MS Backup Utility

[Custom_Grafx]

I did a quick search and couldn't find any feedback on MS Backup Utility so thought I'd post.

I currently use this on my XP to back up data files.

I perform daily incremental back up to an external HDD and I am happy with the way it works. It doesn't take long at all (about 10-20 minutes at most, including verifying files). I have had to restore my main data folder once in the last year, and without this I would have lost all my files.

Is there something else I could/should be using for regular (daily) incremental back ups that are more suitable which you could recommend? If so, how and why it is better. Or... is what I'm doing just fine for what I do? (small business).

Thanks!

 

[phototec]

I use Norton Ghost to make a complete backup disk image of my operating system on the "C" drive, and also all my data files on the C and E drives, it backs up everything to an external hard drive once a week, after backing up I remove the external hard drive and put it into a fire proof safe, till the next back up, the next week. If an external drive only runs for a few hours once a week, it will most likely work for a very long time.

Most hard drives that run constantly, will eventually wear out and not work, then you loose your backup disk image and data.

All graphic project files are stored on a different RAID 1 mirrored hard drive, because it is in use everyday, every time a file is saved, it is automatically saved on two drives, it only shows up as one drive, but all files are mirrored. In the event one of the drives fails, and they do, I will have the files on the other hard drive. As soon so I'm notified that one of the drives has failed, you simply replace the failed drive with a new one, and the software will copy all files to the new hard drive, and then again, you have the mirrored backup of all project files.

It is so much better to put this practice into play before you have a catastrophe, and then it;'s to late. All hard drives fail, it's just a matter of when?

 

[Custom_Grafx]

Thanks Photo.

Ideally, yes, a RAID setup with a ghost image of everything is what I'd like. I will be taking this path when I upgrade my PC sometime this year.

One question for RAID (I've never used it before sorry for my ignorance), what happens if there is a power surge and all your drives fail? I'm guessing this is why you have your external HDD once a week back up in place? is this correct?

 

[phototec]

what happens if there is a power surge and all your drives fail? I'm guessing this is why you have your external HDD once a week back up in place? is this correct?

Actually, that has happened to be before, so now I have a very heavy duty surge protector multi-outlet which all my external hard drives are plugged into. But yes, I have backup, of backups.

I used to work for Dell as a graphic designer, everyone in the design group had dual systems, a graphic design workstation and then a separate business computer hooked up to the Internet. We never had a design workstation connected to the Internet because of viruses. Every computer was running off of a UPS battery backup with isolation electronics to prevent surges of any kind and would operate our computers for about 20 minutes in the event of a power failure.

I have now adopted these policies in my business, I have two separate computers, actually 3 PC and two laptops, but for my graphics business, I have dual 22" monitors on a Dell Vostro quad processor running Vista Ultimate 64 with Adobe CS5 and the RAID 1 backup system which is powered by the UPS system, no power outage or surge will effect the PC, all power coming to the workstation is filtered, the workstation is ONLY used as a graphic workstation, nothing else, period.

The other computer is used for everything else (the one I'm on now), is connected to a UPS battery backup with surge isolation also. It is connected to the Internet and I have caught 3 viruses in the last two years, not a happy camper when this happens, it's a pain in the but to get the system back. However, you should learn your lesson when this happens, and for me working at Dell taught me the biggest lesson, DO NOT have Internet access or email on a graphic workstation that earns your bread and butter, period!

http://reviewsurgeprotector.com/best-surge-protector.html

 

[phototec]

At Dell we used the Tripp Lite ISOBAR8ULTRA 8-Outlet ISOBAR Surge Protector, so I figured if it was good enough for Dell it would work for me to. It comes with 50,000 Ultimate Lifetime Insurance; lifetime product warranty.


Product Features

• Ultimate protection with 3840-joule surge suppression rating
• Exclusive isolated filter banks eliminate line noise interference
• Indestructible all-metal case won?t crack, burn or melt
• 8 surge-protected AC outlets, widely spaced to accommodate up to 4 transformers
• $50,000 Ultimate Lifetime Insurance; lifetime product warranty

http://www.amazon.com/Tripp-Lite-ISOBAR8ULTRA-8-Outlet-Protector/dp/tech-data/B0000511U7

 

[Custom_Grafx]

Thanks for all the useful info.

