Some backup questions

[HansEverts]

Just read the help file on backups (again) and have now included the folders with application data. But I still have a few questions of which I found bits and pieces on the forum, but not all.

1) I never seem to be happy with my backup scheme and change every couple of months. I like Second copy for its simplicity plus the fact that it simply copies without locking the files in some software specific format. That last point is also my biggest problem with Acronis True image. True, it is a very powerful software, but I hate to see my folders inaccessible, because I haven't installed TI. The Zip file option is limited and does not seem to get along with Windows 8.1.

Therefore I use now TI for the image and Second copy for the data.

What do others use?

2) Right now I make a daily backup, but I use that also as the source for the weekly backup. What do others do: backup the backup or always backup the source?

[joel23]

Just read the help file on backups (again) and have now included the folders with application data. But I still have a few questions of which I found bits and pieces on the forum, but not all.

1) I never seem to be happy with my backup scheme and change every couple of months. I like Second copy for its simplicity plus the fact that it simply copies without locking the files in some software specific format. That last point is also my biggest problem with Acronis True image. True, it is a very powerful software, but I hate to see my folders inaccessible, because I haven't installed TI. The Zip file option is limited and does not seem to get along with Windows 8.1.

Therefore I use now TI for the image and Second copy for the data.

What do others use?

2) Right now I make a daily backup, but I use that also as the source for the weekly backup. What do others do: backup the backup or always backup the source?

Hans, I don't get you here regarding the locking of files. I use Acronis doing full backups every 7th day and incremental the other days.

What I really like about Acronis is the ability to open a container by double clicking on it and restore a single file or folder.

[HansEverts]

But the backups are enclosed in specific Acronis folders. In other words, you need TI to access them. Somehow that makes me uncomfortable. It is different with an image, which in any case requires an Acronis boot disk.

Perhaps I am unnecessarily cautious, but that extra Acronis layer between me and my photos worries me. But I posted this thread to see what others do and take advise.

Thanks

[Mario]

Whenever you store data in an application-specific proprietary format you depend on the application vendor (in this case Acronis). You can't get your files out of the archive without having TI installed.

I myself use TI as one stage in my backup process. Software like second copy or the free Duplicati or rsync or robocopy (part of Windows) allows you to backup files scheduled without relying on some sort of archive format. Comfort-wise, nothing beats TI and I had never a problem with it (I regularly mount TI disks and restore files).

I'm still using the 2010 of TI version, though. After that they started to add features over features in order to make their users buy upgrades. Yet another "safe delete" and some automatic modes which really don't work. But as a company you have to make you users buy upgrades regulariily if the market is saturated. And we then see the "feature creep" problem with many applications. Like CD/DVD recording/burning software which suddenly included a media player, safe delete functions and whatnot just to justify upgrade prices...

[joel23]

But the backups are enclosed in specific Acronis folders. In other words, you need TI to access them. Somehow that makes me uncomfortable. It is different with an image, which in any case requires an Acronis boot disk.

Perhaps I am unnecessarily cautious, but that extra Acronis layer between me and my photos worries me. But I posted this thread to see what others do and take advise.

Thanks

If you mean you need to start Acronis TI in order to access the backups, than its not true. As said you can access a TIB by double click on it and you will find an explorer like  structure. Guess not only when using images.
But of course TI has to be installed and its process running.

ps
Another way would be to synchronize folders, for example with a filemanger like Dopus or similar. No extra layer then.

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[HansEverts]

But of course TI has to be installed and its process running.

That was exactly my point. You can uninstall Second copy, but still use the backup.

Mario, I fell in that trap of getting TI 2014. I can't complain about the number of options, but I have tried several that do not seem to work.

I will try the current setting (TI for images and 2nd copy for data) for a while and reevaluate.

Have a nice evening

[joel23]

But of course TI has to be installed and its process running.

That was exactly my point. You can uninstall Second copy, but still use the backup.

Where is the point to make backups with Acronis (TI) and not have it running (as a process in the background)?

[hro]

I am using a combination of tools.

TI (2014) for my general PC backup. I've been using it since 2010 and it has served me well. Agree, there are now lots of bells and whistles that you don't need. However, it was the only tool that allowed me to do a complete system restore on another laptop (different hardware) without any problems. This is a huge time saver.

I also use SyncBackFree mainly for copying (syncing) IMatch databases and images between desktop and laptop. This is very quick, safe and uses no propriety format.

[joel23]

I am using a combination of tools.

TI (2014) for my general PC backup. I've been using it since 2010 and it has served me well. Agree, there are now lots of bells and whistles that you don't need. However, it was the only tool that allowed me to do a complete system restore on another laptop (different hardware) without any problems. This is a huge time saver.

Agree.

I also use SyncBackFree mainly for copying (syncing) IMatch databases and images between desktop and laptop. This is very quick, safe and uses no propriety format.

