OT _ Back up Advice - PC

[DerbyBorn]

I have just bought a Seagate 1TB back-up drive.

Should I use Windows to do the backup - or should I use the utility that is with the drive? (and why?) Please.

Many thanks

[alan_m]

What is the utility with the drive?

[DerbyBorn]

alan_m wrote in news: [e-mail]:

It offers a menu for selecting files and types to back-up

[Cursitor Doom]

Well, you need to differentiate between backing up and imaging for a start. There's a BIG difference.

[DerbyBorn]

In simple terms I guess I need to be able to resore windows if all fails - and have a compact backup of data.

[Bob Minchin]

I'd consider putting in a partition just big enough to make an image of your current disk state and the other to to incremental backups as and when you need to. Recovery would be to install the image to a new internal disk and then use the incremental backups to get to the state of the disk when the last incremental back up was made.

[dennis]

neither? one external hdd doesn't make a backup.

it does make a copy.

The problem is that at some point there will be a failure while doing the backup and you will lose both.

Maybe it will be a hardware fault or a virus that encrypts your disks or a software fault in the OS or the backup software but it will happen sooner or later.

Anyway having got the bad bit over with .. what software does it come with and which version of windows do you have?

[Cursitor Doom]

Then you need *both* by the sound of it. I've been running Linux with no issues for years. I can image a full disk (a complete, bootable operating system plus all the user's data files) in about 13 minutes by using the free utilities written for Linux. First I create one MASSIVE file of zeroes from all the unused space on the drive, then I invoke "dd" to do a byte for byte copy of all the remaining ones and zeroes on the drive whilst piping the output through a compression utility to an external drive. Never known it fail, whereas yonks ago when I used Windows and various 3rd party imaging software, I had no end of problems. Never going back to Windows!

[GB]

Windows Backup is broken in the latest release of Win 10, and MS have no intention to fix it. I think the only option is to use 3rd party backup software.

[T i m]

Ah, that explains loads.

Yup, a full 60GB disk?

That's handy (x2).

That sounds user friendly and 'hands off'.

Do you have a special chant for that and do you also need a wand?

Yup. All sounds very nooby friendly I'm sure.

Of course you haven't, why would you.

Sounds like finger trouble to me. Probably not complicated enough for you. Not enough man pages to read.

No, and that was exactly what the OP was asking about wasn't it ...

Now I do absolutely nothing and every day my WHS backs up every PC / Laptop that is on and allows me to re-image them back (from bare iron) using just a generic boot disk. No wand or man pages needed.

Cheers, T i m

[Cursitor Doom]

I should also have mentioned that you can use free Linux utils to image Windows operating systems, too (+ all the user apps and data) - with no incompatibility issues at all. Utils like 'dd' and 'tar' don't care a FF about tricky file system variations and heads, cylinders, volumes etc that seem to confuse so many of the Windows 3rd party backup apps. Personally I wouldn't use anything else, but you do need to be conversant with entering instructions via a command line interface rather than some fancy GUI. Still, it ain't no biggie.

[DerbyBorn]

"dennis@home" wrote in news:haq0D.1166190$ [e-mail]:

windows 10 - latst update Windows 10, version 1803

[T i m]

No, really, wow!

Only the incompatibility between ordinary (non Linux geek) users and an OS that still relies heavily on the CLI and 'man pages'.

And most computers users wouldn't give a FF for learning all this prehistoric stuff, compared with clicking on a Windows app that does it all for them.

We know you wouldn't. Why would you be open mined about that when you aren't about anything else?

Bingo. You got that bit right at least ... other than using GUI tools aren't 'fancy' in 2018 you Linux dinosaur!

And how well would your advice be likely to sit with the OP do you think? (Not that you have thought. You are just stuck on TX).

Cheers, T i m

[John Rumm]

Well its a start - but you need more than one physical device for backup.

I would suggest buying a bit of software proper backups (full and incremental). Also make an image of the system from time to time for quick disaster recovery.

Having an image of a system is nice for a quick restore if you can do it to the same platform (or at least one very similar) without needing to manually reinstall the OS and backup software.

Something like the disk2vhd utility[1] will do a complete image backup that you can mount as a virtual disk or even use to spin up a complete VM can be quite good for that bit.

However its not a proper file level backup since it does not help in cases where you need a generational backup - i.e. you realise that a file you need was corrupted some months back, and you have backed it up ten times since then. You need a way of rolling back to the last good version, not just the previous backup.

You want to avoid having all your backups on the same physical device (it might fail, and anyway you don't want to risk corrupting you only backup when creating a new one).

Not having all your backups in one physical location is also good - you need to protect them from fire/flood/theft etc. Also keep in mind that an off site backup is a security vulnerability - so they should be either encrypted or under lock and key.

Some cloud backup services can be good - if you have the bandwidth and don't mind the cost.

[1] free download from sysinternals:

[Jeff]

Doesn?t need to be very similar anymore with the best of the backup software and it isnt even that expensive either.

And that is where the Win backup fails very badly. But it is less clear how many of that serf of user actually uses that even if they can or if they actually need to if they don?t write code or do fancy spreadsheets or databases.

But the cloud backups do help a lot with that now.

Not if the offsite backup is just a swap with a mate or having it at work or something like that, but encrypted is possible with all but the worst backups anyway.

[Chris J Dixon]

I use Macrium Reflect, which I have found to be better than all others I have tried. The basic version is free, so you could give it a try.

Chris

[Brian Gaff]

Yes I'm on the look out for a back up drive I can attach either via the network ports on the router, or on individual machines via either a net port or usb. In both cases I want an image and an incremental change system so its just press and go to bring up the machines concerned with the minimum fuss to last update specs.. I need it to be easy to use for blind people. If possible, since a full image restore will probably not be using windows, I'd have no use of any feedback to do the job. Brian

[Bill]

In message , Chris J Dixon writes

+1

I use it to take occasional, separate images of the whole machine.

For intermediate data backups, I use the free Microsoft SyncToy 2.1, which is quite versatile and works simply and well for incremental backups. Its disadvantage, common to much backup software, is that it will not backup open files.

This all depends on attempting to keep programs and data separated. For example, I have a separate "Media" directory with subdirectories for Video, Audio, Sheet Music etc, and each of these have their own subdirectories. Similarly, I have structures for text and office type files.

On most machines here I keep these data directories on a separate partition or drive.

All of this is currently working here on Windows 10***, where Microsoft's backup system appears to have been abandoned, but with W10 tomorrow is always an adventure.

*** I am currently looking at a friend's problem where SyncToy failed while trying to backup a huge directory (approx 1.4TB) after the latest W10 update. My tests here have failed to replicate any problem and his subsequent test has been fine.

[Thomas Prufer]

Seagate users get a (maybe not-quite-new) version of Acronis True Image for free, AFAIK.

Thomas Prufer

[dennis]

That would be why windows comes with file history and imaging backup. You take an image to do a quick restore and let file history backup files as and when they are changed. You can recover a file from many versions ago if you want.

Its best used with a NAS drive IME.

I have the odd image on a usb drive and a file history on a Synology NAS. The Synology NAS does its own daily backups to a second NAS in a remote site and an encrypted sync to my cloud storage.

That way if there is ever ransom ware on the PC I can get the stuff back.