I currently have a Belkin surge protector unit. Better safe than sorry for sure.

There is definitely no limit to what can be done to protect the data - but alas, I also have a budget...

Just running one computer, no huge amounts of data, looking for a reasonably reliable plan for regular back up routine and a reliable system for data storage, what would your recommendations be?

I'm thinking...

The RAID system, a daily incremental backup to external drive, a good anti virus/firewall, ghosting... anything else?

You mentioned you ghost your drive once a week. Does this mean you don't do incremental back up? Is there a down side to incremental back up over doing a full back up/ghost as you do?

 

[choucove]

If you don't have the hardware to go with a full RAID system, I would suggest taking at look at Cobian Backup. It's a free program that will also install a scheduled service. You can configure what files will be copied and to where, set a schedule, and it does it all automatically. It can be used as a simple backup utility - to just copy selected folders such as "My Documents" onto an external drive - all the way up to a disc cloning utility - where the entire hard drive including programs and operating system are duplicated onto a separate drive. The power of using Cobian Backup (or another one that I like is Backup Magic) is you have TONS of options for customizing backup options. There are options for setting the schedule, parameters to exclude certain files or file types (such as pagefile.sys), and you can even have it send you notifications by email if a backup is missed or errors.

Perhaps the greatest benefit of this kind of backup is your data isn't being compressed or packaged up into a single file that required a specific program (and usually a very specific version of that specific program) to be able to open again in the case you need to retrieve or recover your data. Instead it's a straight over copy just like using the "copy" "paste" functionality.

Look at it this way. If you're using a program like Norton Ghost or MS Backup, it's going to make an image file of your system that is saved as a specific file for that specific version and build of the program. You then save this image file onto a flash drive. Now tomorrow you come in and your hard drive has died. To get your data back now you must put in a new hard drive, install Windows back onto the computer along with your necessary backup program like Norton Ghost (unless you have a pre-built boot CD ready that works with your system) and THEN you can select and rebuild your data since you now have the program installed which can view the files. If instead you have a straight clone of your drive such as using Cobian or Backup Magic, all you have to do is take that external drive with all the files from your backup copy, plug it in to any other computer out there, and you have access to all your files in less than a couple minutes.

If you've been doing backups of your entire system drive using Cobian or Backup Magic onto a separate hard drive, then you also have the ability to just directly swap out hard drives in the case your system drive fails. I've had to do this a couple times before, where the system's hard drive fails, so we just pull apart the external drive and install it in the computer and they're up and going in less than 10 minutes.

Further, it is not limited by a set hardware platform. If you're making images of your system, you're also copying over all the drivers and everything specific to that computer which means if your whole computer dies, you have to get a new completely different computer to replace it, then that backup clone will not work on your new system as the drivers and platform are different. It will not work. With a straight over copy of your data you can plug in that external data to any computer at all, and have access to all files on the computer.

 

[Custom_Grafx]

Thank you Choucove, that makes a lot of sense.

I'm going to look into that software you've mentioned.

If it's something that keeps the files the same format and not in a proprietary format, that's GREAT!

Can you still do things like incremental back ups and the such? Or does it just copy/paste everything? I really do like the incremental option, as it makes the process very fast compared to doing a full back up.

 

[choucove]

You can set the backup type on both Cobian Backup and Backup Magic to be either a full backup or incremental. In Backup Magic it is named something a little different, the incremental backup is called "Mirrored" where it basically copies over any files that have been changed since the last backup, any new files, and deletes those files which have also been deleted in the source location. It does help speed up the backup process tremendously.

Just as an example, at our offices we use Backup Magic to handle all the actual backup processes for our workstation computers and our servers. With Backup Magic it doesn't actually set up a scheduled service within the program, instead all it does is build the backup information that is needed and then creates a file that basically stores those parameters. Double click that file like opening any file and it will just start up the backup. To set it to run automatically I created a batch script in Windows to start that file. I then set up a scheduled task using Windows to run that batch script at the desired times.

