How to make offline backup
Guys,
Need some advice. All of my backups are done through windows and I assume count on the Windows Shadow Service, so I can continue to use the machine as the backup proceeds simultaneously.
How does one make an offline backup using bootable media? Heard of this, but never done myself.
Thank you.
Duplicate post deleted.
Steve,
You always come through. I am grateful to you. BTW, that recommendation regarding USB power setting to disable seems to have cured the problem with external USB HDD not being recognized by Acronis. That should be a sticky.
Thanks again,
Leonard
Leonard, glad to try to help other users in these forums. It all helps keep the 'little grey cells' working as Poirot would say!
Hi
Why would we need to make a backup using the bootable rescue media? Is there an advantage over using Acronis live in Windows to make the backup?
Steven, the main advantage of making a backup using the bootable rescue media is for those users not wanting to install the Windows ATI application, but it can also be used in situations where you want to capture a vanilla backup image of a new Windows computer, i.e. before starting it for the first time when it then gets personalised to an individual user.
The rescue media can also be to backup other OS systems, i.e. I make a backup of my Ubuntu Linux system using the rescue media.
Another scenario is when you have a failing computer which won't boot in to Windows and want to capture your documents, pictures etc before trying to get the computer fixed.
Thanks
Steve,
You mentioned backing up your Ubuntu Linux system... Darn, I have a similar Ubuntu Linux system setting here and was just wondering what program to use to back it up. Always associated my TIH to my PC's... Duh !
Thanks for that little mention.... That resolves that problem !
Regards,
Steve F.
Steve, one point to note is that backups of non-Windows file systems such as ext3/4 used by Linux will normally be performed as sector-by-sector backups, thus will be larger than an equivalent Windows file system backup.
Last month I created two different offline backups using the bootable media, one containing my OS disk and another containing the files for a few VMs stored on several different disks. Now it's a month later and I went to create the first incremental backup for each of these but I was surprised that there is no way to choose those existing archives and simply add an incremental backup to each. Instead, I first have to choose what I want to backup, and then "Add to Existing Archive." It seems odd that I have the option to choose a different set of files to backup compared to the original backup (I tested this and did not get any sort of error or warning). Is this by design or are the restores going to fail if the file selection doesn't match exactly each time I add a new backup to the archive? Is there any official documentation which addresses this?
Jeremy, welcome to these User Forums.
When using the Acronis Rescue Media you are booting into a standalone application environment which has no memory or method of knowing what actions you took using the same on any previous occasion, so if you want to make an incremental backup based on a previous full backup image, then this is very much a case of having to repeat all the steps you took previously.
The alternative here is to use the main Windows ATI application which can hold all the information to allow your task to create new incremental backups when needed. This is the recommended method for making backup version chains rather than trying to do this via the bootable media.
En réponse à Jeremy, welcome to these… par truwrikodrorow…
Steve,
Thanks for the quick reply. I understand that the bootable media application itself does not have any knowledge of my previous backup session, but I would think that the archive file could contain this information, which would allow me to just choose the existing archive and the settings would all be preselected. It's unfortunate this is not how it was designed.
Regardless, the reason I would prefer to take backups using the bootable media is to avoid any Windows-related issues. This forum discussion makes a pretty strong case for wanting to take backups offline:
https://forum.acronis.com/forum/acronis-true-image-2016-forum/validatin…
I would still like to know the answers to my questions, if you are able to help:
1) What happens if the file selection doesn't match exactly each time I add a new backup to the archive?
2) Is there any official documentation which addresses this?
I went ahead and ran the validation process on each of the two backups after I took the incremental backups and they both said they were successful. What exactly does the validation check for, and does it check whether the set of files is consistent between the full backup and the incrementals, assuming it's even necessary for them to match?
Jeremy, there is no information stored in the image .tib file related to a previous session, only the source data in compressed format and a checksum calculated when the file was created (which is used for validation, as discussed in the old 2016 post you referenced).
I can understand a requirement to make an offline backup but I only do this occasionally rather than being my main approach, and then I tend to stick to making just full backups via this method. All my regular / scheduled backups are done via the Windows ATI application and have never given me any issues caused by Windows interfering etc.
To your questions:
1) What happens if the file selection doesn't match exactly each time I add a new backup to the archive?
As far as I understand, you would only capture changes for those files/folders that you did include, so any mismatch with the original source data would just be reflected in some potentially back-dated files/folders, i.e. some may be still in their original state whereas others may be as they were when the next backup was created. Taking a K.I.S.S. (Keep It Simple & Simple) in terms of your source data selection would be the best approach here, i.e. select the whole drive / partitions each / every time.
2) Is there any official documentation which addresses this?
The only official documentation is the ATI 2018 User Guide which you can access via the Help option in the ATI GUI or via the web link, or else searching in the Acronis Knowledgebase.
What exactly does the validation check for, and does it check whether the set of files is consistent between the full backup and the incrementals, assuming it's even necessary for them to match?
See the other forum topic you referenced above which has a good description of validation.
See also the ATI 2018 User Guide: Validation description in the Glossary. which covers the different scenarios where this feature is used.
Validation does not care about the actual source data content in your archive files, so there is no consistency check performed by this tool. As mentioned above, when each archive file is created a checksum is calculated and embedded with the file. Validation recalculates the checksum and compares this with the embedded checksum value - to confirm that the file remains unchanged from when it was created. The other aspect of validation is version chain integrity, i.e. that all the files that comprise a complete backup version chain are all present and correct - an initial full backup file followed by 1 or more Incremental backup files, where these are the correct files as originally created based on the initial full backup file. Validation will fail if any incremental files in the version chain are missing, or if a file from a different chain is renamed to be included etc.