Implications of restoring image of Operating System on File backup shedules
I have recently down loaded a trial version of TIH 2013; specifically to evaluate, before purchase.
My intent is:
(1) To back up my operating system, which is on a dedicated SSD (Drive C, with no personal files, or data) This will be a full backup – A once only event!
(2) To backup my personal files and data, which is also on a dedicated hard drive; namely, drive D!
This will be a full backup, followed, by 27 Incremental backups; an incremental backup being scheduled to be performed daily, 7:30 am! I have selected Delete version chains older than 2 days.
(3) The backups (1) & (2) will be made to an external hard drive, Drive E
(4) On day 1, after creating the back plan, (2) above, I will create a full back up of my operating system!
Let us assume that my computer runs successfully for 20 days, backing up my personal files/data, as (2) above.
What would be the situation, if on the 21 day, I had to restore the image of my operating system?
Would Acronis, in the restored operating system, recognise the current status of the incremental backups; namely, it is day 21, and not day one, and incremental backup, would continue, for a further 6 days!
Finally, what would be the situation if I chose to perform 27 differential backups, rather than incremental.
Would Acronis, in the restored operating system, recognize the current status of the differential backups
Pat,
Thank you for your comprehensive reply; I shall take not of your comments/recommendations
However, I am still a little confused concerning the situation of what happens when you restore an image of your operating system, which was created at an earlier date!
Currently, I backup all of my software, with a program Genie Backup Manager Pro! This creates an index, which records the status of each back up i.e this is incremental back-up 21. I record this index, and provided that I re-install this, after I have restored my operating system, future backups of my personal files, continues, as if I had not changed my operating system.
So what I am not sure about, with Acronis, is! If I restore an image of my operating system, which is many days old, will my personal files continue to be backed up, on an incremental/differential basis, as if I had not had not re-loaded my operating system. What I mean, is if I restore my operating system on day 21, will the next incremental/differential backup of my personal files be back 22, of will I start from scratch, with backup No 1 - A full back-up!
Genie Backup Manager Pro is a great program, for personal file back-up, but I do not wish to have both programs on my PC, if not necessary, and Acronis is preferred!
I'm not familiar with Genie Backup Manager Pro. You say it backs up your applicatons. Does that mean that, if you did a clean Windows install, you could somehow restore that Genie Backup to have working applications without reinstallation?
As for whether to get rid of Genie Backup Manager Pro, that's your choice. Many of us here use more than one backup solution. I use Acronis True Image for disk backups/images, mostly for disaster recovery. I also use Microsoft Robocopy for file-based backups.
Pat,
Thank you for your comprehensive reply; I shall take not of your comments/recommendations
However, I am still a little confused concerning the situation of what happens when you restore an image of your operating system, which was created at an earlier date!
Currently, I backup all of my software, with a program Genie Backup Manager Pro! This creates an index, which records the status of each back up i.e this is incremental back-up 21. I record this index, and provided that I re-install this, after I have restored my operating system, future backups of my personal files, continues, as if I had not changed my operating system.
I have used Genie Backup Manager Pro. Great software! I really liked the powerful scheduler. I don't have the last version as I switched to Acronis for disaster recovery of the OS & Apps.
So what I am not sure about, with Acronis, is! If I restore an image of my operating system, which is many days old, will my personal files continue to be backed up, on an incremental/differential basis, as if I had not had not re-loaded my operating system. What I mean, is if I restore my operating system on day 21, will the next incremental/differential backup of my personal files be back 22, of will I start from scratch, with backup No 1 - A full back-up!
Again to be clear, I understand you have 2 different backups:
- OS & apps backup: this would be a disk and partition backup of your entire SSD. All partitions would be included.
- Content backup: this would be file backup of your entire disk D.
When you restore the OS backup, the Content backup doesn't care and continue doing its series. Vice versa, when you restore your content on D, the SSD is untouched and the OS backup continues its merry way.
The 2 backups are completely independent.
