What do you use for complete backup's?

[gatordad]

After finally getting my cab playable, I have spent alot of time to setting up, tweaking, loading, downloading, etc..........

I would hate to lose any of it.

What are the best / easiest and most popular backup solutions for os and everything else?

[protokatie]

What are the best / easiest and most popular backup solutions for os and everything else?

Really depends on what OS you are using. As for the Mame stuff, in my cab, I just plan on having a DVD R with the whole directory (MAME, mala, etc) stored on it, as well as have a backup on my laptop (This is a good idea for me since I will be using my MAMEbox as my home's file server, so I will be able to test stuff out on my laptop and then copy the changes to the MAMEbox over the wifi)

[DaveMMR]

The files for my cabinet are actually mirrored on my main computer's drive.  This is so I can make and test changes on my main computer and just copy those changes to a USB memory stick and "sneakernet" it over to the cab.  It just happens to also be a handy backup as well.

I also plan on copying all the files to a stack of DVD-Rs.

[kegger]

Another option is to use a second drive. The big drives are fairly cheap now and usually you can download software from the manufacturer  to clone the drive.

That will give you a quick change out in case of a drive failure and the operating system will be backed up too.

[leapinlew]

Another option is to use a second drive. The big drives are fairly cheap now and usually you can download software from the manufacturer  to clone the drive.

That will give you a quick change out in case of a drive failure and the operating system will be backed up too.

I use this method on any of my cabinets that use more roms than would fit on a single disc.

My setup for vertical games that use 1 button fits on a small USB stick. Copy over the mame and mala directory to the C drive and it's done.

[HairyDVD]

One thing you could do is partition a drive and use one of the secondary partitions to hold backup info.  The proplem with that is if the drive fails you lose everything.

Another alternative is to use a program like norton ghost and create an image of the hard drive onto dvd-r.  It compacts the image as it creates and burns - and in the case of a mishap, you just boot from the dvd and it resets the info on the harddrive in about 15-20mins.

All methods have plus and minus points - pick the one which is best for you.  You may want to bear in mind if you will be changing setups and roms etc and how up to date the backup will be.

[FhM]

I would do a combination of some of the suggestions above. I would get my cabinet how I wanted it then I would take an image using ghost or clonezilla or similar. I would put this on an exernal hard drive. I would then have a program that would look at the Mame folder and any other folders that were to do with roms and setup etc and mirror this to the external hard drive. Once the inital sync had been done it only saves the changes. I would have this run on startup and or shutdown. The time it would take would be minimal after the first time.
This way you could add a load of roms to your external hd from another computer and when you boot your cab it would copy them over.
My weapon of choice for this would be robocopy from the microsoft resource kit. You can also get a GUI version as well.
This would mean an upto date backup and fast recovery once a dead HD had been replaced.

[sac01]

A couple of months ago I was messing around inside my cab and grounded out the circuit board on the 120gig HD in my cab...everything would have been lost (all my mame roms, tones of mp3's for the juke, and every console rom) not to mention all the configuration files, the daphne stuff, etc.... I felt sick...Sooooo I searched around on the web and found a seller on ebay that sells exact replacement circuit boards for all different HD models.  I got lucky enough to find one with the same revision and firmware numbers and was able to save everything.  This xmas I got a 500 gig HD and ghosted everything over to that and removed the 120gig to keep as a backup...

  Moral to my story:  If you've had your cab for years and put tons of work into collecting everything on it and getting it just the way you want, it's well worth the investment in another HD to back it all up.  Think of how much your time is worth if you billed yourself for all the work.

[leapinlew]

A couple of months ago I was messing around inside my cab and grounded out the circuit board on the 120gig HD in my cab...everything would have been lost (all my mame roms, tones of mp3's for the juke, and every console rom) not to mention all the configuration files, the daphne stuff, etc.... I felt sick...Sooooo I searched around on the web and found a seller on ebay that sells exact replacement circuit boards for all different HD models.  I got lucky enough to find one with the same revision and firmware numbers and was able to save everything.  This xmas I got a 500 gig HD and ghosted everything over to that and removed the 120gig to keep as a backup...

  Moral to my story:  If you've had your cab for years and put tons of work into collecting everything on it and getting it just the way you want, it's well worth the investment in another HD to back it all up.  Think of how much your time is worth if you billed yourself for all the work.

And this is why I keep my computers inside their cases whenever possible.

