Acronis True Image

[zman88]

When using this program for recovery purposes , do you use the original file created to start the recovery process or does one use the last incremental file created ? TIA

[SRTDodge05]

I think you start with the first backup. I normally just keep having acronis make a full backup everytime and it replaces the old one.

[zman88]

Just wondering . You using 11.0 ?

[SRTDodge05]

On my server i use Acronis true image server enterprise 9.1 and on my standard machines i use home v10.

[bjbgraphics]

Typically, you want to restore from whatever the latest backup is, full or incremental. If your incremental backup is the latest then you can recover from that but the Full backup that it is associated with must be available as well.

I am using Acronis True Image 9 on all my systems.

BJB

[zman88]

OK, Thank You Both.

[SRTDodge05]

I have 3 desktops and 3 laptops and i have a shared drive on my server for backups. I load true image on all my machines and 3 times a week it does a full backup to my server.

[bjbgraphics]

Yeah, I have a similar setup. Basically, I run full backups on Saturday morning with incremental backups each weekday morning. I have 2 desktops and 1 laptop backing up their c: to shares on my server's RAID 1 drive and the server also backs up its own c: to its RAID 1 on this schedule.

The server additionally backs up the entire RAID 1 drive to an external drive on Sunday morning with incremental backups through the week (scheduled a few hours later than the other computer's incremental backups).

So at anytime I can restore any of the computer's c: or even the entire RAID 1 drive on the server back to the state it was the morning of any weekday. I could of course just restore from the full backup on the weekend as well.

BJB

Originally Posted by SRTDodge05

I have 3 desktops and 3 laptops and i have a shared drive on my server for backups. I load true image on all my machines and 3 times a week it does a full backup to my server.

[wonderwrench]

Wow I did not think anyone used incremental backups. In my experiences incremental backups were nearly as large as a full backup. Tested using TI 8 and 9. Has this been fixed?

[raging bull]

has anybody done a recovery/restore from acronis without any problems? i was using it diligently, and then tried to use it to restore and it was useless......

[SRTDodge05]

I never had a problem restoring a image, i had to do a few times. Once a month i test my images to make sure they work.

[bjbgraphics]

Oh? My incremental backups are typically about 10%-12% the size of my full backups and they take a lot less time to run.

Originally Posted by wonderwrench

Wow I did not think anyone used incremental backups. In my experiences incremental backups were nearly as large as a full backup. Tested using TI 8 and 9. Has this been fixed?

I did have to do a restore to the server's c: last year after the drive started corrupting. I actually was able to catch the drive before it completely died and ran chkdsk a couple times successfully. After that I ran a full backup with Acronis True Image 9 and was able to restore a new hard drive with that. It's been running great ever since.

It was a great feeling of relief and satisfaction... even though I couldn't boot the server into Windows (because of new hard drive), I booted it with the Acronis True Image 9 disc and it was able to mount the RAID drive. I just pointed it to the backup folder for the server, and had it restore the full backup I made. Then I removed the Acronis True Image 9 CD, rebooted, and there was everything just as I had it only moments before but now on a brand new hard drive.

Originally Posted by raging bull

has anybody done a recovery/restore from acronis without any problems? i was using it diligently, and then tried to use it to restore and it was useless......

BJB

[wonderwrench]

Originally Posted by bjbgraphics

Oh? My incremental backups are typically about 10%-12% the size of my full backups and they take a lot less time to run.



I did have to do a restore to the server's c: last year after the drive started corrupting. I actually was able to catch the drive before it completely died and ran chkdsk a couple times successfully. After that I ran a full backup with Acronis and was able to restore a new hard drive with that. It's been running great ever since.

It was a great feeling of relief and satisfaction... even though I couldn't boot the server into Windows (because of new hard drive), I booted it with the Acronis disc and it was able to mount the RAID drive. I just pointed it to the backup folder for the server, and had it restore the latest incremental to the new c:. Removed CD, rebooted and there was everything just as I had it only moments before but now on a brand new hard drive.



