acronis services in the bacroungd in DAW's, does it hit performance ?
I would like to think it's a clean system to do backups and I would like to purchase it. I've got more than 10 years of musical works, files and dependable plugins and libraries on my music making pc which I would like to preserve should there be a crash. So I bought myself a WD passport 2 tb, and I'd liek to buy 2tb cloud service to safeguard the exact hdd image I have.
However, what I see are multiple processes of true image running when I test drive it on my entertainment pc. It's a bit undesirable to have all these things running, however I understand they are used to make incremental backups and add diffs.
Do you really need to run them all the time ?
i'd like to do a scenario where I backup the entire pc and then not have any acronis stuff runing until I want to make another backup.
I'm fearing that it interfears with projects and calls system resoruces while I'm streaming too much pluginsamples.
Can you prevent this software from running without having to install it and always disable all processes manually, with one button ?
Will it be able to make the incremental backup after 2 months if it doesn't run constantly ?
thx
I'd like to second Steve's thoughts on backups. Please consider the 3-2-1 backup as your bare minimum backup plan... 3 copies of your data, stored in at least 2 locations and at least one offsite location. If your data is critical/important, taking precautions to back it up is well worth it - even if it costs a little extra $ to buy some additional storage options. For starters, having one local backup and 1 cloud backup is great. Personally though, I don't think it's enough.
I would personally do the following:
1) Original data on the original drive
2) 1st backup of all original data to a secondary drive. Keep multiple versions (incremental or differential) at a comfortable level - don't let incrementals go too long or grow too big - should one fail (for whatever reason), your best recovery is likely to be the last full that was completed. Diffs are less likely to fail, but since they backup all changes since the last full, can get much bigger.
3) 2nd backup to the Cloud or some other offsite location - just in case your first backup and original data are unusable (fire, theft, hardware failure, etc).
4) 3rd backup to another local location - for instance offline only backups to another exernal drive that is only plugged into the computer for offline backups. This will be completely outside of Windows so 3rd party applications and or OS issues cannot interfere. PLUS, this minimizes the chance of ransomeware or malware ever touching your backup data as it will be completely outside of Windows and only attached when Acronis is being used and detached before the Windows OS is ever booted.
5) I would also use a sync appliation to replicate your data to yet another hard drive. There are free synch tools or the free Windows Robocopy (command line) option. This can replicate your data to another drive exactly as it exists on the main drive (DATA - not the OS or applications). It is not a backup in the sense that you can recover to a single point in time. However, as a replicated disk, if your main one dies or fails, you have an exact copy of the DATA replicated to this other drive that is already avaialable and ready to go and hopefully, would not fail at the same time as the original
A bit anal? Perhaps. However, how much is your data worth to you and how would you feel if somethign happened to the original content and for whatever reason, your only backup was not usable either? This would give you multiple avenues to attempt to get your data backup from and I would only rely on the cloud as the last resort since it's much, much, much slower to backup to and restore from and I personally don't want to put my backup chances in the hands of anyone else other than me, except as my last resort. These are just my thoughts and opinions though, but I hope that they may help you as well.
Hello,
Thanks for the replies. Well I'd consider the WD my passport I receive tomorrow and the cloud backup (i'm gonna take 2 tb) , to be enough for now. I could always expand later. i'm not really full of money rightnow but there's now about 10 years of work on my 1 tb disk , plus all the sample libraries that are installed.
I would be a bit annoyed when I discover I have to reinstall all that stuff on their correct location.
It's good to know that I can use batch processes to disable all the services at once.
About the rescue disk, can you create this without having to install the entire application ?
I'm tempted to use the incremental backup feature whenever I finish a new song.
You can download the rescue media as an .iso from your account and burn that to CD or DVD. Then you would not have to install Acronis at all and could do all of your backups "offline" with the rescue media.
Make sure to test the rescue media so that it 1) boots and 2) detects all of the hard drives you will be using.
allright. I'm ready if that drive arrives tomorrow I'm gonna do it.
thx
allright. I'm ready if that drive arrives tomorrow I'm gonna do it.
thx
allright. I'm ready if that drive arrives tomorrow I'm gonna do it.
thx
So I've now gotten acronis and already installed one backup on the new drive, now i'm busy uploading to the cloud. With a connection of 20mbps this is going to take a while and I'll have to interrupt several times.
Does that affect the backup, could more errors slip into it when I do it like that ?
If after a week it will be complete, can I integrity check the backup on disk and cloud ?
Stephen, backing up to the Cloud should not affect the backup because of interruptions or introduce any errors.
