Backup Strategy

[jch2103]

Following the advice here, I began using Macrium Reflect Free about six months ago to start backing up my computer (256 GB SSD plus a 2 TB hard disk currently ~ 1/3 full), including photos, to a MyCloudEX2Ultra (2 x 4 TB, RAID 1). I had been running monthly complete backups plus daily differential backups. I currently have enough room on the target for about 2-3 full monthly backups plus a month's worth of differential daily backups. (I also use two USB portable disks for backup.)

I took advantage of a recent Macrium sale to upgrade to Reflect Home, and now have the option of incremental as well as differential backups. I know that incremental backups offer the advantage of taking less space, but with the potential downside of needing all incremental backups to be intact for a restore. I also see something in the documentation about synthetic full backups and delta incremental backups that I don't fully understand yet.

I'd be interested in any recommendations on how to best configure my Macrium backups, especially regarding incremental/differential. Everyone's needs are of course different, but any insights would be welcome.

[sinus]

That is a good question.
I use Macrium Reflect also. I think, this is a good program.

But to be honest, it is also not really clear for me, what to use best.
Without having a real reason, I use not differential, but all full or/and incremental.

I do also not know, does this, what I do, make sense: I delete from time to time all files, what the backup has created (full and incremental) and start a full new backup.

And, finally, people like you and me, I guess, can somehow manage a quite good backup-system, but if I think a my brother or millions of other user, nowadays backups are still really too complicated.

Say there would be a system, I put in a (big) harddisk (for example external), let run a backup and in the end all would be backuped including windows and so on, this would be fine, thought it would take a lot of time.
But after this I would know, all is backuped. A week later the same, and the program would decide, not me, if differential, incremental or what else, this I would call much more user-friedly.
Systems now are "computer-specialists-friendly".

My 2-cents. 

[Mario]

The decision of incremental (less space, more risk) and deferential (more disk space, more save) is usually made by looking at 3 factors: How large is your backup disk? How much data needs to be backed up each day (do you change 2 GB or 20 GB of data a day) and the retention time (how long do you need your backups).

[Jingo]

When I was on my MAC system... I used to use Carbon Copy Cloner to backup my system... main OS drive was a complete backup every night.. photo drive was incremental (only photos that were modified or added were backed up).  What was great about that program is I could just go to the backup drive and see all the files just like I can on my master drives... no need to load software to see the files, etc.  Also, there was the option to leave deleted files on the backup disk even if they were removed from the Master (or not - up to you).  This saved me many time when I needed a document that had been deleted off my main drive because I thought I no longer needed it...

I haven't been able to find anything on the windows platform that matches this type of functionality (welcome suggestions!)... I currently use Genie Backup Manager which has some similar features but still puts backups under its own "drive" folders so while not a simple 1-1 like CCC allowed, this comes pretty close.

For me - since I only modified or add a few hundred files a day, incremental backups makes the most sense... though I do run a differential backup monthly and that would quicken a restore.  Lots of options... don't think one is really best - well.. until you have to do a full restore!

[Mario]

I produce ~20GB of backup data every day.
With Reflect you can just mount your backup drives as disks. And that even individually for each day you have in your backup. Which means you can go back your entire hard disk(s) day-by-day for several weeks. Which is awesome.

[JohnZeman]

I also use Macrium Reflect and have chosen an even and odd method of backing everything up.

My computer has two hard drives.

A 500GB  C: drive which contains Windows and all of the installed programs.  At the first of each month I do a full image of my C: drive and then for the rest of the month I do incremental images.  The even and odd system refers to months, meaning I back up to one destination on the even months (February, April, June, August, October and December) and then I'll back up to a different destination on the odd months (January, March, May, July, September and November).  This gives me two months of C: drive images that I can restore my computer from.

My second hard drive is a 4TB D: drive that holds "my stuff", IMatch databases, my photos, etc.  I use an even and odd incrementals forever file backup method on the D: drive.  I have my incrementals forever limit set to 60 for both the even and odd months which means I can go back up to a year or so to restore any files.  If I reach the 60 incremental backup limit then Reflect automatically starts merging the oldest incremental backup with the original full backup.  Which theoretically means I would never have to do another full backup of my D: drive again if I didn't want to.  I like Reflect but I'm not trusting it enough to rely on the incrementals forever backup strategy forever, so at the beginning of each year I start all over from scratch and do a full backup of the D: drive again.

I backup to a 16TB Drobo system.  Whenever I swap out a hard drive, which I do every 18 months or so as preventive maintenance, I put the old hard drives in my bank safety deposit box downtown.

This system works very well for me.

