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Backup Types and Online Backup Full Backup

Thread needs solution

Hello,

I am trying to figure out exactly what type of a backup my company needs. There is no server or anything stored other than basic business files. I have already decided I need to be able to backup my entire hard drive so I can restore it from its previous point in time. A partial backup is crap because all my custom files associated with any and all programs will be lost.

Anyhow, from reading the acronis manual I can see that a full disk backup is easy enough to do. First of all I am wondering

A) Do you recommend having a data partition and a partition to just store applications and the OS?
B) I can't figure out whether or not online backup provides a full disk or partition backup option?

Thanks,

Justin

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Disk layout.

I would recommend separating data and OS at least by partition. I go further and have one drive for OS and other drives that contain the programs and data.

As far as plain imaging is concerned - another drive external or one that can be removed easily from the PC is the way to go.

OLB doesn't image - it backs up - in other words 250gb of data - would require 250gb of space.

So OLB is great for storing copies of your business documents and photo's etc (not ones in raw format due to their size).

Even if you use OLB it would still be prudent to make either copies or whole disk images more local.

I make images to both an internal hard drive which is used purely for imaging and a swap file on a separate partition, as well as making images to an external drive. An internal drive is quicker, but the downside is that if a power surge takes out your PC and with it all your drives....... The best way would be to invest in a disk carrier which allows you to remove the disk containing the images, once an image had been made.

Cool, sounds good.

I was wondering one more thing about the online backup option. Why should I pay for the online backup option when I can just use the space that my web host gives me via FTP to store my backup? Will Acronis seamlessly let me backup and restore my files via FTP as if it was on a local disk? If this is the case there is no point in using Acronis's online backup option.

Thanks.

Justin

Also, when you backup both your data partition and your OS partition, would you simply image the OS partition and select say one root folder of your data partition? Or, would you just create a folder on the drive and have it backup that folder? I guess I am thinking in terms of performance that it might be a lot faster to do it that way.

Thanks,
Justin

I'm not sure what protocol OLB uses (actually hadn't occurred to me to look). I suppose OLB could be thought of as a user friendly ftp front end limited to one specific task.

OLB allows you to autoschedule your backups.
OLB allows auto cleanup options.
Allows easy multiple archives of a single or multiple PC's.
Allows a web browser to be used to gain access via your Acronis account if TI isn't installed on a machine.
Has data encryption during the up/download.

Does the ISP allow you 250GB of space?

I think it's horses for courses - you could use ftp to your own server/ISP, but OLB is (in theory) easier to use and looks pretty'ish :)

As for your second question, I tend to make whole disk images of my OS drive and whole drive and partition images of my other drives.

So on my program/data drive - I have it split into 3 partitions - I make one complete image of the disk once a week, I then image the partition that has my most used data and programs on, on a daily basis.

bodgy wrote:

I'm not sure what protocol OLB uses (actually hadn't occurred to me to look). I suppose OLB could be thought of as a user friendly ftp front end limited to one specific task.

OLB allows you to autoschedule your backups.
OLB allows auto cleanup options.
Allows easy multiple archives of a single or multiple PC's.
Allows a web browser to be used to gain access via your Acronis account if TI isn't installed on a machine.
Has data encryption during the up/download.

Does the ISP allow you 250GB of space?

I think it's horses for courses - you could use ftp to your own server/ISP, but OLB is (in theory) easier to use and looks pretty'ish :)

As for your second question, I tend to make whole disk images of my OS drive and whole drive and partition images of my other drives.

So on my program/data drive - I have it split into 3 partitions - I make one complete image of the disk once a week, I then image the partition that has my most used data and programs on, on a daily basis.

If you could seamlessly backup to FTP, then auto scheduling would definitely be possible by Acronis and it doesn't matter that there is the the auto scheduling of the online OLB you are talking about.

In FACT, if Acronis treats FTP like backing up and using a normal drive, then I don't see why you couldn't just use the "pretty interface" of acronis to do all the necessary backup/retrieval. Thus what you said is null and void. If, however, Acronis doesn't allow you to use FTP and restore/backup seamlessly (i.e. if you had to log onto your site using ftp clients or something similar, than you would be right. But I really don't know the answer to that. Does anyone out there know? :)

Thanks,

Justin