[Tfug] bacula et ilk

[Bexley Hall]

Hi,

My W2K machine recently suffered a series of hardware
crashes.  After each, I dutifully restored my  most
recent backup and would limp along until the next
crash.

[I've since traced the problem to a bad memory device
*and* a marginal disk drive.  :<  ]

Anyway, in those few times when the machine was "up"
enough for me to do some useful work, I noticed that
my "restore" seemed incomplete (or, perhaps the
original *backup* was to blame?).

E.g., I would have to "re-register" (authorize) programs
that *had* been registered previously.  Certain programs
would complain that there were "necessary files missing",
etc.

At the time, I was more focused on trying to figure out
why the machine was repeatedly crashing so I didn't spend
much time trying to resolve these issues (all of my "data"
was preserved/restored correctly so these other issues are
just "inconveniences" -- though damn costly ones!)

Of course, now is the time to resolve those issues.  :-/

I had used Windows' "Backup" utility to do the backup and
restore -- since it seems ludicrous to have to install an
*application* (i.e., some "backup" utility) just to
restore a system!  Annoying enough to have to reinstall
the OS to do this...  :<

I've since looked through all the options in the backup
*and* restore aspects of that tool and have just concluded
that it must have some fundamental flaw -- it doesn't
restore an exact image of your system regardless of how
you tickle it!

My Solaris and NBSD boxes I have been doing backups just
using simple tarballs.  Portable, no overhead to set it up,
etc.  But, since the W2K box appears to need some other
"solution", I figure I should look into things like bacula
in the hope that it *really* can cope with a heterogenous
environment (as opposed to just *claiming* it can!)

Any advice on this from folks who have actually *lived*
with such an environment?  (I can read the propaganda just
as easily as the next guy... I'd like to know what The
Real Story is...)

Any *other* suggestions?

BTW, I restore exclusively to tape.

Thx,
--don