Cannot back up my hard drive onto multiple DVDs
Hello. I just bought True Image Home 2010 and so far I can't say I'm having any luck with it.
I started by reading the help to get an idea as to what the options include and how to go about backing up a system. I am using this on a Windows XP machine BTW.
I have 2 drives on my computer. My C: is my main where windows is located and then on my D: I have files I've stored, and I've also installed non-essential programs on there (such as games and other software that's not essential to my system operating). Anyways, I chose to backup both C: and D: as a first time or full backup (seeing as how I have never used this True Image before).
I told it to back up onto DVDs. I don't want to use an external hard drive or USB drive because I have had these fail on me. I want a copy backed up onto DVDs...I actually need to do this for my own preference and this is one reason why I bought the program.
Anyways I got it going and it worked fine until it was time to insert the second disc. When I do that I get an error message saying the file could not be created. It gives me the options to cancel, format, browse for a different path or just click retry. Well Retry doesn't work and when I click browse the program seems to lock up. Clicking retry just makes my DVD drive eject and give me the same error.
Anyone know what's going on?
I agree with DwnNDrty
I would take that slightly farther and say your best backup is one you actually own.
If you have to swap dvd's in and out for an hour (or more) then human nature being what it is you will be inclined to not do a backup at all today because your pressed for time right now but tomorrow you think you will have more time so you choose to not backup your PC tonight.
Conversly if you do what DwnNDrty says and backup to usb, then your backup can be configured to run every single day without you doing a gol-darn thing other than leaving the PC on.
So every single day the sun goes up, the sun goes down and oh yeah, another backup occured.
If desired, you can configure your backup to be automatically split into 4.7g (dvd) sized chunks.
That way, every single day you get a new backup and when and if you ever decide to take the time you can at your choose to burn the backup files found on your usb drive onto a set of DVDs.
Many of us have the same concerns as you with regard to backup devices failing.
It really doesn't matter if the backup device is an internal drive, a network drive or a usb drive any and all of these devices can fail.
A "solution" is to accept that devices can and will fail and run two backups every night onto two different devices.
An easy configuration for me is to do full backups on sunday and daily incrementals.
A full backup for me can take hours and sunday has a window of time which I can afford to take a full backup.
I have one backup line which does its full on the 1st sunday of the month.
The other backup line does its full backup on the 3rd sunday of the month.
Each line does a nightly a incremental (which only takes a few minutes).
The above means no matter what day of the month it is both backup will easily finish in the window of time allotted.
With the above on any given day I have two backups lines either of which can be used to completely rebuild/restore my system. While I would hate to have a usb drive fail, its failure does not mean I have lost my backup, I always have the other.
Good luck.
You guys sound more hardcore than I am. I'm really not that concerned with making regular backups. Once in a while I just want to have a backup of my system made so that I can do a restore if my system starts running like crap. For example...lately my system has just been running really slow and instead of manually screwing around with everything trying to clean and organize I would rather just format my computer and put everything back as I need it. I've already saved my important stuff onto discs so I won't lose anything I need. I don't have a large enough USB key and I don't mind doing it from the DVDs. I just don't understand why the program is not letting me back up to multiple DVD discs.
I thought about doing what you guys said and backing it up to the hard drive in chunks, then putting those chunks onto DVDs. If I did it that way, then in order to restore it I would first have to have the bootable TRUE IMAGE disc (my retial disc) in order to boot up the system, then I would have to have my backup DVDs in another DVD drive to restore from (in other words 2 DVD drives) is this correct? I'm assuming I wouldn't be able to remove the TRUE IMAGE disc after booting up from it because the disc is what's acting as the operating system.
I was hoping to be able to just back it up onto the DVDs with this program and I thought there was an option to put the TRUE IMAGE program files onto my backup as well, so I would only need to utilize one DVD drive and restore from just one set of discs (does this make any sense at all or am I just being very confusing?)
