Do later versions have speed improvements?
In an old version of TI 9, it takes only 1/2 hour to increment backup a drive but takes 10 hours to verify. Are later versions faster in this regard?
Thanks.
Paul
In case you are unaware, the large difference in the create an incrmental and validate times is because the entire archive is validated, not just the new incremental portion.
At first glance this may seem a bit silly but in reality it is good insurance in case something has happened to the old part of the archive. The new incremental is useless if the remainder of the archive has a flaw. A disk sector may go bad for a couple of reasons or a defrag operation may go wrong such as writing a sector to a new location that is poor.
True, I am guessing that the long validation time is to validate the entire disk. This also mean that the validation time will get longer and longer as the number of incremental backup grows. This makes validation somewhat impractical, since it's not like we can spend 10+ hours each day validating. I was hoping that future versions of Acronis True Image may have faster algorithms.
Paul
You haven't mentioned your hardware but if you use a second internal drive, a drive caddy arrangement or an eSATA drive instead of USB you could speed up the process.
If it takes 10 hrs then you are backing up a lot of data which on a moderate PC using internal HDs would work out to very, very roughly 600 GB of archive. If you are using the Secure Zone then I believe the validate does validate every archive in the Secure Zone (I think this is correct for TI9 but it may not be for some later versions).
Personally, I have my C drive set aside for OS and Apps only. All of my data files are on a different partition and I only use TI to image the C drive. I use SyncBackSE for the data files (there are others such as Karen's Replicator, etc). I prefer this approach because it does not stuff the data files into a proprietary container file where a critical failure in the container file will render the entire archive useless. If there is a problem with the Syncback archive it only affects the file or a few files, not the whole thing.
No, the bottleneck is the network. I am trying to set up a scheme where each machine on the network would backup to the server. I then copy the file every 2 week or so to an external drive. That way if a power surge toast the system, the external drive still exists.
Unfortunately, for this to work, I have to pretty much backup over the network. The laptop's fastest connection is a 100-base-T. Without the verification, it's possible to do a incremental backup over 11g within a few hours. With the verification, it's slow even over wired network.
You know, if I backup online, the issue would be even worse. Even 11g is faster than most internet connections. How do people do backup and verify online?
My wife complains that she loses stuff when the computer crash. I was thinking about upgrading to the latest Acronis version with continuous backup, but I am wary of how reliable this features is.
I was also thinking of an alternate solution where I would setup a work folder which would version to a large sdhc card using either Syncback SE or dmailer.
Paul
I have no idea how people backup on-line because, like you, I think the speed would be a showstopper. Even download speeds are poor compared to USB2 and when you consider the upload speeds tend to be a fraction of the download then it seems silly. I do keep some encrypted personal data files on a internet accessed server as a third level backulp but these are very small.
I was trying to use a "server" on my home network and found it slow enough to discourage me. This is also because I do manual, not-scheduled, images. My gigabit LAN probably runs TI at USB2 speeds in reality.
My current setup makes images or other backups to a second internal physical drive. My experiece says the even though a controller can be a common point of failure it rarely is in terms of damaging all the drives on the system so I'm relatively comfortable with it. S$%^t happens so I copy selected images and other backups to an external drive from time to time. I have a disk caddy mounted in each desktop so I can transfer at HD speeds.
Laptops tend to be a bigger pain because of a lack of a second HD in most cases. In this case I have a second partition for images which get copied to a USB2 drive at suitable intervals. I've never tried using a flash card but it seems like a reasonable idea.
Now, the key to my system is that I don't keep important data files on any machine - they all get saved to the server and it runs SyncBack every evening incrementally backing up to the second internal HD in the server box. Some I will save locally while working on them and then copy to the server when finished for the day. Others I just save to a networked drive connected to the server PC while working on them.
It would not be a disaster if I lost my C drive although it would be a bit of a pain and a time-sink to rebuild it from the DVDs, downloaded programs etc. I have all the CD/DVDs filed with their serial numbers and all downloaded programs are on my server PC as are copies of the serial numbers. The files you must take care with are your data files since they aren't available anywhere else at any price but you knew that.
I have never seen the need for non-stop backup and it doesn't appeal to me but my needs are not the same as yours. I come from the old school that says backup your work every several minutes or after you've made significant changes and change the filename every now an then so you don't overwrite your history with a screwed up file.
Computer crash? It's been a long time since I've had one of those where I've lost data - a non-responding app seems to be the worse thing I've encountered for a long time.