Because of this slightly more complex system of setting up schedule backups I actually like Cobian Backup a little more as it's all done within the program, no batch scripts or Windows Scheduled Tasks required.

Doing a full backup of our server at one office of about 500GB of data from the source drive onto an external USB hard drive takes a little less than 2 hours. The daily automatic "mirrored" backup through Backup Magic takes about 1 minute to copy the data that has changed since the last backup.

 

[CES020]

Just a side note on the surge suppressors. Make sure they have the "insurance" (i.e. $50,000 worth of coverage) and make sure you do not throw the box or the receipt away. I had one fail and a spike took out my home computers hard drive, which wasn't backed up (years ago). I filed a claim and they paid for data recovery services for 2 drives. I had priced it at the time and they wanted about $2,500 per drive to recover it after I sent them the discs to analyze and quote. I'm sure those services are less expensive these days.

They paid the full $5,000 to the company and I got all of my digital photos back that were stored on those drives.

One thing to note is that in some of the fine print, it says clearly that a photocopy of the receipt or UPC code is not good enough. That's why I said to keep the box and the original receipt.

It saved my bacon. I couldn't afford $5,000 to get my photos back at the time, and I had just lost a family member with 100's and 100's of photos of him on those drives.

 

[phototec]

Just a side note on the surge suppressors. Make sure they have the "insurance" (i.e. $50,000 worth of coverage) and make sure you do not throw the box or the receipt away. I had one fail and a spike took out my home computers hard drive, which wasn't backed up (years ago). I filed a claim and they paid for data recovery services for 2 drives. I had priced it at the time and they wanted about $2,500 per drive to recover it after I sent them the discs to analyze and quote. I'm sure those services are less expensive these days.

They paid the full $5,000 to the company and I got all of my digital photos back that were stored on those drives.

One thing to note is that in some of the fine print, it says clearly that a photocopy of the receipt or UPC code is not good enough. That's why I said to keep the box and the original receipt.

It saved my bacon. I couldn't afford $5,000 to get my photos back at the time, and I had just lost a family member with 100's and 100's of photos of him on those drives.

Thanks CES020,

Good info to go along with my thoughts of having a good heavy duty surge protector.

Now I have to find that receipt, I know the box is in the attic, I have every box that any high value component came in stored in my attic. I even have the box for my Roland SP540v less the wood pallet in the attic.

 

[cdiesel]

We've been discussing his with our IT guy the past week or so. Right now we have two 10TB Synology file servers (running RAID 6) that are backed up nightly onto external HDD's. What we're looking at now is automating the nightly backup via the internet. We're planning on installing two more 10TB servers at my house, and mirroring them to protect more against fire/theft. Right now we swap out the HDD's, but it's a pain.
The file servers have their own backup utilities, but using a different program that doesn't compress & combine the files would be ideal.

 

[choucove]

Chris, you can use Cobian to perform off-site backups as well just like you are describing. The only thing I have a concern with when using an off-site backup system for a large amount of data is the amount of time it takes to back everything up and the reliability of the connection from point A to point B.

A lot of places have great internet speed and services available, but it's not always the case. Take, for instance, our internet here. We had played with the idea of doing a remote offsite backup of our Hay's office data (about 250GB total, located an hour and a half away from our main office) onto our primary server in Colby. The backup would be done nightly and would only be incremental to help save on time. However, the fastest internet connection available really is a 3 Mb/s download and 1 Mb/s upload speed at both sides. Even going at the theoretical maximum speed possible between the locations, it could take between five and ten hours to back up the data that was new or modified somehow just in one day's work. Not only that but our internet service out here can be a little flaky sometimes, meaning you may get a random sporadic drop in service even if only for a few seconds. However, a network communication drop even for a second during that long backup process means a failed backup and everything errors out. We just couldn't really justify it here for the hassle and potential problems it posed here.

Again, that being said, your internet speed and reliability there may be much better that it is feasible to do off-site backups of your primary data but it would very likely have to be done every night as an incremental backup.

This is all getting somewhat into the idea of cloud computing, which is something that I have been doing some planning and looking into. Microsoft, Google, Apple, and a number of other major technology companies out there are making a push towards cloud computing where everything is run or backed up onto the internet somehow.

