Backup before Formatting
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I am a Developer using Win xp, SQL Server, Visual Studio 2008 and NAV 2009 as development tools. This seems a very stupid question, but I need your suggestions. I want to format my hard drive. What are the things that I should backup before formatting? I know few things that I am surely going to backup. e.g. my own profile folder from Documents and Settings, Outlook mails & contacts, Inetpub folder (very important), SQL Databases, messenger history etc. Please give your suggestions for any items that I might be missing. Thanks in advance. Note that I don't want to end up backing up my whole hard drive partition... :)
I caught myself having not backed up my music last time. I still had all the disks, and fortunately all of it on my phone. So I had to recover from there. I have a terrabyte drive now and do back up the whole frickin' thing.
_____________________________ I've often heard of an older, wiser person passing the torch. After witnessing something like that, I'm not sure who'd want the thing.
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I am a Developer using Win xp, SQL Server, Visual Studio 2008 and NAV 2009 as development tools. This seems a very stupid question, but I need your suggestions. I want to format my hard drive. What are the things that I should backup before formatting? I know few things that I am surely going to backup. e.g. my own profile folder from Documents and Settings, Outlook mails & contacts, Inetpub folder (very important), SQL Databases, messenger history etc. Please give your suggestions for any items that I might be missing. Thanks in advance. Note that I don't want to end up backing up my whole hard drive partition... :)
Sadly I would back up everything if it was urgent. Developer tend to install so many tools all over their hardrive and not neccesarily just code. You could release something, runs beautifly for years and then WHAM, problem. And now you've lost that little prog that helped so much in a format. If you got the time, go through your harddrive folder by folder and store what you need in a sperate folder and back up that. If your short on time, dump the entire thing and do the process as above. There's nothing more painful than having to reset up a dev environment. Especially if you work on a wide range of projects and areas ( web,forms,services, other languagues, db's etc). Although, having a seperate dev server is nice. DB's are on that box, some form of source management and all the critical dev downloads. Also, you should already have the answer to your above question with a normal backup process run nightly :doh: , we hope :-D
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I am a Developer using Win xp, SQL Server, Visual Studio 2008 and NAV 2009 as development tools. This seems a very stupid question, but I need your suggestions. I want to format my hard drive. What are the things that I should backup before formatting? I know few things that I am surely going to backup. e.g. my own profile folder from Documents and Settings, Outlook mails & contacts, Inetpub folder (very important), SQL Databases, messenger history etc. Please give your suggestions for any items that I might be missing. Thanks in advance. Note that I don't want to end up backing up my whole hard drive partition... :)
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Oh, and any licenses you may have to protected content. I have one or two videos from before my last reformat that I can no longer watch because I forgot to backup the dang licenses.
Visual Studio is an excellent GUIIDE.
Thanks for reminding most important thing...I have few licenses of the applications that I use on that drive. :thumbsup:
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Some people prefer to backup settings in various programs (e.g., Visual Studio). I prefer just to reset them myself. Gives me a chance to explore new settings each time I do a reformat. And I usually do a reformat because I want a clean environment, so I don't like risking botching the install by importing funky settings. And you might want to just buy a new hard drive and install on that. Seriously, then you can always go back to your old hard drive in case you missed any files. Oh, and iTunes. Must back that up (though most leave it in the default location of "My Documents").
Visual Studio is an excellent GUIIDE.
Yes, I am also formating because I need a clean environment, and I also prefer to set those settings in VS and other applicatiosn I use. Still collecting money that will be enough to buy an iPod or iPhone ;)
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I caught myself having not backed up my music last time. I still had all the disks, and fortunately all of it on my phone. So I had to recover from there. I have a terrabyte drive now and do back up the whole frickin' thing.
_____________________________ I've often heard of an older, wiser person passing the torch. After witnessing something like that, I'm not sure who'd want the thing.
This is an office PC, so no ga-ga music in there...thanks for the thip though, I can use it at home... :)
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Sadly I would back up everything if it was urgent. Developer tend to install so many tools all over their hardrive and not neccesarily just code. You could release something, runs beautifly for years and then WHAM, problem. And now you've lost that little prog that helped so much in a format. If you got the time, go through your harddrive folder by folder and store what you need in a sperate folder and back up that. If your short on time, dump the entire thing and do the process as above. There's nothing more painful than having to reset up a dev environment. Especially if you work on a wide range of projects and areas ( web,forms,services, other languagues, db's etc). Although, having a seperate dev server is nice. DB's are on that box, some form of source management and all the critical dev downloads. Also, you should already have the answer to your above question with a normal backup process run nightly :doh: , we hope :-D
Yep, you're right, I will have to configure all the projects that I am working on currently. I plan to check my Program Files folder to backup arsenals that I use often during development. Thanks. :)
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What I _always_ forget to back up is fonts. I have a lot of extra fonts installed in the Font folder, and I keep losing them everytime I format.
Yeah, have gone through that situation once. I was using regional language font, and I doomed it when formatted hard drive. :)
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I am a Developer using Win xp, SQL Server, Visual Studio 2008 and NAV 2009 as development tools. This seems a very stupid question, but I need your suggestions. I want to format my hard drive. What are the things that I should backup before formatting? I know few things that I am surely going to backup. e.g. my own profile folder from Documents and Settings, Outlook mails & contacts, Inetpub folder (very important), SQL Databases, messenger history etc. Please give your suggestions for any items that I might be missing. Thanks in advance. Note that I don't want to end up backing up my whole hard drive partition... :)
Bookmarks, music.
