Backup to DVD

I have bought a LG DVD burner with the expectation that I could back up to it. However, I'm having problems with using it with W98 Microsoft Backup. It doesn't seem to like the large file created and also it doesn't allow the backup to span different discs. Any suggestions of software and hardware combinations to make this work or have I wasted my money?

Thanks

David

 

Hi, Did you not get a CD with the drive which allows install of the
manufacture's copying software ?
regards

 

Hi DavidW1234,

You have NOT wasted any money. You're just using the wrong backup method. Do your backup manually (drag and drop to the writer). You can drag whole directories/folders or individual files, and with RW disks you can overwrite and erase at will.

 

To back up personal data, I use the freeware, Replicator. Although won't write directly to CD or DVD, it's excellent software for the price.

I configure it to back up the indicated files and folders to a folder on the harddrive. After the initial configuration, it's a matter of remembering to burn that backup folder to disk.

The advantage of using either sparrow's method or Replicator over XP's backup software is, in my opinion, the files are backed up in their original format, making them much easier to use when you need to retreive only one, or a few, files.

There is commercial backup software out there that will write direcctly to CD and DVD that works well but I've yet to find freeware that will do that reliably.

 

Is it possible to backup system files to a CD- (or DVD-) RW? I thought there was a limitation to only R's. Maybe this is only if you use MS's NTbackup.

 

You can back up directly to a cd of any type with MS Backup as long as you have some type of packet writing software installed on the computer although you still won't be able to span disks. If you don't have any packet writing software you're out of luck. You'll have to backup to your hard drive and then burn the file(s) from there.

It sounds like the problem you're running into is most likely the file size limitations of the fat32 file system. 4GB is the maximum so if you're trying to back up more than that at one time you'll receive an error of some type. If you want to use MS Backup the answer is to create multiple backup jobs. If you do this you should be able to backup everything you're trying to backup now, however in order to burn it to a cd or dvd you'll have to keep each job small enough so that it will fit on whatever disk you're going to use. That would solve the spanning problem. If you plan on backing up the same things each time you backup you can save each backup job after you create them and then the next time you want to backup you can just open the previously created jobs. It's not real elegant but if you want to use MS Backup, it's a workaround that should do the job.

 

***** ms backup. You probably have software that came with the burner that will do it properly, spanning disks etc.
If you have Nero, use Nerobackup. It will backup whatever you want, and span the number of disks you need, far easier than manually dealing with ms.
Get the Nero6 package (fully functional demo) at (duh!) www.nero.com