The Cloud backups work in a different way to the normal local backups, hence you may see some lengthy messages that Acronis is scanning the source drive data during the process, especially after any interruptions - this is necessary because the Cloud backups & restore operate from a Delta where the data present on the source drive is compared to that held in the cloud and only the changes are transferred. This makes the Cloud backup more efficient than needing to do multiple full backups etc.
In terms of integrity checking, you should be able to do a Validation for your local backups but there is no option to do this for Cloud backups that I am aware of. You could of course select some random files to restore from either type of backup to test that all is well.
Hello, and thanks for all the info so far.
So i finally was able to upload a backup to the cloud after 2 weeks, that is great, i guess now the worst is over.
On the drive though, i made a new backup to update it to what I ahve on the cloud (there has been a few windows updates)
Anyway, so there's a few questions:
on my backup hdd, I see 2 inc files (guess it's incremental). Isn't it possible to just merge updates to the main backup as well . I wouldn't want to end up with 27 inc files
Also, if I would buy a new computer and want to use this backup, will that work ? It seems that true image automaticly shows a list on my second computer which is not the music pc I did the big back up on. SO it seems that backups are associated to pc's.
But what will happen when I want to put a backup on an entirely new pc, will that work ?
thx
on my backup hdd, I see 2 inc files (guess it's incremental). Isn't it possible to just merge updates to the main backup as well . I wouldn't want to end up with 27 inc filesAlso, if I would buy a new computer and want to use this backup, will that work ? It seems that true image automaticly shows a list on my second computer which is not the music pc I did the big back up on. SO it seems that backups are associated to pc's.
But what will happen when I want to put a backup on an entirely new pc, will that work ?
You can use cleanup options, but I'll let someone else speak to that as I don't use them.
IMO, 27 incrementals is too long a chain. That's risky. Let me explain a bit about how such backups work.
A task for Incremental or Differential will always begin with a full backup. That is necessary, as that becomes the baseline.
For an Incremental task, after the first full backup, subsequent backups will be incremental, each one based on changes since the previous Incremental backup, all the way back to the second backup being incremental based on changes since the full backup. As such, you need all links in the chain, all incremental backups right back to and including the first full backup, in order to Restore.
For a Differential task, after the first full backup, subsequent backups will be differential, each one based on changes since the first full backup. To restore, you would need just any Differential and the Full backup on which it is based.
You should not allow an incremental chain to become too long. An incremental restore depends upon every incremental in the chain being valid, including the original full. It's better to limit each chain to just a few incrementals, followed by a fresh full backup to start a new chain.
You should validate backups periodically. That would alert you much if the full backup were missing or unreadable.
If restoring a disk/partition backup, you should boot from the ATI Rescue Media. You could restore to a new, replacement drive. Yes, you could theoretically restore to a new PC, but the OS would have to match, and there's the issue of different drivers so it may be somewhat more work than a simple restore to a replacement drive. If the OS differs, then you shouldn't restore an OS backup as that would overwrite and replace the new OS. You could still restore user files.
I strongly recommend that you spend time reading the user manual, and check out the many user guides and tutorials in the left margin of this forum. ATI is a powerful tool with many options covering many situations. You'll be in a better position to handle issues if you understand how things work.
I'd rather have only 2 or 3. Because I'm not gonna take too much frequent backups. Maybe once a month, and when I've made a new song ofcourse.
It would kinda be cool to know if I could just merge with the full backup and keep that fresh especially on the cloud. It took me 2 weeks lol.
Anyway, about the new pc business:
Can't I just assemble a new pc, then directly (without installing the os first), use the rescue media to place the backup on that drive so it boots up like that ?
You can restore the backup image to a new drive. Moving hardware is not as simple as that though - different drivers for different hardware, what type of OS license do you currently have - OEM or retail box? YOu'll need to make sure to set the SATA mode on the new system to match the old one. You'll need to ensure the new system supports the older system install type (some newer PC's are only UEFI - if the old system is legacy/bios, you need to enable legacy/csm mode on the new machine in the bios as well).
Once you have the bios settings ironed out and have a transferable license that can be reactivated on different hardware, you can restore the backup image to the new PC on a new drive. If you have Windows 7, 8, or 8.1 - you'll likely need to run universal restore after that to generalize drivers back to Windows defaults or you probably won't be able to boot. After running Universal restore, when it does boot, you'll likely need to go and install proper drivers for the new machine hardware.
All do-able, but it's not as simple as just restoring an image from one computer to another.
hmm, well I can understand the problems. Mosly the hardware will just differ in motherboard, memory and cpu, and maybe also ssd drivers instead of the 10k rpm drives I have now.
