PHP files and Windows Vista Backups
I being a web developer (amongst other things!) take great care to back up my PC daily, as I have thousands of lines of code belonging to numerous websites that i need to be able to work on and update.
My workstation runs Vista Home Premium. Now really should have Vista Business but its a long story that I am not going to go into here why I have Home premium.
I do my backups two ways, I run Sync Toy every day to an external drive and I run Windows Vista Backup to an internal drive.
Following a recent crash with my Raid array (a striped set) I went to restore my user data from a back up. I was surprised to find that none of my files with php extensions were there.
Fortunately I had the copies from by Sync Toy images so I was OK but its worth stating that unless all your interested in is the back up of “personal” files- ie images, mp3s and common file extension docs like xls or doc files you cannot rely on the back up tool for Vista to save you. Somewhat oddly it does save html files- probably due to the fact that many programs can generate html files as an output format, that are not deemed as “professional” file types.
Be warned!
3 Responses to “PHP files and Windows Vista Backups”
Leave a Reply
Theme created by
I was just victimized by this as well. I have over a terabyte worth of content on my drive. I used Vista’s backup and restore utility to store the contents of my system to an external drive while I reinstalled vista (I was going from 32 bit to 64 bit). After the backup process was done, I free-eyed the data to make sure everything I needed was there. It appeared to be (again, I have over a terabyte worth of content).
A few months later… I go back to work on some personal web projects I had spent months working on. All of my PHP files were gone. I have no idea why Microsoft would design their product this way. It had to be a conscious effort. As a loyal Microsoft user (since Windows 3.1) — my faith in the company was extremely shaken. I hope others out there let Microsoft know — what a horrible design flaw this is.
Me too. Unbelievable firstly that Microsoft have taken so long to include a backup facility in their OS and secondly that they can make such a hash of it. And there’s no way to configure it. Time to search for some Open Source backup software. Any ideas?
I don’t worry too much about system software backups, but do take lots of backups of my work files.
I run mirrored disks, and then have a big hard drive (bigger than the mirror) that I copy my work files over to daily.
I then once a week back that lot off to an external drive- very much belts and braces.
I also have an offsite backup for really important stuff as a final backup- I do it via my pcnow account with webex (I need this to get access back to base when on the road)
Ironically I use synctoy to run almost all my backups, as I find it really easy to manage with windows scheduler. It does not do a full system back up but its ideal for work stuff and gets will copy over anything you ask it to. There are though pleanty of creditable backup utilities out there and if you are not too bothered getting this years latest versions, the pc press – magazines like PC Pro are as good as any for getting free full featured backup utilities.. Think ther eis even one in this months copy (OCT 2009).