about a year ago I bought a Seagate USB Back-up drive.
I used the Seagate software to create a back-up . I have since used Windows Back-up and I have ended up filling the drive.
I am thinking (whilst all is running well) of clearing the back=up drive and starting over again.
If I do this, which back-up system should I use - Windows own?
It seems you've tried both versions. Which did you find the most convenient / easy / user friendly - at least to create the back up.
Chances are, they both work as well as each other in terms of keeping data - one may be quicker, more efficient etc. Until you need to restore something you can't compare that aspect.
Seagate have a good reputation. I'm not a fan of Windows but, to be fair, I don't doubt their back up software basically does the job.
Basically, it probably comes down to personal choice.
I use Microsoft Sync Toy (I think Robocopy is similar) to make an exact file-for-file copy of designated folders onto the backup drive. That makes it very easy to locate a missing/corrupted file on the backup and copy it back to the original location on the PC, without needing to use any proprietary software to extract the file from an enormous composite backup file.
I'm not sure what happens if you backup a folder using software which creates one big backup file and then update one of the files that it contains. If the new file is smaller, you can probably just write those blocks in the file, leaving a small "hole". But if you make if bigger, does the backup software fragment the file into two sections: as much as will fit where the old version was, and then the remaining bit tacked on the end of the backup file? Or does it junk the space that the changed file used to occupy (making it available for any subsequent smaller files) and add the whole of the new file on the end? Is there a garbage collection/compaction process every so often to avoid the backup file becoming bloated?
Commercial softwares almost all use VSS (volume shadow copy service) to make hot copies of Windows file systems. This allows backing up the C: drive while the OS is running.
The commercial softwares also use a format, where they can "mount" a backup image, as if it was a physical hard drive, and this support random access. If you wanted to fetch just the bookmarks.html file of two years ago, you right-click the image file made, the proprietary software mounts it to a new drive letter. Then you navigate to that new drive letter and find your bookmarks file of two years ago. Acronis and I think even old versions of Ghost, allowed mounting of backup images, so the idea has been around for a while.
Using emergency boot media (prepared with the commercial software), it's possible to start with a blank new hard drive, and restore an image (from an external drive), to the new hard drive. You boot your emergency CD, to provide an environment to complete the restore.
And this much functionality is available for free, with some of the products.
This article likely needs an update, as some of the version numbers shown are quite old.
There are two clear winners for the free backup solutions.
Aomei Backupper was the fastest to create full backups,
EaseUS Todo Free was the fastest for incremental backups but AOMEI was much faster to restore either type of backup.
Macrium Reflect Free also performs quite well but loses the ability to run incremental and differential backups [ incremental is on the paid version, differential is less valuable, "full" backups are free].
Active@ Lite is strange because it can backup your Windows drive quickly but cannot restore it because there is no boot media available in the free version.
Both Acronis based applications performed backups similar to the full True Image but weirdly both took twice as long at restoration. "
The slowest part of some of the backup softwares, is the ability to compute a checksum over the created image, for verification later. Smart softwares, could have a checksum per file, and a small storage error might only affect the one file. Other methods, if there is one stinking error in a terabyte image file, the whole thing is effectively trashed (the software doesn't come with pick&choose capability to save the good bits). I've lost four or five backup images. I recommend to anyone using this flavor of software, to run the "Verify" at regular intervals, to spot computer problems before it is too late. The funny thing with the problem I've spotted, is *only* the image files are getting damaged. Regular files are OK. But like a tape drive (like the helical scan tape drives at work), if you're not verifying your images, sooner or later you'll be in for a rude surprise. That happened at work, several times with the tape drives, and just with local users.
Even our own software team at work, wrote backup software. They declared one day "they were finished". A month later, an emergency arose. They loaded up the tape and... "no can restore". Egg on face and so on. The manager was heard to say "well, it was too hard to test that the restore would have worked".
When you first test backup software, make *two* copies, each copy using a different software product. That's how I dialed in my current backup/restore package. I tested restore, using the "product of unknown quality", knowing that I had a copy in a "bulletproof format", if that failed to work properly.
If you have enough hard drives, then you likely don't have to worry, as you can practice your restore OP on a scratch drive.
I have yet to find a utility that can check for "exact copies", including all file permissions, extended attributes and the like. There must be one out there somewhere. You can use hashdeep64, as a basic comparison vehicle, but it needs a boatload of parameters on the command line, to prevent it from getting "stuck" on Windows 10 drives. This is the reason the program has a boatload of parameters to begin with, because the author of the program ran into so much trouble with it. I didn't understand this at first, but then, a light bulb went on. It's what happens when you don't read the manual page thoroughly and read between the lines. The purpose of running hashdeep, is just to see whether the file contents remain the same.
Paul
An OOB feature in Win10. complete with file history over the lifetime of the product (or other user selectable period for limiting backup size). Start -> Settings -> Backup -> More Options and so on.
My PC fell over, and since I hate Win10 I put Linux on the new one.
Which can't read Windows backups...
Luckily the old system disc was still OK, it was the motherboard that fell over, so I could just copy the files off. But it could have been nasty.
Andy
Hang on I have a 2TB drive, I have two pcs. I plug in the drive to each, and it says, as one of my choices,do you wish to do a back up. Yes I say, and it does one. The system is intelligent enough to remove old backups when the drive is getting fully, leaving me with at least one for each machine. Thus if you are running out of space, then you either need a bigger partition or drive or something is odd about how you set up the back up. I have had to have one of the machines restored after a SSD failed and it worked fine. Brian
There is something odd Brian. I used the Seagate Software and then started to use the Windows software.
I need to start again.
Since using a mirror imaging application(Reflect), I have never worried about the software damage I do to the 'System' drive/device. It is also true that, since then, I have learned very little more about PC problems because I prefer the ease of restoring a mirror copy.
Before I update or install, or hack the OS, I clean the system drive and registry and then I make a mirror copy of the system drive. Only the system and applications sit on this device. Any data generated by the app's on to the system disc is saved to the data drive often.
Before restoring a mirror copy, do be sure to back up any program settings or profiles so you can dump them back onto the system disc after the restore. Given I rarely install new software App's, some of my mirrors are relatively old but, that wont matter given a 'no system change' since the time of making the mirror copy.
...Ray
But what happens if you screw something up and the screwed up bit gets copied to the mirror as well? A backup needs history so you can go back to where it wasn't broken.
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