[JohnZeman]

Along the same lines I also use CrystalDiskInfo to take advantage of the recent technology where your computer can analyze the condition of your hard drives before they fail.

It's a free tool and I find it to be very useful.  Here's a link that explains how it works: http://www.howtogeek.com/134735/how-to-see-if-your-hard-drive-is-dying/

[Mario]

A note, from personal experience:  S.M.A.R.T does cannot always predict dooming hard-disk failure. I have lost many disks in the past which showed perfect S.M.A.R.T scores before. Sometimes they power-down in the evening and newer power up again 

Which is why I do backups, use mirror RAID for important data. I hope that the switch to SSD also reduces the failure rate. No mechanical parts 

[JohnZeman]

That doesn't surprise me Mario, I've also learned hard drives can be like light bulbs.  Fine one day then the next time you flip the switch they're no good.

At least CrystalDiskInfo can give us some insight as to what's going on with the hard drives.  I also like the way it can give me a powered up hour count for each drive.

[jch2103]

Another question re backups: If you use cloud backups (e.g., OneDrive, etc.) for cloud backups of Macrium backups, how do you protect against the threat of ransomware (assuming the usual precautions against ransomware such as keeping system up to date, never opening unknown source attachments, etc., etc., etc.)? Despite precautions, it's always possible for a threat to succeed through accident, zero day exploit, etc.

Ransomware can encrypt all local drives, possibly including cloud backups. Mario uses BoxCryptor to encrypt files before uploading them, but I don't think this would protect against a ransomware threat. I presume keeping incremental backups in the cloud for an extended time would be part of the strategy, but this assume the cloud backup itself is safe against ransomware...

I believe some cloud backup systems are relatively safe because they aren't mounted as 'local' drives (e.g., as I believe DropBox does), but I don't know the details.

[Mario]

Ransomware may be able to infect also your cloud storage - if it can reach them. If it encrypts data in your OneDrive/DropBox/Google Drive folder, the encrypted data will be synchronized into the cloud, replacing good data with bad data.

The only security measure is to keep histories of your backups on media physically disconnected from your PC. And that for many weeks. Like, a USB disk is only connected when you do your weekly / monthly backup and then plugged out again. No way for any Ransomware or virus to reach the data.

[cthomas]

When I was Network Administrator I used Differential and Full backups. The reason for using Differential vs Incremental Is you have a lot less images to keep up with and since we kept our backups in a bank box it took a lot less space. As far as your backup is concerned it doesn't matter whether you us Differential or Incremental the difference comes in when your doing a restore: For example if you use a Full + Differential to do a restore you would need your Full + 1 Differential on the other hand if you do a Full backup and Incremental. To do a restore you would need your Full + 1, 2, 3, or maybe 4 Incremental. http://knowledgebase.macrium.com/display/KNOW/Differential+and+incremental+disk+images#Differentialandincrementaldiskimages-IncrementalImages Disadvantage of incremental images: All files must be present in the image set. If any intermediate incremental images are missing, it is not possible to restore the system to the latest backup.

[sinus]

When I was Network Administrator I used Differential and Full backups. The reason for using Differential vs Incremental Is you have a lot less images to keep up with and since we kept our backups in a bank box it took a lot less space. As far as your backup is concerned it doesn't matter whether you us Differential or Incremental the difference comes in when your doing a restore: For example if you use a Full + Differential to do a restore you would need your Full + 1 Differential on the other hand if you do a Full backup and Incremental. To do a restore you would need your Full + 1, 2, 3, or maybe 4 Incremental. http://knowledgebase.macrium.com/display/KNOW/Differential+and+incremental+disk+images#Differentialandincrementaldiskimages-IncrementalImages Disadvantage of incremental images: All files must be present in the image set. If any intermediate incremental images are missing, it is not possible to restore the system to the latest backup.

Thanks, Carl, interesting!

[sinus]

I also use Macrium Reflect and have chosen an even and odd method of backing everything up.

My computer has two hard drives.

A 500GB  C: drive which contains Windows and all of the installed programs.  At the first of each month I do a full image of my C: drive and then for the rest of the month I do incremental images.  The even and odd system refers to months, meaning I back up to one destination on the even months (February, April, June, August, October and December) and then I'll back up to a different destination on the odd months (January, March, May, July, September and November).  This gives me two months of C: drive images that I can restore my computer from.

My second hard drive is a 4TB D: drive that holds "my stuff", IMatch databases, my photos, etc.  I use an even and odd incrementals forever file backup method on the D: drive.  I have my incrementals forever limit set to 60 for both the even and odd months which means I can go back up to a year or so to restore any files.  If I reach the 60 incremental backup limit then Reflect automatically starts merging the oldest incremental backup with the original full backup.  Which theoretically means I would never have to do another full backup of my D: drive again if I didn't want to.  I like Reflect but I'm not trusting it enough to rely on the incrementals forever backup strategy forever, so at the beginning of each year I start all over from scratch and do a full backup of the D: drive again.

