PC running Windows Home Server. I am pretty handy when it comes to installing operating systems, so I don't back that stuff up -- I just use WHS to backup my emulator configurations and roms (and pictures of my kids). |
| alfonzotan:
Acronis is excellent for Windows backups. I have an onboard backup of my cab's OS X boot partitions via Carbon Copy Cloner on a separate drive. Game data is on a different partition that can be accessed by either OS X or Windows, and I keep an external backup of game ROMs. |
| HaRuMaN:
--- Quote from: mgb on September 10, 2012, 12:00:31 am ---I'm a little confused about why different size drives. --- End quote --- So you don't get mixed up and clone the empty drive (spare) over top of the source drive (original). |
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