 

[phototec]

If you've been doing backups of your entire system drive using Cobian or Backup Magic onto a separate hard drive, then you also have the ability to just directly swap out hard drives in the case your system drive fails. I've had to do this a couple times before, where the system's hard drive fails, so we just pull apart the external drive and install it in the computer and they're up and going in less than 10 minutes.

Further, it is not limited by a set hardware platform. If you're making images of your system, you're also copying over all the drivers and everything specific to that computer which means if your whole computer dies, you have to get a new completely different computer to replace it, then that backup clone will not work on your new system as the drivers and platform are different. It will not work. With a straight over copy of your data you can plug in that external data to any computer at all, and have access to all files on the computer.

Ok, I agree with you about Norton Ghost, it does compress the back up files and If (when) I loose my OS hard drive, I would need Ghost installed on the new drive before I can retrieve my files and OS.

I like your idea of a clone (duplicate) HD to just be able to swap out in the event of my OS HD crashing, so let me get this straight?

You are saying I can pre-purchase a 500-750 GB internal hard drive on sale, use Cobian or Backup Magic and make a complete copy of my current OS (Windows XP), all current drivers, all applications (Adobe CS), etc onto the new back-up hard drive, then store it away in a safe place, I don't need the data files on this drive, because I have them backed up on a separate external designated for ONLY data files no OS or applications.


Then when my internal hard drive fails (it will, just don't know when), I can simply open my case, remove the bad internal 750GB with OS, and install the previously created clone (mentioned above and in your post), hard drive, turn on the system and the computer will start up with the OS, all applications and drivers as if nothing has happened?

I have never heard of this before, If this is true, I will do this right away, Fry's has internal hard drives on sale all the time, I'll get one and make the clone and have it ready to go.

ARE YOU 100% SURE you can do this and it works as you described?

What about the licensing with the OS, etc.?

 

[choucove]

Phototec, if you're wanting to use JUST Cobian Backup to basically make a complete clone of your primary OS hard drive, there are some limitations. Cobian Backup (and any software out there for that matter) cannot copy, move, or modify certain system files such as USER.DAT located in your user account folder while you are logged in to the computer as that user. There are some other files or folders as well, but that is one big key file that comes to mind at the moment.

The only way to make a full clone of one hard drive to another on your primary operating system drive is to make a backup WITHOUT being logged in or running within Windows. Even Acronis TrueImage cannot make a full disc clone while running within Windows, it can only be done from a boot disc.

What I do any time I am working with a customer's hard drive is to use an Acronis TrueImage boot CD, load into the software (before Windows even starts up) and select to make a direct clone of the disc from its source (the internal hard drive) onto an external hard drive. Acronis is very easy to work with to do this, it's pretty cheap software, and I bet I use it nearly every day to do just this. Once the cloning completes, you can take out the original hard drive, plug in the external hard drive and everything powers up just as it was running before. What it sounds like you are describing and wanting to do above, Phototec, I would recommend going with Acronis and a boot CD to make a full disc clone and put it up for safe keeping. We do that on all the systems at our office.

Cobian Backup is a very powerful software for moving data, but if you're wanting to use it for a full disc cloning utility on your primary operating system drive then it might not be able to back up and clone some certain files which COULD cause issues if you just directly swapped out the external backup hard drive to use as your primary drive.

I apologize that the last paragraph you quoted above was a little confusing. What I was meaning to say there is that with a backup method such as Norton, the only option after a backup is to restore your hard drive. If you have to go out and get a brand new computer with a completely different set of hardware in it than what was in the backed up previous computer, then when you restore it the system will not run, the drivers and hardware have changed and it will error out. This means you still won't have any access to your old data. Actually, you can retrieve the data after this point but you have to once again take that hard drive out of your computer and connect it up to some other computer as an external or spare hard drive and THEN you can view the data on the hard drive from within Windows. However, if you're using Cobian Backup (or something similar) and you have to get a brand new computer, you can still plug in the external hard drive used for your backups as an external hard drive in any other computer and be able to access all of your data as needed without having to make any restore.

