King Files

Use an automated backup script that will check your backup drive letter

I have tried many different tools for automated backup, both third party and the ones built into windows, but the best one by far is Robocopy. It is the most robust, stable and reliable tool that youll ever find to automate backups both in the enterprise environment and at home.

I use Robocopy scripts to mainly create backups onto an external USB drive that can be routinely taken offsite and switched with another external drive.
The biggest problem when using automated backup onto an external drive is the fact that the letter of the drive may change at some point if the drive was unplugged and then re-plugged. This causes your backup procedure to miss the target drive and backup will not run.

Heres an example of a script that overcomes the problem of the changing drive letter.

In this example we run a mirror backup of a server folder onto an external backup drive, and the script will find out whether the backup drive is using drive letter G: or H:


We start by creating a procedure that will check for a file called "ident.txt" (could have any other name or extention) - this is an empty file you should create and put in the root folder of your backup drive.
So if the file is present on drive G: - we point the script to a label called "run1" which runs the backup to drive G:. If the file is not present on drive G: (or if there IS no drive G:) we bounce the process to the label called "run2" which will then run the backup onto drive H:.

Robocopy then starts backing up a shared folder called "Administration" located on a server named "Server" onto the the external USB drive.

Available link for download

Wubi will support Lubuntu in release 12 04

Lubuntu
Coming with 12.04 precise pangolin, Wubi will support Lubuntu. Preliminary tests using the daily live CD and this wubi.exe are successful. Note you have to logon blind for now while bug 918401 is sorted out.

I found that Lubuntu ran very well on my junky old test laptop - while it was very sluggish with 11.10 Ubuntu. So Lubuntu might be a better option for older machines.

If youre going to be testing Wubi remember to use zsync to keep your test ISOs up to date. Its a great tool.

Other wishlist
Itd be nice if Wubi could install from a USB stick with 12.04 - since the desktop CD ISO is supposed to be around 750MB it wont fit on a CD so I expect many people will try with USB. Waiting on longstanding bug 461566.

Also, itd be nice if some of the obscure error messages that have appeared since 11.10 could be replaced by human-understandable text. For example "WindowsBackend object has no attribute iso-path". I suppose its no better than Permission denied being used indiscriminately, but I suppose we were used to that.

For the preinstalled image install method, Id like to see an easier way to override the kernel boot options for users with ATI or NVIDIA cards requiring nomodeset.

From a personal point of view Id like to have an installable Wubi migration gui app ready - but its not looking like it will happen in time.

Available link for download

Windows 8 will allow you to create “Storage Pools”

This will mean that you can create RAID level storage easily across many different storage devices, regardless of type. Once configured, it will simply see them as a single drive.

Available link for download