BJB

Wow 10-12% the size of a full backup. I have never seen that happen. Just for fun I did some testing. I made a full backup on 3/12/08. Today I made a incremental based on that backup. The full backup was 5.43 gigs, the incremental was 5.57 gigs. Now why is this, TI should only backup files that have changed since the last backup. Trouble is this is not what happens. Any file that has moved on the drive is considered changed. So if you defrag your drive between incremental backups the backup size is much larger than need be and can be as large as a full backup.

To test this theory I made another incremental backup about 10 minutes after the first. Its size was 29.7 megs. I then ran a defrag on my boot drive and then made another incremental backup. This backup was 725 megs.
So what this tells me is the only way to use incremental backups would be to make them daily and never defrag the drive you are going to backup. Now you could defrag after the incremental backup is made but this will increase the size of the next incremental backup.

I'm a defrag maniac myself. I defrag using PD 2008 every day or so. So for people like me incremental backups are not a good option. For the average PC user that does not even know what a defrag is or someone that only defrags once a month or less incremental backups may make sense.

I use TI to make a full backup atleast once a month. I also make a full backup before I make a major change to my boot drive. I use FEBE and CLEO to backup Firefox. FEBE is set to backup Firefox once per day. I manually make CLEO packs once per month. I use Mozbackup to backup Thunderbird once a week more often if needed.

It would sure be nice if incremental backups worked correctly and only backup actual changes.

[wonderwrench]

Originally Posted by raging bull

has anybody done a recovery/restore from acronis without any problems? i was using it diligently, and then tried to use it to restore and it was useless......

Can you explain what happened? Things that can cause restore problems.
Boot disk fails to boot
Boot disk fails to see your drives or network PC's
A corrupt image
A corrupt hard drive
etc. etc.

Before anyone can trust any backup program it must be tested full circle on each PC it is going to be used on. TI's boot disk is Linux based so driver support will never be great. Old hardware or new hardware seems to be the most problematic. I have found the best success using a TI plugin for BartPE. This works for 99% of the PC's I have tried it on. BartPE has quit the learning curve but is well worth the work because it has many uses besides getting TI to work.

[bjbgraphics]

Interesting. It makes sense though. Acronis isn't backing up files, it's backing up an image of all the data on the entire disk and any differences between the backup image and the disk should be considered a change and be re-imaged, even if it isn't associated with a modification of the contents of any actual file content.

So in my case, I could get away with defragging just before my weekly full backups so my incremental backup sizes during the week aren't inflated. Perhaps you could compromise between your defrag/backup schedules and do a defrag and then a backup once a week?

BJB

Originally Posted by wonderwrench

Wow 10-12% the size of a full backup. I have never seen that happen. Just for fun I did some testing. I made a full backup on 3/12/08. Today I made a incremental based on that backup. The full backup was 5.43 gigs, the incremental was 5.57 gigs. Now why is this, TI should only backup files that have changed since the last backup. Trouble is this is not what happens. Any file that has moved on the drive is considered changed. So if you defrag your drive between incremental backups the backup size is much larger than need be and can be as large as a full backup.

To test this theory I made another incremental backup about 10 minutes after the first. Its size was 29.7 megs. I then ran a defrag on my boot drive and then made another incremental backup. This backup was 725 megs.
So what this tells me is the only way to use incremental backups would be to make them daily and never defrag the drive you are going to backup. Now you could defrag after the incremental backup is made but this will increase the size of the next incremental backup.

I'm a defrag maniac myself. I defrag using PD 2008 every day or so. So for people like me incremental backups are not a good option. For the average PC user that does not even know what a defrag is or someone that only defrags once a month or less incremental backups may make sense.

I use TI to make a full backup atleast once a month. I also make a full backup before I make a major change to my boot drive. I use FEBE and CLEO to backup Firefox. FEBE is set to backup Firefox once per day. I manually make CLEO packs once per month. I use Mozbackup to backup Thunderbird once a week more often if needed.

It would sure be nice if incremental backups worked correctly and only backup actual changes.