I backup to a 16TB Drobo system.  Whenever I swap out a hard drive, which I do every 18 months or so as preventive maintenance, I put the old hard drives in my bank safety deposit box downtown.

This system works very well for me.

Hm, John,
very interesting.
I mean, this scenario, what you describes, a C drive and a (mostly bigger) D - Drive does have a lot of people, I think.

And also a lot of people does have windows on drive C.

So I would think, that it should be possible to have a good and quite save backup-strategie for such a scenario.
Your described scenario, do  you think, this is quite save for you?

To be sure:
-You do all backups on one 16 TB Drobo system? Means 1 backup target (I do not know, what Drobo is).
-If windows would fail to start, hm, you could restore the whole system? (Macrium has such a special option for this, create an image, you do not use this?)
-So, in the badest case, your C and/or D and 16 TB Drobo could go defect. In this case you would have at least the last harddrive in your deposit box, what would be in the badest case 17 month old?

I think, the time to restore is not that important.
More important is, to be sure, if NOW for example nothing would go, my HD would be dead, I could go, take my backup source and restore the whole computer.
What leads also to easy questions, like ok, my PC does not start, the backup HD does not fit in the old place of the defect HD, what can I do, to restart my PC?

I ask such a lot of questions, because I think, I should adapt your system, if you think, it is quite safe. 

[Jingo]

I think the biggest issue in determining incremental vs differential is how often the files update (or new files are added).  I have a 1TB drive that gets backed up nightly... .the full backup takes 4 hrs to complete.. incremental backups are about 10 minutes depending on the number of changed or new files on that drive.  If using differential, over time, this backup time could grow to many hours - approaching the 4hr completion time when a new Full would be in order. 

Also, I use a non-compressed backup which allows me to see the files I might need to restore individually in explorer without having to open an archive... with the imcremental system - this gets updated automatically and appears as a single directory of images.

In the end... I guess each system is good... just depends on your approach.

[JohnZeman]

-You do all backups on one 16 TB Drobo system? Means 1 backup target (I do not know, what Drobo is).

Markus a Drobo is similar to a RAID system, basically it's an external hard drive system that automatically backs up anything you copy to it.  So when I back up to a Drobo I'm putting two copies of each file on it and each copy of the file is on a different hard drive.  My Drobo consists of 5 hard drives, if one of those hard drives goes bad I just unplug it from the Drobo, slide in a different hard drive to replace it, and the Drobo restores everything to a dual redundancy status (so there are two copies of each of my files on the Drobo).

And if the Drobo itself fails, my data would still be safe.  I'd have to buy a new Drobo but all I'd have to do is to plug the hard drives form the old bad Drobo into the new one and I'd be back up and running again.  At least that's what Drobo claims, I've never had to do that yet.

-If windows would fail to start, hm, you could restore the whole system? (Macrium has such a special option for this, create an image, you do not use this?)

Yes, and yes, I do create an image of my C: drive, two of them actually.  One image for even months, the other for odd months.  At the beginning of each month I create a brand new image to replace the old one then I  do incremental images the rest of the month.

What leads also to easy questions, like ok, my PC does not start, the backup HD does not fit in the old place of the defect HD, what can I do, to restart my PC?

It doesn't matter if the backup HD fits or not.  Replace the bad HD in your computer with a new one and you can restore your computer from your external backup hard drive, or for me, the Drobo.  If it's your main Windows hard drive that went bad you will need to have created a rescue disk beforehand, my rescue disk is a 16GB USB flash drive stick.  When the Windows HD goes bad, with the computer off I plug in my rescue disk and temporarily boot the computer up on that.  The rescue disk has the files needed to restore your full backup or image from whatever you are using as a backup hard drive.

I ask such a lot of questions, because I think, I should adapt your system, if you think, it is quite safe

I'm happy with it.  I'm just a retired old fart and my files would be of no interest to anyone else but they are very important to me.  If I could think of a better and safer way to keep my data safe, I'd do it. 

[Jingo]

John - you have a good system... my only addition would be to put your IMPORTANT photos/documents, etc on a separate external drive and get it into a fire safe or outside of your residence if possible.  In the event of a fire (or break-in) or hacking - your backups will be toast as well as your main data.  Having this data offline in a safe spot will help you at least get some of this back....