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Some people prefer to backup settings in various programs (e.g., Visual Studio). I prefer just to reset them myself. Gives me a chance to explore new settings each time I do a reformat. And I usually do a reformat because I want a clean environment, so I don't like risking botching the install by importing funky settings. And you might want to just buy a new hard drive and install on that. Seriously, then you can always go back to your old hard drive in case you missed any files. Oh, and iTunes. Must back that up (though most leave it in the default location of "My Documents").
Visual Studio is an excellent GUIIDE.
aspdotnetdev wrote:
Gives me a chance to explore new settings each time I do a reformat.
For some combination of software, this is a nightmare. Typical example being Microsoft Outlook Domino Connector and Lotus Notes.
Vasudevan Deepak Kumar Personal Homepage
Tech Gossips
The woods are lovely, dark and deep, But I have promises to keep, And miles to go before I sleep, And miles to go before I sleep! -
Yeah, have gone through that situation once. I was using regional language font, and I doomed it when formatted hard drive. :)
When you download a font, it is always better to have one copy in downloaded folder or elsewhere. Depending upon OS and other program's home folders is normally risk-prone.
Vasudevan Deepak Kumar Personal Homepage
Tech Gossips
The woods are lovely, dark and deep, But I have promises to keep, And miles to go before I sleep, And miles to go before I sleep! -
Sadly I would back up everything if it was urgent. Developer tend to install so many tools all over their hardrive and not neccesarily just code. You could release something, runs beautifly for years and then WHAM, problem. And now you've lost that little prog that helped so much in a format. If you got the time, go through your harddrive folder by folder and store what you need in a sperate folder and back up that. If your short on time, dump the entire thing and do the process as above. There's nothing more painful than having to reset up a dev environment. Especially if you work on a wide range of projects and areas ( web,forms,services, other languagues, db's etc). Although, having a seperate dev server is nice. DB's are on that box, some form of source management and all the critical dev downloads. Also, you should already have the answer to your above question with a normal backup process run nightly :doh: , we hope :-D
Mario Luis wrote:
Sadly I would back up everything if it was urgent.
Not the OS volumes and garbage software like Symantec etc right? You would end paying up for costly backup devices in that case. If you have earmarked your volumes for system, own data etc, backup and restore would be a breeze.
Vasudevan Deepak Kumar Personal Homepage
Tech Gossips
The woods are lovely, dark and deep, But I have promises to keep, And miles to go before I sleep, And miles to go before I sleep! -
Mario Luis wrote:
Sadly I would back up everything if it was urgent.
Not the OS volumes and garbage software like Symantec etc right? You would end paying up for costly backup devices in that case. If you have earmarked your volumes for system, own data etc, backup and restore would be a breeze.
Vasudevan Deepak Kumar Personal Homepage
Tech Gossips
The woods are lovely, dark and deep, But I have promises to keep, And miles to go before I sleep, And miles to go before I sleep!If he it was urgent, as in very very short timespan, I would dump the drive and sort out later. Quite often you may find that you've installed some small tool and its in a arb place. Windows not normally but items like favourites etc yes, but thats why I say you go through it at your leisure later. Technically, they way my dev enviro is at the momment, I could lose my entire pc and the worst that would happen is I would lose my unchecked in code and scripts. Everything else I leave on our dev server including the installs of any apps I download, prefereably linked with a note or something to the application they're used with. So it would be the pain of a re-install but everything should be there. A sad lesson I've learnt before is to never have anything on a harddrive that doesn't have some form of redunduncy. It's a mechanical device with moving parts thats suspectible to break at any time. Dev box -> raid in mirror in case of hardrive failure Dev code -> source managed via a dev server. Dev server -> hdd on san running raid 1+0 Dev server -> backed to tape every night Tape -> Multiple tapes rotated regularly. Tapes -> Copy taken offsite and stored as well. Overkill but I hate re-construction. :mad:
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I am a Developer using Win xp, SQL Server, Visual Studio 2008 and NAV 2009 as development tools. This seems a very stupid question, but I need your suggestions. I want to format my hard drive. What are the things that I should backup before formatting? I know few things that I am surely going to backup. e.g. my own profile folder from Documents and Settings, Outlook mails & contacts, Inetpub folder (very important), SQL Databases, messenger history etc. Please give your suggestions for any items that I might be missing. Thanks in advance. Note that I don't want to end up backing up my whole hard drive partition... :)
VMWare has a tool that takes a running system and makes a WM out of it. I find that often I need a registry setting or some such thing down the road that typically does not get backed up. With the VM you have a running system anytime you need it to check something. After I am sure I no longer need it, I simple delete it.
Rocky <>< Recent Blog Post: Chocolate Chip Cookies!
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VMWare has a tool that takes a running system and makes a WM out of it. I find that often I need a registry setting or some such thing down the road that typically does not get backed up. With the VM you have a running system anytime you need it to check something. After I am sure I no longer need it, I simple delete it.
Rocky <>< Recent Blog Post: Chocolate Chip Cookies!
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If the post was helpful, please vote, eh! Current activities: Book: Devils by Fyodor Dostoyevsky Project: Hospital Automation, final stage Learning: Image analysis, LINQ Now and forever, defiant to the end. What is Multiple Sclerosis[^]?
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