Backup -Image or Normal Backup

[leehack]

This is getting me worried now

I have Acronis and make a backup daily to a USB backup disk and also have a USB stick with the Acronis backup utility on it

I understood but have not tested it yet that if my Hard disk went down I could either plug in the USB stick to either a new hard disk or new PC and then restore my information and have a duplicate setup to when I last restored as long as the new hard drive is as big or bigger than the old one

Please tell me I'm OK as you have me worried now

Chris

Ideally you want 2 identical setups or you can fall foul of hardware issues as Duncan says. The image takes the lot, including drivers, so if your second system did not have the same hardware, then it would not be the same to restore. I do similar to Duncan, but i do full backup everyday, i set it to run as soon as i go to bed, it takes about 20 mins. I do this to cover for a hard disk failure mainly. If my hard disk fails, i buy a new one, plug it in and restore the previous setup.

I also store everything i do in My Documents and backup the whole My Documents folder once a week. This is the real data i am protecting as this holds everything i am worried about. The complete image backup for me is just saving me about 10 hours loading software, drivers, updates all over again.

That's how i use it anyway.

[Mark H]

Could someone with Acronis answer me a quick question - can it be set to back up in the form of folders and individual files in native format, instead of large image files? (the reason I'm having to ask is that the reviews say it can, but I can't see anything about it in the user guide).

[Duncan Rounding]

BY native I presume you mean just like copying the files, in which case I don't think so (at least I don't thnk so in v10) - there wouldn't be much point as you can do that with xcopy anyway.

But you can choose to just backup any selected data. You can then just click on the file (on any computer with Acronis loaded) and it opens in windows explorer with the file structure. You can then copy files out as you wish.

[Mark H]

I'm looking for software to constantly mirror my data disks onto an external drive which can easily be carried out of the building at the end of the day in case of fire/burglary overnight. I've looked at syncToy and a couple of others, but they seem to fall over with relatively high volumes of data (>50Gb). Hence the reason I'm looking at NTI Shadow, but don't yet know whether this can cope. It claims to backup/mirror only those files which have been changed, and backs them up into the "mirrored disk".

I'm probably being irrational/unreasonable, but I don't trust software that lumps everything into large image files, and then says "don't worry, just press the button on a new PC (old PC stolen/burnt) and everything will be OK", I like to be able to see the individual data files on a carry out disk, and access them out of the office if I want.

As to system restoration, we have had to restore a few PCs over time, but have done this using PCs system restore disks and reloading all the software from scratch. Long winded, but very clean (speeds up the PCs!!). We don't look to backup software to do this for us.

PS, we don't use simple copy software because of the volume of data, no point in copying 75Gb data every day when only 1Gb has changed.

[Duncan Rounding]

Sounds like you want RAID1 with removeable drives. At the end of the workiing day after shutting down just pull out one of the drives and take it with you.

[Mark H]

I would but someone growls at me every time I go near the RAID drives

[leehack]

I have adopted an approach that if something growls or hisses at me, then i put my foot up its jacksie at very high speed. I'd strongly recommend it, works a treat.

[chris ashdown]

Just got this message back from Acronis Support that may assist others

Quote

With Acronis True Image Home versions you can create an image of your system or any other partition that you can restore on a computer with exactly the same hardware or to a same harddrive on the same computer. You can also clone your hard disk to another hard disk that has to be of the same type.

Restoring the image to a computer with different hardware can only be done by using the Microsoft sysprep utility or by using our corporate products for example Acronis True Image Echo Workstation in combination with Acronis Universal Restore which allows you to restore to any type of computer also with different hardware.

However if you created an image which is saved on an external drive (for example USB drive), then you can also just simply mount this image as a virtual drive and browse it to copy your files and folders from the drive to your computer. But you will not be able to restore the image itself.

[chris ashdown]

Just a last follow up, I just upgraded to the workstation option with universal restore a total upgrade of about £40.00, made my first full disk backup, which i hope solves all my problems

I was always worried that if the main computer (we have three computers networked by ethernet) ever got stolen or had fire damage ( old building and old electrics) then even with data backups we would be out of action for quite a while whilst re-loading all programs and no doubt loosing quite a few programs loaded from the web and other odd data, passwords sdo and other items which in a good run office would be safe and neatly organised (not really us i'm afraid)

So now with the aid of a USB stick and USB hard drive we should be back up and running in a couple of hours with new hardware and hopefully few or none of the above problems. Not bad for about £60 per year

[fleetwood]

Thanks for the update Chris.
Any idea if you need more than one workstation licence to swop machines ie one on original machine, one on new machine, or does universal restore mean that you don't need to have a second copy of workstation?

[chris ashdown]

Martin

Carn't say at present as its on my work computer and I at home, but I think it does other workstations as wel

There is also larger setups for bigger companies