Ask HN: What's your approach to personal data archiving and backups?
Yes, there are some challenges in backup
and recovery, for ordinary data, for
installed programs, for files for an
operating system, etc.<p>I&#x27;m struggling, don&#x27;t have good solutions,
have a good start, but otherwise have only
a work in progress.<p>On my HP laptop Windows 10 computer, I
have the D:\ <i>recovery partition</i>.<p>Otherwise I have 3 Western Digital USB
external 3.5&quot; form factor hard disk
drives.  Two of the drives have 2 TB
(trillion bytes) of space, and the third
one, new, has 5 TB.<p>I back up using ROBOCOPY with some
carefully selected options.  Occasionally
I do a <i>full</i> backup of <i>my</i> data on C:\
and frequently I do an <i>incremental</i>
backup of that data.<p>By <i>my</i> data I mean the Windows file
system directory tree rooted at directory
(for Apple users, <i>folder</i>)<p><pre><code>     C:\Users\user1\
</code></pre>
This procedure does a lot of good but has
some flaws:  One of these is that some of
the directories close to C:\ are <i>special</i>
in Windows and don&#x27;t work in the normal
ways with the command line command DIR,
etc.  I don&#x27;t understand all the problems
but for one it appears that there are
circular references in the directory
structure that lead some software
operations, e.g., part of backup, to
infinite loops -- as far as I can tell
currently, really big, gigantic bummer.<p>So, there are problems:  Last week an
external keyboard held down a key on my
laptop, and Windows got confused and
deleted several icons from my screen,
<i>desktop</i>.  Bummer.<p>Eventually Windows users discover
(apparently secret knowledge) that each
such icon is from a file of type LNK. So,
some of these files are in directory<p><pre><code>     C:\Users\user1\Desktop\
</code></pre>
but others are in directory<p><pre><code>     C:\Users\Public\Desktop\
</code></pre>
This directory was <i>hidden</i> until I used<p><pre><code>     attrib -H
</code></pre>
to <i>unhide</i> it.  Well, the LNK file for
the icon for my installation of an old
version of Google&#x27;s Web browser Chrome was
in that directory and was one of the icons
and LNK files confused Windows deleted.<p>And the actual EXE file for Chrome was in
a directory that does not play well with
DIR, etc.<p>So, it looked like (will do better next
time) I had to go to a directory<p><pre><code>     C:\Users\user1\prog05\google\chrome\
</code></pre>
with program<p><pre><code>     chromesetup.exe
</code></pre>
and run that.  And that is what I did.
So, I <i>reinstalled</i> Chrome.  I don&#x27;t know
if what was reinstalled was the old
version of Chrome I had or a newer
version.  I care:  When I like an old
version of a program, I&#x27;m very reluctant
to install a new version that replaces the
old version.  E.g., for Mozilla Firefox, I
used to like it, but the recent version I
have changed the user interface (in ways I
regard as silly and steps backward) and,
really bad, force me to close a popup
window a few dozen times a day asking me
to install an new version.  [I do NOT want
a new version -- Mozilla, I deeply,
profoundly, bitterly, hate and despise the
whole idea of frequent new versions.
Please, please, please STOP pestering me
to get new versions.] Further, when I have
Firefox save a Web page and then display
the saved copy, Firefox pings me asking
that I make Firefox my default Web browser
which it already is.  And, once again,
Firefox pesters me, interrupts my work,
gives me another popup that demands that I
reject installing a new version of
Firefox.  Further, some of the Web pages
saved by Firefox, Firefox won&#x27;t display
but Chrome and Brave will.  Silly
situation.<p>Due to such pestering, I may have to junk
Firefox:  I have 100,000 lines of .NET
code with comments with tree names of
documentation, 6000+ Web pages, and used
to use Firefox and a single keystroke to
display such a Web page.  Maybe now the
pages won&#x27;t display or I will get my work
interrupted by two !@#$%^&amp;*() popup
windows I HATE.  Looks like I may have to
junk Firefox and go for Chrome, Brave, or
some such.  Maybe there is a way to
download and keep a version of Firefox
5-10 years old that I liked JUST FINE the
way it was -- no popup hassles.<p>So, net, Windows getting confused due to a
key held down forced me to download a new
version of Chrome -- really bad bummer.
And the Chrome EXE file is in a directory
that does not play well with DIR, some
approaches to backup, etc.<p>For the LNK files in directory<p><pre><code>     C:\Users\Public\Desktop\
</code></pre>
I&#x27;ve copied those to part of the file
system that behaves normally and where I
can back it up.<p>It looks like I will have to do some
system management mud wrestling to get the
EXE files, etc. for programs in
misbehaving directories<p><pre><code>     C:\Program Files

     C:\Program Files (x86)

     C:\Windows
</code></pre>
to a normal behaving part of the file
system where I can use ROBOCOPY to back up
the files and just COPY or XCOPY to
restore selected files&#x2F;directories from
the backup.<p>To me these misbehaving directories look
like a grand design disaster of Windows.
Windows has had 30 or so years to get such
things right and still has some serious,
first grade, problems.  I will have to
investigate to find ways to work around
these Windows disasters.<p>Near the top of my TODO list is getting
around bad or missing Windows
documentation to get around some really
bad Windows system management disasters.<p>E.g., those circular references in the
file system directory <i>tree</i> -- no longer
a tree.  WHAT a bummer.  Where is the
documentation for how the heck to work
with such directories, list them, copy
them, restore them?  Was it really
necessary to ruin the file system in this
way?<p>E.g., I can&#x27;t do a routine backup and
restore and, thus, am pushed into
depending on Web sites continuing to
provide the downloads I want -- years from
now.  Bummer.<p>And part of this work to be done is to
understand what I can do with the HP D:\
<i>recovery partition</i> and how to do it.<p>Uh, in simple terms, I want to know how to
boot from a DVD, restore all the HP and
Windows stuff from somewhere, DVDs if the
size is small enough, from external hard
drives otherwise, and then use ROBOCOPY to
restore everything else.  This goal seems
simple and obvious enough.  Now a big
detour in my work is to figure out how to
do that -- knowing that good documentation
will be more rare than hen&#x27;s teeth.
System management mud wrestling to get
around problems of HP and Windows instead
of my real work.<p>On my other computer, a <i>desktop</i> computer
I assembled from parts, e.g., an AMD
FX-8350 processor, I have lots of internal
hard disk space and two new 4 TB disk
drives ready to install.  So so far I do a
lot in <i>internal</i> backup.<p>One problem is it appears that Windows has
seen some free space on one of my hard
disks and decided to use it for a lot of
temporary storage to be used by running,
installed programs.  Since that storage
changes frequently, it gets backed up as
part of an incremental backup and makes my
incremental backups much larger than they
should be.  Bummer.  That is just what I
do NOT want.  And Windows never asked me
about using my disk volumes this way, and
so far I can&#x27;t find any documentation for
how to tell Windows to put that temporary
junk where I would want it to be and out
of the way of my real work.  Windows,
messing up my real work.  Bummer.