Genie Backup Manager Pro is a great program, for personal file back-up, but I do not wish to have both programs on my PC, if not necessary, and Acronis is preferred!
Genie Backup Manager Pro works great indeed. Something you would lose if you were to switch to Acronis for your files is:
- the flexibility to trigger a full backup on particular days.
- the option to do a simple mirror of your content (this is great for backup including files like videos, music (ie content that is big, but doesn't change much, and is aready in a compressed format: putting this type of content in a compressed container doesn't add much except fragility of the backup).
But I would definitely recommend ACronis over GBM for the disaster recovery of the OS and apps. For this kind of backup, imaging technology is much preferred (rather than file based) and ACronis is excellent at imaging.
Hi Guys,
Thank you for your comments!
Yes, Pat, I have two different back ups
(1) My operating system, plus all programs and applications is on the the first hard drive, on the C partition.
No personal files, or data files is stored on this drive.
When I back up the operating system, I select two partitions (System Reserve partition & the C partition); I do not use the image of drive option!
Hence the image of my operating system includes the Acronis program, the backup options and plans, schedules and settings.
The image is saved on an unpartitioned external drive - E.
(2) All of my data (Documents, Picture, Music, Videos, Mail storage folder, Financial suite storage folder, etc) is on my second hard drive D
This is Not a partitioned drive.
When I back up my files, I select the individual folders (Documents, Picture, Music, Videos, Mail storage folder, Financial suite storage folder, etc).
I do backup the whole drive!
Again, the Acronis image of my personal files is saved on an unpartitioned external drive - E.
So the big question is!
If I restore my operating system (1) twenty days after creating the image of the operating system, with apps, but do not restore my personal files (2), will the Acronis program, in the restored operating system recognize that 20 incremental, or differential backups have been created, since the original full back up!
Unless the Acronis program has the facility to analyses the backup status from the data backed up (looks, to see how many incremental, or differential have been created, on the external drive - E), rather than the contained data, in the program, I don't see that it can pick up from previous activities.
So the big question is!
If I restore my operating system (1) twenty days after creating the image of the operating system, with apps, but do not restore my personal files (2), will the Acronis program, in the restored operating system recognize that 20 incremental, or differential backups have been created, since the original full back up!
I finally understood your question. When you restore the operating system and the apps, the ATI database will be restored to the point where it was at the time of the backup. The implication of this is that ATI will lose track a bit of the backups that were completed after that date. To avoid all confusion, it is better to manually move the existing TIB files of both backups to another directory on the same disk. ATI will automatically start new chains. When the backup are old enough, simply delete the old files manually.
Thank you, Pat; I thought that this might be the case! This is the one advantage of Genie software - by copying the index, and re-installing, you can continue the back up sequence. If fact, it is more powerful - By re-inserting the index, you also re-install your backup plans - So if you uninstall your program, you don't have to create new plans - I currently have 4 plans, with Genie!
Acronis could learn a little from this - insert an index
My problem, is that my personal data/files is in excess of 300 GBs, which takes some time to perform a full back up, even with USB3; hence my practice for long chains - Perhaps Differential, would be safer!
My problem, is that my personal data/files is in excess of 300 GBs, which takes some time to perform a full back up, even with USB3; hence my practice for long chains - Perhaps Differential, would be safer!
You can exclude folders or file types from a backup, even from a full disk backup. I do this often. I create a full disk backup/image with Acronis True Image, but exclude music files. That's because I have over 400 GB of music. I occasionally do a full disk backup of everything, but more often do the images excluding music files and do a separate Robocopy mirroring of music files using Robocopy.
Thank you for this thought, Tuttle;' more for me to think about! (In addition to whether I should upgrade from ATI 2011 to 2013, and Windows 7 to 8)
Brian,
I had the same issue with GBM and personal files, so I moved for a while to Genie Timeline Pro. I really liked that each file was backed up separately, so you would never lose an entire backup because of a marginal corruption in the backup file. Unfortunately, the older version didn't have retention rules and that ended up being a deal killer. So I moved to SyncBack SE and this is what I use now to backup content.
