Msg: Re: Good cloning Vs. System Restore

Trying to catch up with the list and many other things, after being away for a week.

I've also done something like this, but hope it was comprehensive enough, considering how many 5.25" and 3.5" discs were around here. Most of the most important stuff was present on various HDDs, as well. And there were numerous Zip Drive cartridges, also backed up to CD. (The undoing of that format was its low storage capacity -- even by the time it got to the 750 Mb. version -- but the Bernoulli tech was very underrated for its durability.)

After you backup these materials, you really need some convenient, effective means of cataloging and doing searches through it. I have long used a feature in the ZTree file manager that can make such catalogs, even of all the files on a large HDD partition, which can then be keyword searched. ("Keyword" would include options like a date screen, for files later than a particular date.) You can search through a bunch of catalog files in one go. I'm assuming you could do this with some other file managers, like Total Commander. The method is not infallible, as it is still possible to miss something you are looking for, but it does the job most of the time.

Jordan

From: Kari Eveli
To: xywrite@xxxxxxxx
Sent: Saturday, December 5, 2015 5:04 AM
Subject: Re: Good cloning Vs. System Restore

Dear Paul,

Yes, actually I have. I few years back I made a CD of all software
sitting on fragile disks that might be of any use in the future. I still
have working a DOS machine upstairs with a combo floppy drive (5.25" and
3.5"), another machine died on my hands because the BIOS battery was
soldered onto the motherboard and I could not get a replacement BIOS
chip working. Unsoldering was its undoing in this case.

Best regards,

Kari Eveli
LEXITEC Book Publishing (Finland)
lexitec@xxxxxxxx

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5.12.2015, 14:04, Paul Breeze (Redacted sender paul.breeze for DMARC) wrote:
> No doubt you have already thought of this, but if not ... I made hard
> disk images of all my floppies several years ago (5.25 and 3.5) and
> now simply load an image into piece a of software called virtual
> floppy drive if needed. You still have to protect the copies but at
> least they might outlive your physical drives. I have all my XY
> software archived in this way.