As I have written here before I am looking for a fairly simple but reliable back up for my system. What are the experiences of the above, any comments? I know it is not cheap at £120.72 on Amazon.
How much data do you need to backup, BB?
Admittedly not that much, but it "rolls over". I do have rather a lot of data as I have all the UK's Os maps scale 1:25000, also hundreds of books for my Kindle. I could add it up if it is important.
It's just that I wouldn't rely on a single 3TB drive for back. If it fails, everything is gone.
Although now I tend not to archive from the computer, the computer has all my data so that in the event of a backup HDD failure the attached computer has all the files. However photos and music are duplicated separately elsewhere and backed up again.
That is true, though normally peeps back up to a drive and rely on that. I guess it is possible that your machine goes tilt at the same time as your backup disk, remotely possible I would have thought. Not many people back up to 2 separate disc drives me thinks.
Five in my case... ;)
Quote from: Steve on Oct 08, 2012, 11:19:22
Although now I tend not to archive from the computer, the computer has all my data so that in the event of a backup HDD failure the attached computer has all the files. However photos and music are duplicated separately elsewhere and backed up again.
This is basically what I do. I have the PC, a backup drive and a backup DVD/mini drive.
The backup drive is an image of the PC, it contains "everything". The mini drive/DVD collection is just my personal files that I'd not want to loose. So if the PC dies, I can recover. If the backup dies, I can make another from the PC. If both die, well I spend a day reinstalling everything and just put my files/docs back up with the DVDs or the mini drive.
Granted, it's not fool proof over fire/flood, but we can't all live in bullet proof submarines for protection. :D
I wondered why people were giving me strange looks. :)
The more I go into this business of having a fail safe backup the more difficult it seems to become. OK, I can back up all my data and be secure, but the trouble starts when I want to fully backup the system disk. My machine only has one physical hard drive which is split into 2, drive c: and d: It is impossible to add another disk in my machine, so I have several USB drives, that works fine. However I read that Window 7 will not let you boot off external disks, so there does not seem much point in cloning the system disk. What is the solution?
The Paragon software I posted the other day creates a Linux boot disc, that allows you to do full or incremental back ups including cloning the drive. http://www.idnetters.co.uk/forums/index.php/topic,29734.0.html
I think that's it until dare I say Windows 8. ie Linux boot disk and then restore the cloned drive via a USB drive
Sorry to be such a pain, but have any of you done this for real? The reason I ask is that quite a number of people have relied on systems then after, perhaps a long time of apparently successful operation when they have had a system crash the restore failed. Acronis was one where this seemed to happen quite often. Acronis gave a refund in each case, but that is not what you want is it? I am hesitant to try any system in the real world to verify it.
I always test a backup, it's no good getting to crisis point and than finding it doesn't work. Acronis has always done for me.
Quote from: Broadback on Oct 10, 2012, 17:05:04
Sorry to be such a pain, but have any of you done this for real? The reason I ask is that quite a number of people have relied on systems then after, perhaps a long time of apparently successful operation when they have had a system crash the restore failed. Acronis was one where this seemed to happen quite often. Acronis gave a refund in each case, but that is not what you want is it? I am hesitant to try any system in the real world to verify it.
I'm fitting a SSD in my laptop over the weekend (if Amazon deliver it on time) so will be testing Paragon then, I already have the image. if it doesn't work, then I will use my default WHS 2012 image of the laptop.
Quote from: Broadback on Oct 10, 2012, 17:05:04
Sorry to be such a pain, but have any of you done this for real? The reason I ask is that quite a number of people have relied on systems then after, perhaps a long time of apparently successful operation when they have had a system crash the restore failed. Acronis was one where this seemed to happen quite often. Acronis gave a refund in each case, but that is not what you want is it? I am hesitant to try any system in the real world to verify it.
I have. Got a nasty root exploiting virus. As I'd done a backup image the month before, I rolled back the entire PC to before the infection. Other times I've used files from the image if I deleted the wrong thing. As to my "documents and pictures", I still have DVDs lying around with stuff from college and photos from holiday, plus an easy accessible copy of them all on an external drive.
That's using windows 7 backup only. I'll probably be going to paragon free edition later this week. Just got to plug in the new(er) HDD I'm going to use for backup (gave the old one to family, scroungers! :D).
Quote from: Rik on Oct 10, 2012, 17:37:56
I always test a backup, it's no good getting to crisis point and than finding it doesn't work. Acronis has always done for me.
I would agree with Rik that when I used Windows sometime ago I managed a complete restore with Acronis probably version 9?? my most recent successes have been with WHS which always seemed to work.
It's that boring old f*rt again. OK I made a back up of my drives C:&D: using Paragon, all went well. However if I get a total crash and cannot run Windows how do I access and run Paragon please? Hopefully I can make a boot DVD with it on, directions would be great! TIA
Once you click on the Backup & Restore icon, there is an option to burn a bootable CD.
Doh! It never occurred to me to look in tools! :red: Many thanks Glenn.
Well that was easy, DVD boots fine and can explore the discs. Now all I need to do is pluck up courage,corrupt my system disc and do a restore. :swoon:
Ah, the sweaty palm moment... ;)
Brown trousers at the ready? :)x
Quote from: Broadback on Oct 12, 2012, 11:50:40
Well that was easy, DVD boots fine and can explore the discs. Now all I need to do is pluck up courage,corrupt my system disc and do a restore. :swoon:
I'd say... don't! :P
It is best practice to test backups and emergency procedures. It is also best practice not to do so on your main system! (Just in case) :laugh:
Can you do a practice run on a spare laptop? An old HDD, or something? Hmmm. A "dry run" where you go through the menus, but don't press the buttons? :P
Although, you never know, you might be surprised. I managed to recover a whole disk after 3 days of tinkering with it.
PS, am testing Paragon Backup free now. Handy that it allows you to do file compression as part of the backup (you can in default Windows 7 backup utility, but have to work around the settings to do it).
Although, I was certain when I tired it on Win XP it gave me the option to choose specific folders. It did not in Win 7, but I might have just pressed the "wizard" button instead of the custom or something. I'll look at the other settings later.
While waiting it shows "backup in progress: Yes, I'm still doing it. Still backing up. May as well make a cup of tea. I'm still here backing up" etc as a little joke. :P
No idea if the XP and Win 7 versions are different. I can't find the option to do individual file transfers, so I might go back to the in built windows 7 option.
Supplementary question on Paragon. I backed a disk drive up, deleted the data then restored it. It has worked fine, but I had to reload my machine before it recognised the drive as being present, is that normal, or am I missing something?
No idea BB, it didn't like what I wanted to do, clone an active partition on a hard drive, to a SSD. I think the issue was the partition size was slightly larger than the SSD, even though there was less than 25% of the space used.
I think that's in the settings. I got it to happily put a 250 + 250 drive partitions (one 500 divided in half, only 60% used) on a single 150 partition (250 drive on a 150/100 partition). Yes, those partitions sound silly, but I got to test it out. :P
I used compression, and did not do a "copy all sectors" or whatever it's called for a true perfect image copy. I just did a data copy of the image.