Once you boot from the Acronis recovery CD the program resides completely in RAM. Then you can remove the CD and put a DVD in its place.
jeremy:
a) frankly its been years since I tried a cd/dvd backup that spanned a media. as far as I know if you define a backup task and specify the backup location as your cd/dvd burner acronis "knows" exactly how to span media on to those multiple cd's. it simple ejects the 1st, asks for a new blank and when inserted begins writing. When I did this type of backup it was impossible to screw up.
b) you mentioned a usb key. Not sure if you meant a usb memory stick/jump drive or not.
What we meant was an actual hard drive with a usb cable.
An example would be this 1 tera-byte drive with a 5 year warranty for $125
http://www.provantage.com/seagate-st310005fda2e1-rk~7SEGR03V.htm
c) the actual act of burning 4 dvds is not "frustrating"
What is frustrating is trying to do a restore from those dvd(s) (or at least it was several years ago when I last did it).
Here is what occurred years ago and as far as I know the basic backup logic has not changed.
When you start a backup acronis momentarily "freezes" all I/O to the disk.
During this freeze (which only lasts a few seconds) it calculates how many disk blocks make up your HD and creates a bit array of that size (EX: if your HD is comprised of 100,000 blocks the bit map is 100,000 bits).
Also during this freeze it allocates a few megs of your ram.
at this point the "freeze" is over and actual backup begins.
So acronis backs up the 1st block and flips the first bit
it then backs up the 2nd block and flips the 2nd bit
it then backs up the 3rd block and flips the 3rd bit
and so on and so on.
Also during this time you are free to use your PC, and windows itself also is free to do disk writes.
So lets say you (or windows) does something which needs to make a disk write to block 34891. What acronis will do check if bit 34891 is flipped (which means that block has already backed up ).
If the bit is flipped acronis it lets the disk write occur un-encumbered.
however if the block has not been backed up,
acronis takes that block off of disk and puts it into memory and flips the bit.
now that the bit is flipped the disk write that was to occur now will occur.
This of course is great in that you can use your pc while a backup is occuring.
The very next block that acronis will backup/burn will be the block in the memory buffer.
once the memory buffer is empty acronis goes back to working the bit map as it was doing all along. Eventually all 100,000 bits have been flipped and the backup is complete.
so lets assume that a dvd holds about 40,000 blocks.
so your backup is now on 3 dvd's.
dvd1 is not the first 40,000 blocks but a collection of first 40,000 and those blocks that were placed in the memory buffer while we were backing up. same for disk 2 and 3.
taken as a set they are all 100,000 blocks of your original drive.
If you notice, at no point in the above logic did the word 'file' come up just disk blocks. A file can be fragmented into dozens if not thousands of disk blocks.
Back when I did a restore from dvd
Acronis wanted all this disk blocks the exact sequence to rebuild the file. so lets say the 1st block of the file is on disk3,
the 2nd block of the file might be on disk2
the 3rd block of the file also on disk 2
but the 4th block is on disk 3
then disk 2
then disk 3
then disk 1
then disk 2
then disk 1
then disk 3
then disk 1
and on and on and on and on
till eventually the entire file has been rebuilt.
I only needed to suffer through all this once before I said, never again will I backup to dvd and span media. (or at least try a restore from multiple dvd media) that was years ago, maybe the logic has changed and someone can speak up and post how easy it is to restore from DVD's now. but unless they do you may find that restoring from dvd is so painful you really never ever want to do that.
instead if you have backups on dvd and you need to restore, you copy them as files onto a usb drive and then perform the restore from collection of files on the usb drive.
sorry I couldn't be more help to your direct question as to why your dvd backup was not working. maybe someone else can offer more insight.
I think USB and External Hard drives are more secure and can be easily restored. You can also make a backup online or in your Email. I personally prefer USB 3.0
But If you prefer Backup in DVDs then I will suggest you do the followings.
It depends on your Hard drive size. If your hard drive or data you wanna store is up to 8 GB then you can store it on DVD maybe. Or you will need multiple DVDs to store more data on them. You can create different folders for Each DVD.
DVD 1 Folder 8GB
DVD 2 Folder 8GB
DVD 3 Folder 8GB
and make your backup.
You are getting this error because you didn't make a folder of the appropriate size.
Regards
Allhdd.com