Guest Vic Posted September 19, 2007 Posted September 19, 2007 I've read a lot about the virtues of Acronis on this newsgroup. However, people continually talk about IMAGING as a backup. I don't want to do that. Can Acronis use a completely different size hard drive to simply backup selected files/directories (not a cluster by cluster clone)?
Guest sgopus Posted September 19, 2007 Posted September 19, 2007 RE: Acronis / backup question Yes "Vic" wrote: > I've read a lot about the virtues of Acronis on this newsgroup. However, > people continually talk about IMAGING as a backup. I don't want to do > that. > > Can Acronis use a completely different size hard drive to simply backup > selected files/directories (not a cluster by cluster clone)? > > >
Guest VanguardLH Posted September 19, 2007 Posted September 19, 2007 Re: Acronis / backup question "Vic" wrote in message news:e2o5Pfm%23HHA.4184@TK2MSFTNGP05.phx.gbl... > I've read a lot about the virtues of Acronis on this newsgroup. > However, people continually talk about IMAGING as a backup. I don't > want to do that. > > Can Acronis use a completely different size hard drive to simply > backup selected files/directories (not a cluster by cluster clone)? Acronis is a company, not a software product. If you are asking about their True Image product then you also need to specify WHICH version you are considering. Their Home version sucks: - Does not save *physical* images (sector-by-sector) to allow restoring a partition/disk back to the EXACT state as before. It only saves logical images; i.e., it has to open and read files through the file system. A logical image may get an OS partition back up and running okay. It won't be exactly in the same state as before. There is no option to force True Image Home to do a physical image. It will only do a physical image if it does not recognize the file system or the file system is corrupt. - Unlike DriveImage used to be (before Symantec grabbed it) that could save a physical image by rebooting the system and running the image program outside the OS (so the volume was static), TrueImage Home runs under a currently running OS. It saves a *logical* image while the OS is running (and while files are open and being changed). Rebooting to use their rescue CD to run TI Home (without Windows running) is the closest I can get it to do something like a physical image backup. However, and if using rewritable CD/DVD discs to save the image, make damn sure you have enough of them already wiped (formatted) before starting as TI Home can write to rewritable CD/DVD media but it won't format it. If you have 10 DVD-RW already formatted and ready for the backup but it takes 11 of them then you are screwed by having to abort the almost finished backup, reboot into Windows, and reformat the 11 discs needed (and probably several more just in case). - I and other users have encountered file read errors. The file on which the error occurs will change in every backup. This means, at a minimum, that you will lose that file. It could also mean you lose the entire rest of the backup. When the error occurs, a window pops up announcing the file read error which hangs the backup. You come back the next morning to find the backup got hung. You need to use your computer so you have to kill off the backup (see below on why due to poor data bus bandwidth control). You've lost the backup because they halted it to show a file read error instead of skipping past to continue the rest of the backup and then show the error in a log. One suggestion to reduce (but not eliminate) file read errors is to run the backup job at low priority. That means, for example, that a backup that might've completed in 2 hours will now take 15, or more hours. Of course, you'll still have to be there to close the file read dialog windows so the backup will actually continue and eventually complete. - The Home version does not support volume shadow copying to reliability save a snapshot of open files. Besides the above file read errors, it also leads to out-of-sync files that were open at the time they got backed up. VSS has been available in Windows XP and Windows 2003 from their beginning and supported by the crippled NT Backup utility included in them. Acronis hasn't managed to figure out VSS should be supported in the Home version. They suggest you pay more for the Workstation version. They say VSS will be supported in some future version of TI Home (but Windows XP has been out for years and Acronis still doesn't include it in the Home version). - You can specify a priority for a backup job. That does NOT affect the task priority for the processes ran for the backup. The processes still run at Normal priority. Priority in TI Home is a crude and poorly designed control for regulating the data bus bandwith. At low backup priority, your host is barely usable. You will get infuriated at the halted and jerky response of your host, and the backup will take like 15 hours to complete so your computer is farked the whole time. At normal backup priority, you will have long periods of waiting for your host to respond. Obviously a faster computer would help but you probably don't want to be doing much when the backup runs. At high backup priority, forget using your computer for anything else. - They tried to include quotas in pre-defined backup locations. You define a backup location (i.e., drive and path) where TI Home then will take care of renaming the backup files so they don't overwrite each other (there is no option to keep backups from overwriting if they specify the same base filename). That's nice but the quotas are supposed to protect out-of-disk problems. Supposedly you can set the max disk space used for backup files in the backup location, how many maximum backup files to keep there, and how long before they expire. The quotas are not honored. I was told this was a new feature. It doesn't work yet. - The renaming of backup files in the backup location is handy. When defining