Non Stop Backup versus normal backup - am I missing something?

I have NOT used NSB yet so take my reply with a grain of salt.
But the answer seems to me, if you desire only a single backup chain probably you dont need another scheduled backup beyond what you get with NSB. If you desire more than 1 chain it would seem to me that NSB could be one of them.

The way I view things, most HD's have a 50/50 chance of failure in a given 3 year period. Which math wise works out to that on any given day there is a 1 in 1000 chance that today the day that your disk read will fail. (1/1000 chance taken every day for 1000 days is apx 50/50 chance taken over a 3 year perod).

This 1 in 1000 chance of failure is true for your backup .tib chain.
If you need to restore you have about a 1 in 1000 chance you will not be able to do so. but if you have two seperate chains each on an independant device each with a 1 in 1000 chance of failure then the odds that both will be bogus plumets to 1 in a million (1/1000)*(1/1000)=1/1,000,000
So in short, I think if you only need 1 backup, NSB would work if you need multiple independant chains then NSB can be one of them.

Any NSB users out there care to comment?

Kurliana wrote:

I'm NSB user and it helped me to restore registry after virus attack (trojans, worms and so on) . My full backup has been created approximately in the August(yeah, I tested ATIH2010 before release) and the registry was broken at the end of September (I could not install or reinstall any program). I restored system from .tib but some important documents(were placed on the desktop) disappeared. So then I restored all files from NBS storage and everything works fine till today.

Some usefull information. NBS and classic backup have different mechanisms. Incremental backups were improved in NBS. Performance of such backups was improved too.

I think if you are an active pc user(many different files pass through your computer for a short time) then you should turn NBS on. For example you are the manager with notebook and you think that every your document or contact must be saved on the external device. Other way (f.e. your are a gamer) you may create only image backup.

P.S. On another computer(gaming PC) I created only image backup. I played one game in single user mode for a long time. Then I installed bad version of drivers and after restoring from backup(yes, it took only 4 minutes) I saw that all my savings for last three month disappeared. What's a pity))).

So if I understand you correctly the only difference between the classic full image backups and NSB is that full classic image is a snapshot in time whereas NSB is a bang up to date full image with lots of incrementals thrown in so the user can pick any moment in time?

Well I have been trying out TI 2010 using the trial offer for the past few days on my test PC. I have found it to work without any real issues and for some inexplicable reason my PC is using around 5% less RAM than it does with TI 2009 - figure that one?

My impression of NSB - that too works fine but I'm not sure if it's a value added function or not. The way I look at it is that NSB creates a full image and then adds loads of incrementals to it everyday whereas previous versions do the same but only once a day once a week etc.

Is there enough to make me want to go out and purchase the upgrade from 2009 - NO absolutely not. Take away NSB and online storage and it's basically the same product and at the end of the day I only want to make full image backups which is the products core function and something it does really well.

I know NSB consolidates the incrementals into weekly backups but then what have we gained apart from the ability to restore something you've just done?

The words "milking it" and "for all it's worth" spring to mind!

What do others think?

I have never found NSB to make an incremental every five minutes, I think this is a grammatical error in their marketing spiel. I believe it might check the drive every five minutes, which is not the same as imaging every 5 minutes, and think about it, would you really want that to happen, especially in a high resource machine.

I think NSB is just an attempt to make an imaging algorithm automatic and therefore if a user is not a computer 'geek/nerd/alien' or whatever they just need to make some rudimentary choices and forget. The fact it doesn't quite work out this way is a different thing altogether.

Perhaps they should have called it 'Set and Forget ' (TM me!)

Kurliana wrote:

NSB collects all changes you made on protected device in real time. Every 5 minutes it locks you drive(similar as T'n'D way) and if there are some changes then NSB backs them up, unlocks drive and continues monitoring. It doesn't use imaging algorithm automatic(you can do this from scheduling tasks).

It may use a different algorithm but surely at the end of the day it is still making a full image albeit a very uptodate one?