How to Build A Cheap Mobile-Rack Backup

When that happens, the user can reinstall the OS and applications off the original disks. But replacing their data is likely to be expensive at best, perhaps impossible. Similarly, corrupted configuration, application, or OS files can be handled by a reinstall. The reinstall might be painful, difficult, and expensive. But nothing that happens with a computer compares to the pain of losing data important to your customer's business or personal life. That's where a cheap mobile-rack backup system can help.

By the way, the increasingly popular method of using a hard-drive partition to back up the OS, a few critical apps, and configurations, doesn't provide the slightest bit of protection against a catastrophic hard-drive failure. It only protects against file corruption. Corrupted files are more frequent than total drive failure, of course, but anyone experienced with computers knows that all hard drives will fail sooner or later. Betting that important computers will have their hard drives retired before they fail is to bet against Murphy's Law. Similarly, for a white-box vendor to tell a customer, "Well, your computer works, sorry about your data," isn't going to make the customer too happy.

Instead, your customers should both mirror data to a backup drive and make offsite backups with a DVD-R or tape. If you install both a mobile rack and a DVD-R or tape drive in every system, you're looking out for your customers. Doing this also lets you sell systems with greatly increased security at a premium price.

Before we get started, remember that while most backup software works with hard drives, DVD-R, and tape, always check the specs to make sure it will work with the intended configuration before downloading.

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Mobile Racks and Other Components

Mobile rack: I like a low-cost mobile rack called the Genica GN-210 that is available for all of $6.90 at ComputerGeeks. There are many other possible choices in a wide range of prices, materials, even colors. Simply Google on "mobile rack" as a search term, or go to Pricewatch.

Hard drive: I recommend getting a drive the same size as the PC's original drive to allow drive mirroring. This allows the easy restoration of individual files or directories without having to run a backup program to get at the files on the backup drive. If the user chooses to upgrade the hard disk in the future, the current mirror will allow backing up a drive up to 1.5 times the size of the mirror drive using backup software with compression. For example, a 40 MB drive could back up a 60 MB hard drive. While vendors often claim up to 2:1 compression, my observation is that this is unrealistic with the kind of data found on a typical drive. A more realistic ratio is 1.33:1.

Backup software: There are many possible choices. But do not use the MSDOS XCOPY or DISKCOPY command in or out of a batch file; it will not copy hidden files or system files. Since I run Windows98 SE, I use XXCOPY, a low-cost, shareware imaging backup facility. XXCOPY is a Windows utility that runs in command-line mode. I run mine in a screen window off a Windows .PIF set to:

Cmd Line: C:%5CWINDOWS%5CCOMMAND%5CXXCOPY.EXE C:%5C D:%5C /CLONE

Working: C:%5CWINDOWS%5CCOMMAND

My experiences with XXCOPY have been good enough for me to say that a GUI version called XXCLONE, now in beta, is worth a look.

Here is a selection of commonly used backup applications which might suit your needs. By and large, these run compressed backups. That is, they record the files found on a hard drive in a single compressed file analogous to sequential recording on a magnetic tape. Some allow mirroring.

If these don't suit your needs, Google is your friend. There are a great many backup programs, in shrinkwrap, shareware, and freeware.

Customer reminder software: Use an inexpensive, shareware calendar-based reminder program to tell your customer when it's time to run backup. Set the number of reminders per week you think are needed to support your customer's needs. I personally use xReminder, which is a freeware program that will run on any Windows system.

Why is this so important? Because for a backup methodology to work, the customer must use it. The backup method I recommend here requires user intervention. That's the tradeoff for making one's backup generally immune to computer disaster.

It's not that much work, though: The user must plug in the mobile drive rack to run the backup, and then unplug it after the machine is shut down. That's all. But this way, if the computer's electronics are physically destroyed by, for example, a catastrophic power supply failure, the user can be in business as soon as the hard drive is in a new box. In the case of a fire or other disaster, the user can take the mobile rack and leave quickly, carrying a couple of pounds of hard drive with a tray to give it some degree of protection, instead of trying to lug the whole computer system.

After backup, the backup drive rack should be removed to some other location. However, the farther away form the PC that is, the less likely it is that the customer will actually back up when reminded to do so. Again, this is an on-site, not an off-site method for backup. Tape or DVD-R is much more appropriate for off-site backup since there is far less likely to go wrong in either case in the shipping process. Tapes and DVD-Rs don't usually break if dropped. So my rack goes into a nearby room, and my off-site backup is located as far away as possible.

Customer instructions: Write a Quick Start Guide that briefly describes the backup and reminder software, explains how each works, tells how to insert and remove the mobile rack, and instructs the customer to contact the system builder if the hard drive fails.

Putting It All Together

Installing the mobile rack is the easy part. In fact, it's so easy, many mobile racks don't even come with instructions. If it's your first time, follow these easy steps:

What To Do If The Mirrored Main Drive Crashes

What To Do On Warranty Service Other Than The Above