Yepp, synchronizing might be good as well, but we don't have a "versioning" here. Just have this in mind. If a file gets corrupted you might find out months later without being able to restore a working version.
Synchronizing is not a real backup. It just let us quickly restore a file we've altered today (and which was damaged today) by yesterdays version.

It all depends on what we want to achieve and the file formats. Guess no one would like to restore a backup of IM's DB which is older than a couple of weeks months.
But it might make sense to restore single folders or files from a year ago.

[ianrr]

Well, problems that can be caused by a power outage has taken me from concerned about frequent backup to mild paranoia .. So here is how I now cover the situation.

I use an excellent program for all my image files backups, "SecondCopy" . I use it via the "synchronize" feature to update all my image files so that new files or deleted files can be synchronized between my home/work computer, including a copy of the Imatch database folder. It can be set as a manual backup, every hour etc, whatever suits you

Today I added a backup of the database folder, ( Frequency Manual, Run at startup ). every time the computer reboots, with the option set for 6 Archive copies  ... see image. 

I have twice now ( unfortunately ) bought Acronis and find it very disappointing compared to Paragon Backup software. It will do a system restore with a few mouse clicks, and also to different hardware.

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[JohnZeman]

After reading how many of you are using True Image to back up your computers tonight I decided to download and install the trial version of its premium edition.

I wish I hadn't.

Although it claimed to, apparently it didn't install correctly on my Windows 7 machine because when I launched to program to try it out, every module failed giving me a "Failure to Deploy, restart Windows or check your anti-virus."  So I rebooted Windows and that was all she wrote.  Windows would not boot up, it stayed stuck on the Starting Windows screen.  Finally after over an hour of trying to get my system back online I gave up and shut down.  I was able to boot back up on a 3 week old cloned C: drive, cloned by free Acronis Migration software no less.  So I'm back up to speed here again although I did lose a few files here and there.

Think I'll just stick with my tried and true backup methods.  For my data D: drive, I'll keep using xxcopy run by 4NT scripts and I'll use the free Acronis disk migration software to clone my C: drive every 30 days or so.

[HansEverts]

I use an excellent program for all my image files backups, "SecondCopy" .

Sounds like the Second copy I was talking about. And I agree, it is very solid and completely debugged, with the big advantage that, if it fails, I still have my backups directly accessible. I have given it low priority, because without that, I felt it took too much space when backing up.

For the time being, I will continue to use 2nd copy for data files and TI for the disk image. Just in case, I also keep a Windows image, but that one gets updated rather irregularly. I tested it once, only to see that the Windows boot function did not detect the external drive with the image, whereas TI detected them all.

John, sorry to hear you were not lucky.

[sinus]

I use RichCopy 4.0 and I am happy with it. It does NOT zip files, but does copy 1:1.
Hence I can do a backup from whatever I want, backup it for example on a USB-harddisk, take this disk at home, and use there the files, without having installed there the same program.

I used Acronis some years before, but was not happy with it.

Hope, you will find a good solution.

[DigPeter]

I have had Acronis TI for a while, but stopped upgrading some years ago, for the same reasons as Mario.  I now use GoodSync - very easy for both sync and backup of individual folders.  System backup is done on the Windows 7 facility.  I will try Second Copy.

[Ferdinand]

I use Trueimage and I'm happy with it.  But I'm still using V11 from 2008.  I regret not buying 2010 when it was available, because of all the problems since then, esp bloat.  I did buy a copy of 2013 when there was a sale on, and got a free upgrade to 2014, but I haven't installed either of them in a production system.  I tried 2013 when I was installing W7 about a year ago, and had trouble restoring.  I'd need to test it on a spare HDD before I'd try again.

I'm not that concerned about backups being locked in TIB files.  You can mount them and there are recovery CDs and BartPE CDs

[DavidOfMA]

I use Retrospect in "Duplicate" mode for everything but my System partition. The files are just files, not stored in a proprietary format. And I use Paragon Backup to back up my System partition. Retrospect will let me do that, too, but I find Paragon's recovery method simpler to use in the event of disaster.

[hro]

I use Trueimage and I'm happy with it.  But I'm still using V11 from 2008.  I regret not buying 2010 when it was available, because of all the problems since then, esp bloat.  I did buy a copy of 2013 when there was a sale on, and got a free upgrade to 2014, but I haven't installed either of them in a production system.  I tried 2013 when I was installing W7 about a year ago, and had trouble restoring.  I'd need to test it on a spare HDD before I'd try again.

I'm not that concerned about backups being locked in TIB files.  You can mount them and there are recovery CDs and BartPE CDs

I did a restore with TI2014 on a Windows 8.1 system and that worked for me. This gave me the confidence to continue using it. I used a number of backup tools in the past (Retrospect as well) but came back to TI. It is important to understand that TI is quite intrusive on the operating system (others perhaps as well) and installs drivers and other stuff to do its thing. So the installation has to be correct and complete or it may fail.

