Sorting out folders on the backup drive
I have been looking at the drive I set for putting the backups and I'm not sure who all the folders belong to. I have both acronis and windows backing up to the drive.
msdownld.tmp - Empty folder. Must be a left over from another crappy installer but I'm not sure.
My Backups - I know this one is Acronis
Time Explorer Storage - Another Acornis folder
VORG-W7 - This one has an icon that looks like it came from windows 7 icons. It has:
. Backup Set 2009-11-07 235312 - folder
. Backup Set 2009-11-15 190002 - folder
. Backup Set 2009-11-29 190001 - folder
. MediaID.bin - file
WindowsImageBackup - it has a sub folder
. Vorg-W7 - which has:
. . Backup 2009-12-07 020013 - folder
. . Catalog - folder
. . SPPMetadataCache - folder
. . MediaId - file
MediaID.bin file
I thought WindowsImageBackup would be the windows backup folder, but VORG-W7 looks more like it.
Even "Time Explorer Storage" doesn't contain any ".tib" files and that is supposed to be the non stop backup that keeps stopping.
F:\WindowsImageBackup\Vorg-W7\Backup 2009-12-07 020013 contains a couple large .vhd files and a bunch of .xml files (thought xml was a web file extention). So I'm guessing that is the windows backup.
But then what is F:\VORG-W7? It contains zip files of what looks like copies of the c:\user tree.
F:\VORG-W7\Backup Set 2009-11-07 235312\Backup Files 2009-11-07 235312\Catalogs
F:\VORG-W7\Backup Set 2009-11-07 235312\Backup Files 2009-11-07 235312\Backup files 1.zip
F:\VORG-W7\Backup Set 2009-11-07 235312\Backup Files 2009-11-07 235312\Backup files 2.zip
F:\VORG-W7\Backup Set 2009-11-07 235312\Backup Files 2009-11-08 190001\Catalogs
F:\VORG-W7\Backup Set 2009-11-07 235312\Backup Files 2009-11-08 190001\Backup files 1.zip
F:\VORG-W7\Backup Set 2009-11-07 235312\Backup Files 2009-11-08 190001\Backup files 2.zip
F:\VORG-W7\Backup Set 2009-11-07 235312\Catalogs
F:\VORG-W7\Backup Set 2009-11-15 190002\Backup Files 2009-11-15 190002\Catalogs
F:\VORG-W7\Backup Set 2009-11-15 190002\Backup Files 2009-11-15 190002\Backup files 1.zip
F:\VORG-W7\Backup Set 2009-11-15 190002\Backup Files 2009-11-15 190002\Backup files 2.zip
F:\VORG-W7\Backup Set 2009-11-15 190002\Backup Files 2009-11-22 190001\Catalogs
F:\VORG-W7\Backup Set 2009-11-15 190002\Backup Files 2009-11-22 190001\Backup files 1.zip
F:\VORG-W7\Backup Set 2009-11-15 190002\Backup Files 2009-11-22 190001\Backup files 2.zip
F:\VORG-W7\Backup Set 2009-11-15 190002\Catalogs
etc....
Timothy:
Those files sound like they were created by Windows 7 Complete PC Backup. Do you have the Win 7 backup task set up to both back up files and to do an image backup? The image backup creates .vhd files, and the files backup creates .zip files.
Windows does seem to have two backup types set, but there seems to be little control over it. Nether one seems to back up the E: partition which is part of the same drive as C:. I let it setup backup when I installed because I didn't know how long it would be before I got TI.
Looks like I'm going to need more drive space for backups. The drive is already down to 6gb and will cause a full responce to which ever tries to do the next back. See how well each does at dealing with it for now until I can get more drive space. I have a linux computer that I wanted to back up to also. I put Apache on it to make some files available to friends. But I don't know if it has an ftp option yet or not. need to find out more about it.
Timothy:
You can control what Windows 7 Complete PC Backup will store on your backup drive through the user interface. Type Backup in the Windows 7 search box and choose Backup and restore.
Click on the Change settings link to see the choices for what to back up, what to exclude, and how often to back up. Click the Manage space link for viewing the contents of your backup drive and for deleting backups or system images that you no longer want.
Letting Windows Complete PC Backup manage your backups automatically is extremely inefficient and will quickly fill up a drive. You'll have a much smaller and more-efficient set of backups if you create images with TI instead. In my tests, TI is a factor of 3 more efficient in its use of space compared to Windows Backup.
I poked around that menu. When it says include a system image, doesn't that mean it's already backing up C:? or do you still need to check the C: box to back up all of c:?
I was looking for an option to set the number of backups it keeps. But I guess you have to manually delete extra old ones. I had it setup for non stop backup, but that seems bugged now and I'm waiting for the fix for that.
Timothy:
The "system image" choice will make a complete image of any volumes that are needed to run Windows 7, which normally would be the boot volume and the C: volume. The image created is saved in virtual hard disk format as a .vhd file, which is capable of completely restoring Windows.
The other backup choices have to do with which files and folders you want to back up. These normally include all of the files in your user profile by default, but you can also check (or un-check) other files. Normally these would not include any of the files needed to restore Windows; just your user files. They are saved in .zip format.
This may seem simple but it's getting confusing to me. To me a system backup should include ALL installed programs. No putzing around with restoring windows, then reinstalling programs, then re-restoring windows because the reinstall of the programs will make a mess of the restored windows. So to fully back up it need the system partition, C: and E:.
I was trying to keep windows on C: and installed stuff on E: to reduce clutter and fragmenting of windows partition. And incase I am able to move C: to an SSD at some point. But just about every program I install, dispite being told to intsall on E: also dumps crap in c:\program files and/or c:\program files (x86), and c:\programdata and c:\user...whatever.
Program installs just keep getting more and more sloppy dumping crap everywhere. A program should be contained within it's selected install tree and no place else. Guess I should have just left everything on C:. Even temp folders are scattered all over. I tell windows to clean up the mess in it's temp folders only to find that the windows temp folder didn't have that much in it. but there is a temp in the user tree that had over 4Gb of junk! So just moving the temp folder to another partition wouldn't help ether.
Tim:
Correct; with the way you set things up you will have to image both C: and E: in order to have an image of the Windows operating system and all installed programs.
Sometimes it's easier to NOT fight City Hall. You're correct; even if you target another partition when installing programs, the installers will still need to put user-specific settings in the User Profile folder, and unless you've moved your user profile to a different partition these settings will end up in the Windows partition. Even if you do both, installers will add registry keys and the registry is stored in the Windows partition.
All in all, it's often simpler to install Windows AND your programs to the Windows partition. I usually do this and then create a separate partition for my data files.