So what is Ping? Ping stands for ‘Partimage Is Not Ghost’. It enables you to create images of partitions for backup and restoring like Symantec’s Ghost package. However Ping is absolutely free.

Doing a backup and restore of a partition image takes up less time than actually installing an operating system, software and placing your files back. Saves you all the extra configuration time also. Ideal as ‘part’ of a backup procedure.

Perhaps a good use for ping is when a computer is setup with a clean install of an operating system & drivers. Then when required a restore of the fresh install would be effortless and quick to implement. For me I just wanted to try out the new Windows 7 RC, but restore my old system very quickly.

So here are some rough steps and details of what I did:

1. I made sure my backup of important files had taken place before I began.

2. Downloaded the ping iso (23mbytes).

3. The iso is a cd image, I then burnt to a 700mb cd. Software like imgburn, nero, brasero etc will all be able to burn the image to a cd.

4. I made sure the laptop was set to boot from cd and booted using the ping cd.

5. I have two partitions on my laptops hard drive and I chose to backup the primary partition to the second. However I noticed it recognized my usb hard drive, so could of used that and I believe there are other options.

6. Following ping’s instructions even without looking at the available documentation was easy. It is text based, but well laid out.

7. Around 6gigs of actual data on a 20gig partition, took up around 3.7gig of space and took under an hour.

So how about restoring?

1. Again I booted up using the ping cd.

2. I choose to restore a partition and choose the location and specific backup I had created.

3. Under 20 minutes later the whole partition was restored.

So where do I go next?

http://ping.windowsdream.com/

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From the move for the majority of sites from uploading of static files to dynamically edited sites online, backup is unfortunately being overlooked. Scary as sites should be seen as an ‘asset’.

There are two types of backup you should be concerned with. The backup of content so you can roll back to previous versions if required and the ability to have an offline version of your content that can be restored or migrated to another host if need be and quickly.

Relying on your host or an out sourced web design team is not unfortunately wise. Your site is your data, your content and you need to have more control.

You also need to be weary of being locked into platforms that have no means to export your data to another system, should you wish to or have to move or a business hosting your content goes bust.

Recently I wrote a php module for a content management system for small web sites that makes a backup of the current content when an administrator logs in. Very simple and effective if coupled with a monthly regular backup. Plus the cms in question can be installed on other hosts quickly and easily.

With some cms platforms you can sometimes find modules to set automated backups or allow one click backups and offline downloading. However automation if secure is always wiser as this provides more regularly backups, taking away the need for someone to initiate.

There are many ways to implement a backup for a site and I won’t make this article too long and in-depth as there are even more reasons to have control and flexibility of your ‘data’.

So three simple questions to help get you started:
Can you do an offline backup of your site right now?
Do you have a recent offline backup of your site?
Could you quickly migrate an offline backup to a new hosting?

Don’t rely on someone else. It’s too important for that.

If you have any questions don’t hesitate to ask.

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Some features:

• Compression and Encryption
• FTP or access network shares
• Multiple backup schedules

So if you don’t have a backup process in place Cobain could help you on your way.

http://www.educ.umu.se/~cobian/cobianbackup.htm

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