[unclet]

I use to use CD-Rs and DVD discs but that turned on to be a pain since I was always tweaking stuff and changing a little bit here and there and also adding things as well.

I know just mirror everything on my main computer.  Updating is a breeze now.  I simply configure anything new on my main computer and get it working perfectly, then copy everything over to my arcade computer and I am done. 

Changing stuff and then having to reburn discs all the time was crazy ... in my opinion.   I could never keep the discs up-to-date without going crazy and spending a lot of extra time. 

So, I would recommend you just get a spare drive and store everything on that.

[leapinlew]

I use to use CD-Rs and DVD discs but that turned on to be a pain since I was always tweaking stuff and changing a little bit here and there and also adding things as well.

I know just mirror everything on my main computer.  Updating is a breeze now.  I simply configure anything new on my main computer and get it working perfectly, then copy everything over to my arcade computer and I am done. 

Changing stuff and then having to reburn discs all the time was crazy ... in my opinion.   I could never keep the discs up-to-date without going crazy and spending a lot of extra time. 

So, I would recommend you just get a spare drive and store everything on that.

The advantage of the cd's is you have a version history you can revert to if a change you made had unexpected side effects you don't see initially. Especially games you infrequently play. I'm sure you don't test your new tweak on every game on your system?

[gourami]

I backup to a Computer with 500GB Storage on the network with a program called Acronis TrueImage. Its similar to Ghost, it takes an image of the drive, and then sends it to the networked backup computer.

[SavannahLion]

The advantage of the cd's is you have a version history you can revert to if a change you made had unexpected side effects you don't see initially. Especially games you infrequently play. I'm sure you don't test your new tweak on every game on your system?

If versioning is high on your criteria list and you're making lots of changes, it would be better to use CVS, Subversion or some other appropriate versioning tool. I used to do the CD/DVD method for versioning and it got really crazy after a while. At one point, I had a spindle of 50 CD's filled with backups for a particular project. When I caught myself fashioning a custom database to keep track of which CD had which versions, I opted for other solutions.

[leapinlew]

The advantage of the cd's is you have a version history you can revert to if a change you made had unexpected side effects you don't see initially. Especially games you infrequently play. I'm sure you don't test your new tweak on every game on your system?

If versioning is high on your criteria list and you're making lots of changes, it would be better to use CVS, Subversion or some other appropriate versioning tool. I used to do the CD/DVD method for versioning and it got really crazy after a while. At one point, I had a spindle of 50 CD's filled with backups for a particular project. When I caught myself fashioning a custom database to keep track of which CD had which versions, I opted for other solutions.

Seriously Savanna? We are talking about MAME here right? You're suggesting to put flat files, that your the only one using into Subversion? I mean, if the files fit on a CD - I don't see the issue with creating a disc when you've made enough changes to justify a backup. After enough history - you can start throwing away discs. If you're concerned about physical storage - just zip the folders up, date'em and move on.

Subversion is a lot of firepower for this simple task.

I really don't see the issue with dating a cd with a sharpie and moving forward. 

[zaphod]

I took a spare 80 that was gathering dust, used the manufacturer's software and cloned the partition, then disconnected both the power and the cable and left in the case.  In case primary dies, I can just plug in the backup and be good to go.  I don't update the setup (or mame version) so this works well for me.

The mamewah files are also backed up on the network.

[ChadTower]

Subversion is a lot of firepower for this simple task.

I am a Subversion admin where I work.  It is way more than what he needs here and represents a rather hellacious learning curve for someone who isn't going to be using it persistently.  All this guy has to do is use a Ghost backup or similar to make a second drive.  People seem to be worried about the ROMs... the ROMs are easily replaced.  It is the software, and all of the complex configurations and customizations, that are valuable. 

Either way, a full drive backup will accomplish everything he needs and is reasonable considering the overall cost of building a full cabinet.

[unclet]

leapinlew
I was referring to backing my cabinet installs which include about 30+ emulators and all the files which go with each one ...... not just Mame.

ChadTower
Once I get a verified set of Roms for all my emulators, it is a lot easier to simply store the complete setup somewhere in case something bad happens.   This way I can simply copy everything back over to "reinstall/reconfigure" everything .... mostly.   There are handful of steps I need to do when reinstalling everything after the copy has completed but I have this all this written down as well so I do not forget anything.

Yeah, you can regenerate you Rom files and it might be considered easy for some people, but the most painless way I know, once I have a verified set of ROMs to to simply store them away on a spare hard drive.

