Journal zogger's Journal: Windows vista question 3
My friend who runs vista had an interesting question that I don't know the answer to. Is it possible to have a real time backup that will copy everything you type directly to a Cd/disk, as you type it, during a long recording session maybe? And failing that, what would be the easiest, cheapest solution to having a functional real time backup for a regular home user? (I guess besides getting nailed with a keylogger...HE wants the backup)
Thanks guys, I am clueless when it comes to using windows.
ya, ya, I know, I should have stopped right after the word "clueless". OK, yuk yuk yuk
Hmmm.... (Score:2)
The part about writing everything to disk as it is typed...
Do you mean word processing documents? Or every change to the system is noted in a version-control type log? Either way, it would SERIOUSLY bog the system down.
I suspect what you're looking for is a decent backup/restore system for Vista. What version of Vista is he running? If it is not Starter or Home, then he could configure "Windows Complete PC Restore" and set frequent restore points.
Frequently the "save every so often" is a function of the
Run Vista in a VM... (Score:3, Interesting)
This is probably not helpful, but he could run Vista in a VM on a Mac, and use Time Machine to make hourly backups. The disadvantage to that would be that it would back up the entire VM every time.
There ought to be a commercial product for Windows that does roughly the same thing. I don't know of anything that would keep up-to-the-second backups, though. That's a pretty specialized need, and most times it would be met by just using a UPS and backing up at less-frequent intervals.
It would be possible to write a disk monitor that back up every file as it is saved to disk, but you would want to exclude system files from that. The hardest part would be managing the backup volume, and handling files that are exclusively locked by the owning process.
In some situations, having an up-to the second backup would actually be less useful than a longer interval. The file group for a database, for instance, or during the process of ripping audio or video. The intermediate file states are useless, and would eat up disk space fairly quickly.
Also be aware that backup backs up the disk, not keystrokes (for which a keylogger really would be the best solution) or main memory. So nothing would be backed up unless and until it was saved to disk.
What about a RAID setup with mirrored disk? That would get everything that wrote to the original disk, but it would require special hardware. And I'm not sure what would be necessary to have the mirror be external. USB might not be fast enough.
To me, this sounds like someone who has a problem to solve, and is stuck on one possible solution. In my experience, it would be better to ask him what problem he is attempting to solve - because you don't know (or haven't related) enough to know if backup software would solve it. Is this for protection against failure? To replay the process that he went through (for which there are macro recorders that would work)? To monitor his kids' computer use? One of the key questions, if this is for fault recovery purposes, is how much data is an acceptable loss. The lower that number, the more it's going to cost to achieve.
Save for exceptional circumstances, a real-time backup is fairly pointless for a home user. Time Machine on OSX (and whatever does the equivalent for Windows) is probably the best approach for most users.
I guess... (Score:1)
...if someone wants to play ultra- fault tolerant court reporter in their home, it seems like anyone who programs in something like C/C++/C#/Java/VB could write a quickie app that presents a GUI or console window and keeps, on a user-specified volume, a file open for append and dumps the new characters typed say every time return is hit or on line-wrap. But that's only if this silly person is deeply offended or something by hitting ctrl+s frequently in Notepad or something. But to answer your question, yes,