Parallel backup to disk and optical
Apologies if this has been covered previously, but I'm new to Acronis, and evaluating True Image as a replacement for our old XP based system which we are finally retiring (yes, I know its well overdue!). I've had no luck searching the forums - the search bar at the top doesn't seem to find anything, no matter what is given to the search (for instance, even "Acronis" returns "No Results"?).
For our regular development backups (File/Folder based), we have used a dual backup strategy, where the backup is retained on-line, but at the same time a non-erasable copy is taken to a DVD or Blu-ray disk which is off-sited. This gives us fairly instant access to any of the backed up structures, but with the security of a fairly recent off-site copy if the worst happens. Typically we have used what you call a Version Chain model, with regular full backups, with the interim covered with differentials.Typically only full backups are off-sited, with the interim differentials only maintained on-site.
I've had a play with the various Folder/File backup option, and it seems to come close to what we need, but I'm not sure how best to handle the dual on-line/off-line strategy. The reserved copy model sounded ideal, but is not supported with optical drives (actually, it says that optical drives can't be a reserve copy, but maybe the other way way round would work - I'll have to try this).
I can think of a number of ways of handling this, but I'm not fully aware of the implications of these, so thought it best to ask some advice. I suspect they will all involve a separate step to copy the backup to the off-site media, but maybe this could also be automated via a post-backup operation.
- Simply copy the latest full backup .tib to the offsite media. I'm a little unsure how safe it is to copy these .tib's around, as they obviously contain both internal references to other .tib's (but probably not in the case of full backups), and are also maintained in True Image's own catalogue of available backups.While getting the DVD copy is no issue, I'm not sure how I'd go about getting True Image to recover from a tib that it doesn't have catalogued?
- Make a backup of the on-line backup .tib to a DVD target. I'm not sure if this really helps, as even if this is restored back to True Images backup directory, there is still True Images internal catalogue to resolve.
- A totally duplicated backup, once to on-line storage, and again to the off-site media. Would work fine, but sounds pretty ugly.
- Any other ideas?
Thanks for any help, advice or comments.
Andrew
Thanks for that. I've had a good play this morning trying to simulate recovery from an “off-site” copy. While I don't fully understand everything that is happening, I'm comfortable this will all work.
What I did was a full backup, plus an incremental on this. I then took a simple copy of these as if these were taken to off-site media. I know True Image only writes full backups when creating optical media directly, but guessed this was more to do with the risk of only having access to an incremental without its associated full backup, not any particular restriction with copying incrementals.
The original backup and image files were removed from True Image. The idea was to get True Image to forget everything it knew about this backup, and recover purely from the copy.
If I only deal with the full backup, everything works exactly as expected. The copied backup image is immediately readable with File Explorer, and the copied backup can be added and recovered via True Image.
Starting a second time (again with all metadata removed from True Image), but this time tackling the incremental copy with File Explorer, the first attempt to touch this opens a dialogue to "locate the volume with number 1". I'm guessing here that the incremental holds some absolute reference to the original underlying full backup, which no longer exists. I pointed this at the full copy, and I now have full access via File Explorer - everything looks 100%.
Moving to the True Image app, this already has the copied file path as a known backup – obviously this is picked up in linking the incremental back to the underlying full backup in File Explorer. But attempting to “Recover Files” directly leads to a “Cannot find version 1” dialogue. I’m not sure exactly what its looking for here (I suspect the incremental), because any attempts to browse through and select either the full or incremental backup copies still fail. However, deleting the auto-loaded backup path, and re-adding the path manually works 100% - the backup is fully readable, including any incremental changes.
So other than the little quirk with the filepath picked up when opening the recovered incremental in File Explorer, everything works fine, both with full and incremental backups. I've still to have a play with the Post-Op processes to get this to create the copies, but can't see this as a major hurdle.
Be advised that incremental backups are fully dependent on each other meaning that all incremental backups in a chain must be available or recovery will fail whereas a differential backup is standalone and not dependent on other differential backups in a chain.
When you remove backups from True Image and then Add them back you must reconfigure the locations of such so as to update the database which houses the metadata allowing things to work as you experienced.
Thanks. I appreciate the difference, but was just using the scheme the Version Chain creates. It probably does make sense to generate a custom scheme using differentials, as it does make the recovery path a little less dependent on lots of files - it does still need the root full backup though, so will require some care to capture everything required.
I did have a thought that maybe I could cause chaos by generating a new and different full backup with the same tib name as the one copied, as the copied incremental has a reference to the original location, but pleased to see True Backup wouldn't accept this imposter as the root of the copied incremental.
Keep experimenting, I am confident you will find a combination that will work for you. :)