[SavannahLion]

The advantage of the cd's is you have a version history you can revert to if a change you made had unexpected side effects you don't see initially. Especially games you infrequently play. I'm sure you don't test your new tweak on every game on your system?

If versioning is high on your criteria list and you're making lots of changes, it would be better to use CVS, Subversion or some other appropriate versioning tool. I used to do the CD/DVD method for versioning and it got really crazy after a while. At one point, I had a spindle of 50 CD's filled with backups for a particular project. When I caught myself fashioning a custom database to keep track of which CD had which versions, I opted for other solutions.

Seriously Savanna? We are talking about MAME here right? You're suggesting to put flat files, that your the only one using into Subversion? I mean, if the files fit on a CD - I don't see the issue with creating a disc when you've made enough changes to justify a backup. After enough history - you can start throwing away discs. If you're concerned about physical storage - just zip the folders up, date'em and move on.

Subversion is a lot of firepower for this simple task.

I really don't see the issue with dating a cd with a sharpie and moving forward. 

That's why I qualified my statement with, "some other appropriate versioning tool." I agree that Subversion and CVS have some hellacious learning curves there. I've been ---smurfing--- with Subv for at least three years now and I still can't get some of the functions down. I'm reasonably certain there is a pseudo-versioning tool specific to this application, but I can't recall which one it is.

My point is, when you get into the habit of using discs as a means of keeping track of history, it's all too easy to loose track of what is what and where. I don't know about you, but even with the practice of discarding older dics, those things have a nasty tendency to collect. Spindles start growing like trees on the desk. Horizontal surfaces are covered in colorful plastic quilts. In our house, we have six operational CD/DVD burners all producing different discs and keeping a reign on all those discs they produce is a royal pain.

[ChadTower]

My point is, when you get into the habit of using discs as a means of keeping track of history, it's all too easy to loose track of what is what and where. I don't know about you, but even with the practice of discarding older dics, those things have a nasty tendency to collect. Spindles start growing like trees on the desk. Horizontal surfaces are covered in colorful plastic quilts. In our house, we have six operational CD/DVD burners all producing different discs and keeping a reign on all those discs they produce is a royal pain.

Versioned backups like that are a normal IT practice.  You keep 4 or 5 of them around... each time you take a new backup, you recycle the oldest of the group, ensuring that you always have the last 4-5 backups but don't have a massive storage problem as you've pointed out.

[SavannahLion]

Versioned backups like that are a normal IT practice.  You keep 4 or 5 of them around... each time you take a new backup, you recycle the oldest of the group, ensuring that you always have the last 4-5 backups but don't have a massive storage problem as you've pointed out.

I understand that. What I don't understand is is that supposed to be directed to me or to the general populous 

[TimmyB]

I am using mirrored drives, two hard drives that are kept identical by a RAID controller on the motherboard.  If you have a hardware failure of one drive you have a complete copy.  Only expense is the extra harddrive, assuming you have a motherboard with a built in controller.  Nice because it is fire and forget, don't have to flip CDs/DVDs, run backup jobs, etc.

For versioning I wam going to use Volume Shadow Copy which is built in to the Vista OS.  You could also try out Beyond Compare.  A GREAT utility program. You can use that to make snapshots of a folder. I also use it to sync ROMs, CHDs and other support files between my normal workstation and my arcade cabinet.  The latter is a nice feature since it only copies the files that have changed.

[ChadTower]

Both.  You're the one who said:

I don't know about you, but even with the practice of discarding older dics, those things have a nasty tendency to collect. Spindles start growing like trees on the desk. Horizontal surfaces are covered in colorful plastic quilts.

That doesn't happen when you reasonably follow accepted best practices.

[SavannahLion]

Both.  You're the one who said:

I don't know about you, but even with the practice of discarding older dics, those things have a nasty tendency to collect. Spindles start growing like trees on the desk. Horizontal surfaces are covered in colorful plastic quilts.

That doesn't happen when you reasonably follow accepted best practices.

Naturally. You do realize, however, that I have a girlfriend that I have to appease and a seven year old that I don't?

[BobA]

I use TrueImage and make a copy of my drive on another HD.   Costs very little to duplicate your drive now days and gives great piece of mind when you have alot of work invested.

[Havok]

I use Ghost and a second hard drive - save the image to the second drive, and that's it.