My computer is getting old (exactly 7 years), and I'm just up to a new one, so that I can manage my projects and sample libraries better, and have more bandwith to work with. It could be that I also buy a new hammerfall card.
I don't mind installing a few new drivers. And the windows 10 upgrades come from a windows 8 upgrade, and was originally a windows 7 oem licens yes. But that shouldn't be a problem I don't mind buying a new licens.
The problem is that i've got all kind of project files generated from plugins spread across various locations.
I know that the licensing is going to be an issue, I'll have to re authorize all my plugins anyway. That's something I expect to happen and isn't such a big chore compared to having to completely reinstall my 10+ sample libraries and plugins. One of the reasons why I took true image is that I could be spared of this, that all my project and sound files will be on the same location, so when plugins try to fetch existing musical projects, it'll find everything on the correct place. Alot of this is determined in the cubase project file.
Thanks for the additional info. Having Windows 10 already should help make things easier... it handles hardware changes much better than older Os's. Your biggest hurdle should be getting a pc that has legacy support in the bios - if you build your own that's probably available... some own systems are strictly UEFI so check on that.
If you get a system with a new one win 10 license and it's the same type (home or pro) as you have now, as long as you've fired it and activated with Microsoft your transfered is will license too.
1) backup old is with a full disk backup using your offline media
2) do the same for your new pc before you do anything so you have a factory image. If it has an own license for win 10, fire it up and make sure the license has activated with Microsoft.
3) if you can, pull the drive from the new system for just in case and replace with a new SSD or something else
4) go through the bios and disable secure boot and enable legacy csm if need be. Make sure sata mode is the same - AHCI probably
5) restore image to new drive. Restore the entire disk with disk signature may allow your other registered licenses to stay licensed. Make sure you boot recovery media in Legacy mode since you're restoring a legacy OS install!
6) check bios to verify restored drive is first boot priority.
7) try to boot and see what happens. If you get a BSOD try 2 more times to boot, just in case. Sometimes if you boot in safe mode windows 10 will take care of drivers for you. If not, run universal restore to generalize them first and then try to boot.
All doable and not too hard, but I prefer to under promise and over produce than to over promise and under produce. There are a lot of variations with systems, but there's a way to make it work.
right, thanks, I'm gonna keep that in mind but I'd just like to ask at this point if the following is also possible,
1 install new pc with new license,
2. install acronis
3. only install relevant DAW directories and vsti's and library locations from a backup ? or doesnt true image allow to restore folders from another pc ?
Nevertheless I'll keep in mind this thread if the time comes in may for a new pc
Stephen, if you are restoring files /folders to a different PC then the main consideration is not to restore that data with its original permissions as the user account will not exist on that different PC and even if you were to create another user by the same name, the internal user ID would not match which would give you problems trying to open the restored data.
that is possible right ? to adopt current permissions ? ... yeah maybe the problem is that some plugins require elevated permissions, I don't really know..
well it's more complicated than I thought.. Perhaps I'm doomed to keep using this pc now ?
Stephan, see the ATIH 2017 User Guide where it has the following section on this subject.
File recovery options
You can select the following file recovery options:
- Recover files with their original security settings - if the file security settings were preserved during backup (see File-level security settings for backup), you can choose whether to recover them or let the files inherit the security settings of the folder where they will be recovered to. This option is effective only when recovering files from file/folder backups.
- Set current date and time for recovered files - you can choose whether to recover the file date and time from the backup or assign the files the current date and time. By default the file date and time from the backup will be assigned.
well thx.. I didn't want to come accross lazy and I just wanted to ask beforehand what to expect and gonna occupy myself with it , before I'm making the transition to a new pc :)
Hi Steve,
Many thanks for the link to the bat files to disable all the Acronis services !!
In total they were running at 10% CPU on my i7 machine. Before I Installed Acronis, my machine had an idle CPU % of ~1%.
A short time after I installed Acronis I noticed the Local Security Authority Subsystem Service LSASS had jumped to ~10% of CPU from it's previous ~0%. I assumed this was unrelated to Acronis.
My CPU was now running at ~20% all the time :-(
When I stopped all the Acronis services using your bat file, the CPU % for the LSASS dropped back to usual ~0% !!!
My machine is now back to ~1% CPU and the fan has stopped running continously :-)
Awesome. Thanks !!
Cheers, Mark
Mark, glad to hear the positive results from using the batch files - these were mainly produced by Bobbo who has updated them recently to include changes for the new ATIH 2017 NG version.