[herman]

What do others use?

Quite a number of Acronis users here.

Over the years I have tried a lot of third-party software, including Acronis.
I was not really satisfied with any of them.
The proof of the pudding is restoring a backup or disk-image to your PC and have it running again in the state where you made the backup or image.
Restoring a disk image means (to me) restoring from scratch, on a dead PC, without any drivers. All you have got is the BIOS, an empty internal hard disk and a boot/rescue DVD.
My experience is that this is not always possible, so in the end you may think you are safe while you are actually not.

These days I just use the built-in Windows backup software.
The Windows 7 incarnation works surprisingly good actually.
I do the scheduled backups to a USB 3 hard disk connected to the PC.
When I have to restore a disk image from scratch I have to connect the external disk temporarily to a USB 2 port, as USB 3 is not recognized without drivers.
Apart from that it works just as advertised.

[ColinIM]

 On a roughly 3-day rotation I use -

   
• (a) Macrium Reflect for whole-disk imaging onto weekly-switched external USB3 drives (I keep Differential image-backups on top of less-frequently-grabbed Full-disk backups.)
• (b) Macrium Reflect for whole-disk imaging onto my NAS server. (Again, these are Differential backups on top of less-frequent Full-backups.)
• (c) I take regular full computer backups using my Server 2003 edition of Windows Home Server (WHS).

Then, for some incidental and scheduled backups of various sub-sets of my work (not just IMatch & photos) I use two different programs, plus one cloud-based service:

   
• (d) The non-free version of SyncBackSE - backing up to my Synology NAS.
• (e) JungleDisk, writing to Amazon S3 on a wee-small-hours schedule - grabbing only certain important and volatile parts of my "Documents" areas, such as my zipped POP3 emails (Thunderbird), my correspondence and my spreadsheets. 
• (f) WinZip (version 16.5) - to ZIP selected parts of my working data (the POP3 emails for example), so those ZIPs can be sent in turn up to Amazon S3 by JungleDisk.

Regarding versioning of backup sessions (mentioned in an earlier post above) - Note that SyncBackSE does (optionally) maintain versions of overwritten files.  For example on my quite often opened & closed IMatch 5 database in this beta context, with all of its LOG files (pulled from my TEMP folder), plus its entire tree of test images (which change only slightly for now), my SyncBackSE script is keeping up to 200 versions of every changed file, for a time-span of (up to) 400 days.  These versions "cost" almost nothing in terms of disk space.

(For my 'live' IMatch 3 database I use SyncBackSE for my ad-hoc backups of the database and images and LOGs, and in this case I keep only 5 file versions of changed files, for a time-span of up to 90 days.)

Note also that SyncBackSE can compress its backups (optionally) into widely compatible, standard ZIP files and these ZIPS can also be deeply encrypted and/or just password-protected if desired.


Other notes:

   
• WHS can maintain a Grandfather | Father | Son type of pattern of previous backups, going back as many days, weeks and months as is feasible with a given amount of available storage.  Successive WHS backups are effectively incremental, so, along with the wonders of data deduplication ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_deduplication ) it "costs" very little in disk space to keep regular new backups on top of versions of my entire computers going back (in my case) over six months.
• Sadly the Server 2003 version of WHS becomes unsupported by Microsoft in a few months' time, along with XP.  But most frustratingly, the later editions of WHS do not include that superbly effective data-deduplication feature! It's a mystery why Microsoft are dropping it!
• I also moved away from TrueImage in 2010 after a huge loss of confidence in it. I felt that in some senses I was unwise not to keep upgrading TI versions past the 2010 version (mainly (they said) to maintain compatibility with newer hardware) but the TI community at the time were in uproar about the later-version install-hiccups and rescue-disk issues and yes, the very unwelcome bloat too - so I moved onto Macrium Reflect, with no regrets.
• The current version of the JungleDisk Client (which is now rather dated) is able - remarkably - to upload only the changed portions of my 60+MB of zipped email data, so usually only a few hundred KB of data pass up to S3 each day!!

CORRECTION: On that JungleDisk Client program - once upon a time in the past it was able somehow to extract and upload only changed portions of (some) ZIP archives - really really really it did, for sure, I have no doubt about it ...     ... but I see from my recent JungleDisk logs that it hasn't been doing this with my 60MB zips for a long time!!  Maybe I changed the ZIP compression-type at some point (because WinZip gives lots of compression options), but whatever - it was remarkable when it once achieved that trick, but clearly it's not something to count on it doing in future.

I rehearse my WHS and my Macrium "backup recovery" schemes now and then - so I know they (still) work.

[Steps onto soap-box] We all know, don't we, that unless we have tested and proven our backup-recovery plans, that our backups are potentially useless! [Steps off soap-box]

Too long a reply, sorry! 

Colin P.