Pat,
Thank you for all of your help, and thoughts on this subject.
After a good nights sleep, I have decided to stay with ATI 2011, rather than upgrade to 2013 - Not sure that 13 offers me any more, the way that I use it!
Prior to my trial of 2013, I only temporarily installed 2011 to create a Recovery disk to backup/restore my operating system, partitions (on 3 separate drives - belt & braces). This process (touch wood) has never failed me. Acronis, compared to Genie, is quite large, and takes up valuable space on my SSD
At sometime, I may update to Windows 8, and I may then find it necessary to upgrade to 13!
Thanks again,
Brian
Prior to my trial of 2013, I only temporarily installed 2011 to create a Recovery disk to backup/restore my operating system, partitions (on 3 separate drives - belt & braces).
You could have done that without installing. You could have done that from the bootable Recovery Media.
Hi Tuttle,
My copy of 2011, was a download from the Acronis site - I did not have an installation CD.
Perhaps I have used the wrong terminology Recover Disk - should I have called the bootable Recovery Media.
Ever since my first version of ATI, I have found backups of the operating system, created with the bootable Recovery Media, more reliable, than live backups from within Windows.
My copy of 2011, was a download from the Acronis site - I did not have an installation CD.
You do not need an installation CD. You may create the bootable Recovery Media, or Rescue Disk, from within the application, or may download its ISO from your Acronis account.
Perhaps I have used the wrong terminology Recover Disk - should I have called the bootable Recovery Media.
It has been called by many terms over the years. Acronis itself has been inconsistent, as the terms have differed between releases, printed materials, web site, etc. I'm not sure what the official term is now, if there even is one, so I call it the bootable Recovery Media which was at one time one of the terms used by Acronis.
EDIT: in the 2013 documentation, it's called Acronis Bootable Media, although within the application it's called Bootable Rescue Media. Back in v.8 or v.10 it was called Recovery Media. It's also been called Rescue Disk, and I don't know what else. Makes my head hurt and leads to confusion, so I stick with bootable Recovery Media, a term that Acronis used at one time and which I hope is clear.
Ever since my first version of ATI, I have found backups of the operating system, created with the bootable Recovery Media, more reliable, than live backups from within Windows.
To my knowledge, that has not been an issue. The MVPs' recommendation is for recoveries to occur from the bootable Recovery Media, but backups may be performed from bootable Recovery Media or from Windows application. I've restored many full disk backups that were made using the Windows application.
In addition to the good points offered by Tuttle, it is also now possible to create a TrueImage bootable media as a separate process--even with the 2013 trial version. Now, it is possible to create the bootable media CD without performing an install. The 2013 trial version bootable media can be used for restoring prior backup files but the trial media does NOT offer backup capabilities. In order to perform backups using the 2013 trial version, the trial version must be Windows installed.
To access the ISO download file, the key is to register the serial number of your purchased version or trial version. After registration, the user has access to the file downloads and the bootable media ISO file is accessible for download as a single file.
Once you have the ISO file, it can be burnt to CD as an image and becomes the TI bootable media CD. This CD is the same as if created from within the program. If using Win7, RIGHT click on the downloaded iso file and choose the Open with Wndows Disk Image Burner. If using XP, the free download from IMGBURN does a good job of burning images to CD or DVD.
In your reference to an "Installation disk", all full version TrueImge installation files are standalone installations and prior installation not necessary--although you may need a prior serial number if you are installing an upgrade.
If your reference to an "installation disk" should be referring to the Windows Installation disk, most Windows 7 installations provides the user with the ability to make a Windows Repair disk (CD) and this option is listed under the Win7 Start Menu/Maintenance folder.
Once you have the ISO file, it can be burnt to CD as an image and becomes the TI bootable media CD. This CD is the same as if created from within the program. If using Win7, RIGHT click on the downloaded iso file and choose the Open with Wndows Disk Image Burner.
On my Win7 system, the command is "Burn disc image".