[JohnZeman]

John - you have a good system... my only addition would be to put your IMPORTANT photos/documents, etc on a separate external drive and get it into a fire safe or outside of your residence if possible.  In the event of a fire (or break-in) or hacking - your backups will be toast as well as your main data.  Having this data offline in a safe spot will help you at least get some of this back....

Thanks Jingo, and I agree with you.  For preventative reasons I replace my hard drives once a year and when I do I'll put the ones I take out of the computer into my bank safety deposit box downtown.  True, that means I could lose up to a year's worth of files but I'd still have the majority of my data.  I'm also keeping a fair amount of my data on a cloud now too.

[cthomas]

The worst backup system is the one that does not get used. And this is the biggest challenge for people who have jobs. Now the best, now I said the best backup is the one that gets used every day.

Good morning JohnZeman.Where as people like this old man.  Who has plenty of time  should be able to do the best backups.

[Jingo]

The worst backup system is the one that does not get used. And this is the biggest challenge for people who have jobs. Now the best, now I said the best backup is the one that gets used every day.

Good morning JohnZeman.Where as people like this old man.  Who has plenty of time  should be able to do the best backups.

Agree 100%... not much on an excuse really with scheduled jobs... my backups go off each night at 2am, 3:15am and 4am... all finished by 4:30am at the latest.  These jobs back up data across 5 partitions including a NAS system to both internal and external drives.  With differential backups on my most important work - I have 6 days of restore power before it gets blown over... then, the process repeats.  The other data is on incremental schedules for 2 weeks.. after which it the oldest set gets purged and a new set (full/incremental) created.  I also perform a manual clone of my OS drive monthly in case of hard disk or other disaster...  Main drives also get cloned to External USB and put in fire safe on a monthly basis...

With today's software and cheap drives, backups are very easy to automate and perform.... highly encourage everyone to at least do the minimum and backup their photos securely and safely.

[sinus]

The worst backup system is the one that does not get used. And this is the biggest challenge for people who have jobs. Now the best, now I said the best backup is the one that gets used every day.

Good morning JohnZeman.Where as people like this old man.  Who has plenty of time  should be able to do the best backups.

Agree 100%... not much on an excuse really with scheduled jobs... my backups go off each night at 2am, 3:15am and 4am... all finished by 4:30am at the latest. 

Is there not also the danger of fire?
I had really, 2 years ago, a fire in one of my computer. When I realised it, it does some, then it begun to fire (flames), but I was then there and could unplug the pc. But all was defect.
After that I read about the danger of fire ... and it seems, it is not that unusual!

Since then I am always a bit anxious to let run my pc too long alone. 

[cthomas]

Is there not also the danger of fire?

Since then I am always a bit anxious to let run my pc too long alone. 

That is another reason I want to set up a backup that runs every hour. Paranoid maybe but I would rather be safe then sorry. 

[sinus]

Is there not also the danger of fire?

Since then I am always a bit anxious to let run my pc too long alone. 

That is another reason I want to set up a backup that runs every hour. Paranoid maybe but I would rather be safe then sorry. 

Better safe ... yep, I agree.

Though I do it not every hour, but every day.

[Jingo]

The worst backup system is the one that does not get used. And this is the biggest challenge for people who have jobs. Now the best, now I said the best backup is the one that gets used every day.

Good morning JohnZeman.Where as people like this old man.  Who has plenty of time  should be able to do the best backups.

Agree 100%... not much on an excuse really with scheduled jobs... my backups go off each night at 2am, 3:15am and 4am... all finished by 4:30am at the latest. 

Is there not also the danger of fire?
I had really, 2 years ago, a fire in one of my computer. When I realised it, it does some, then it begun to fire (flames), but I was then there and could unplug the pc. But all was defect.
After that I read about the danger of fire ... and it seems, it is not that unusual!

Since then I am always a bit anxious to let run my pc too long alone. 

There is the danger of fire in ANY electric device... do you unplug your fridge, oven, tv's and other devices each evening?  Been using computers for over 25 years.. I have 2 that run 24/7 in my house plus a NAS... I have zero worry of them catching on fire.. anymore than my fridge or tivo doing the same.

[sinus]

There is the danger of fire in ANY electric device... do you unplug your fridge, oven, tv's and other devices each evening? 

Yes. It is also healthier.
Simply add a "general fuse" and with one click it is done. 

There is also a question, should I have an insurance or not? The old question.

Some does, some not. 

[Jingo]

Interesting... guess it depends on what else is on your fuse... over here - circuit breakers will trip well in advance of fire if a surge happens... also, surge protectors for the plugs going to the computer so little worry of fire.  :-)  I love my middle of the night backups!

[sinus]

I love my middle of the night backups!

nice to hear!