 

[phototec]

What I do any time I am working with a customer's hard drive is to use an Acronis TrueImage boot CD, load into the software (before Windows even starts up) and select to make a direct clone of the disc from its source (the internal hard drive) onto an external hard drive. Acronis is very easy to work with to do this, it's pretty cheap software, and I bet I use it nearly every day to do just this. Once the cloning completes, you can take out the original hard drive, plug in the external hard drive and everything powers up just as it was running before. What it sounds like you are describing and wanting to do above, Phototec, I would recommend going with Acronis and a boot CD to make a full disc clone and put it up for safe keeping. We do that on all the systems at our office.

Yep, that's what I would like to do, I will look into Acronis, what I don't understand, is where does the boot CD come from?

 

[choucove]

Sorry, the Boot CD is part of Acronis. When you get the software, it has an option in the software to make a Rescue Boot CD (there should also just be an ISO file with the program to make this boot CD.) I almost never use the Acronis software within Windows (though it is a good software to work just like Norton Ghost.) It's the Boot CD that has all the power.

You can burn this boot CD, insert it in your computer, and you can boot up from it before your computer boots Windows XP. It has a fully functioning Acronis window to do any backups or restorations, plus you can do drive partitioning, diagnostics, and it works across a network very easily so you can even make a backup of your hard drive to an image file on a server or to an FTP website.

The boot CD has the capabilities of doing a full disc clone as well as I mentioned above. If you have questions or need any assistance with that part as well, let me know I'd be glad to help!

 

[Custom_Grafx]

Phototec, I have heard good things about Acronis, and it was recommended to me a while ago for what you have described. That person also told me they have done full restores simply by swapping the disc and it works fine.

Choucove, do you know if I was to use Acronis for back up, would it also just copy/paste my files as is like in Cobian, or does it create its own special file format for the back up?

Something interesting I read in the Cobian forum last night during research, was that the biggest disadvantage of having everything compressed into the one file is that if even one byte of data is incorrect, it renders the file corrupt. If you have single copies of each file as per Cobian's standard back up method, it's apparently a lot safer?

 

[choucove]

There are two different ways of running Acronis. First, you can install and run the software on your computer just like any other application. In this case, you can set it up to back up specific files (which will be copying from one folder to another, similar to Cobian), there is the option to make an image of an entire partition (such as a second hard drive partition just for job files) and an option to make an image of an entire disk drive (such as the operating system, boot partition, and any other partitions on the entire drive. However, if you're running Acronis from within Windows like this, the only way that I know it can work is to make an image FILE and compress everything together as a single file. I have yet to see an Acronis version that is able to do a clone without creating its own specific file format and compression from within Windows.

The second option is to run Acronis from the Boot CD, which is what I choose to do pretty much all the time. The Boot CD will allow you the option to backup (and restore) to a specific compressed file type OR you can make a direct clone of one drive to another. However, again this can only be done from the Boot CD. Any program that wants to make a complete duplicate of the operating system hard drive and successfully copy ALL system files (including the USER.DAT file I mentioned before) MUST be run outside of the Windows operating system meaning something like a boot CD.

You are also right that usually it's safer to do a backup of copying files instead of a full system backup into a single file because, just as you said, one tiny piece of information copied improperly will probably render the entire backup image file corrupt so it's all or nothing. However, if this somehow happened when performing a "copy/paste" backup like with Cobian, then it might just be that one file that would be corrupt from the momentary data corruption and you MIGHT lose that one file, but it's not going to render all of your thousands upon thousands of files corrupt.

 

[Custom_Grafx]

Thanks for the clarification.

I much rather have actual copies of each file like Cobian. It means I can instantly take my back up to say my laptop for example and instantly access my files.

If I'm in need of a system restore, then I have the discs for those programs, and will need to install everything again. For one computer, that's not such a big deal IMO.

I'm also thinking, if I want the best of both worlds, maybe I should buy Acronis, do a full clone of my drive in case of full system failure, and also do the incremental back up of individual files without compression in case I want instant access to my data.

I could run a full clone say once every two months (I don't see a need for doing it more often than this?) and I could run the data back ups daily on incremental to external HDD.

What do you think? Covers most bases this way?