a backup policy, you can specify "Create a full backup after N backups". That way, you could define an incremental or differential backup so the first one would be a full backup, then N more incremental or differental backups are saved, and the cycle repeats. It helps in not having to define multiple policies that will manage the backup files properly. However, this option is not honored if any of the quotas are enabled in the backup location. Since the quotas are not honored anyway, there is no point in using them. Define the backup location, turn off all its quotas, and use the "Create a full backup after N backups" option to keep the total count and size of backups under your disk's free space. - If quotas are enabled on the backup location, TI Home doesn't merely delete the full backup (and its incremental or differentials tied to that full backup) when disk space needs to be freed up. Instead they consolidate the incrementals so there are less of them to store with the associated full backup. This safety measure is trying to keep as much of the old backups as possible but it incurs a big hit in time. Consolidation can take many hours, so your 2-hour backup could end up taking 8 hours, or more. It's a bit tough to setup schedules of tasks in their scheduler and also in Windows' own task scheduler when it is unknown how long maximum the task should take. - They have a Secure Zone to hide backup files under the mistaken premise that hidden partitions are safe from malware. Nope, malware does not require using a drive letter to access a partition that is recognized by the OS. However, it has value in keeping them out of sight from you or other users to prevent accidental deletion. Handy and not handy. Not handy in that you cannot access the backups in the Secure Zone even through True Image itself. Say you find out that you are infected or included the wrong partitions in a backup. The latter can happen if you change the number of partitions on a disk because TI Home first selects all drives on a disk rather than what you specify (i.e., if you have 1 partition and select it, TI Home selects the the whole disk so adding a partition later will also include it). You now have backups in the Secure Zone that you don't want. You don't want the infected backup there because you might restore from it and get reinfected again. If a 2nd partition got created after defining the backup policy but which you did not want to include (i.e., you put files there that you don't want TI Home to backup from that disk) and which made for a huge backup, you can't delete it (and update the backup policy to reflect just the original partition to redo the backup). The Secure Zone is hidden from normal access but it shouldn't be hidden when using TI Home itself. You can mount the backup image but that doesn't let you delete it. If you mount in write mode, it says another backup gets saved with the changes (so you still don't end up deleting the unwanted backup should you, say, mount that backup image and delete all files and instead you still have the unwanted backup and now another one with zero files in it). I gave up trying to use TI Home for logical file backups. I don't like logical image backups, especially when the OS is running. So I only use the bootable [rescue] CD to start TI Home (and not within the OS) to save a logical image (although I'd prefer a physical image). For logical file backups, I went to PC Backup from Migo Software (was Stompsoft) which is a rebadged version of Novastor's NovaBackup. It supports VSS, never has had an file read errors, causes some impact on responsiveness of the host but is still a very usable host. However, as with many backup programs, you will need to manage the backup files to eliminate the old ones so you don't run out of disk space. NovaBackup has an overwrite option for backup so you can start a set of backups from scratch, like having an incremental w/overwrite run on Tuesday (to start them all over), incrementals w/append on Wed to Sun (so they append to the same backup file), and a full w/overwrite on Mon (or you could have an incremental w/overwrite specifying a different file for each day). With the append option (and overwrite if not specified), you can figure out when you want to restart the backups. TI Home tried to do something the same with their quotas on the backup location but they don't work. There was only a couple reasons why I quit using crippled NT Backup included in Windows XP: (1) It won't compress the backup file when saving it to a hard disk (it can only turn on *hardware* compression is supported by the backup device, like a tape drive that has its own hardware compression option), so backups are much larger when using this backup program; and, (2) It doesn't support spanning the backup across multiple CD/DVD media (but will support spanning across tapes). NT Backup was a crippled version of Backup Exec Desktop from Veritas who sold it off to Stompsoft (which, I think went to Ahead as Nero Backup while Stompsoft, now Migo Software, switched to Novastor's NovaBackup). So I dumped TI Home for doing logical file backups and went with PC Backup (aka NovaBackup). I still have TI Home to do *logical* image backups but am now checking the alternatives to see which ones do physical image backups (like DriveImage did although it still could skip unused sectors by reading the file system).
Guest sgopus Posted September 19, 2007 Posted September 19, 2007 Re: Acronis / backup question Very informative, thanks for the details "VanguardLH" wrote: > "Vic" wrote in message news:e2o5Pfm%23HHA.4184@TK2MSFTNGP05.phx.gbl... > > I've read a lot about the virtues of Acronis on this newsgroup. > > However, people continually talk about IMAGING as a backup. I don't > > want to do that. > > > > Can Acronis use a completely different size hard drive to simply > > backup selected files/directories (not a cluster by cluster clone)? > > Acronis is a company, not a software product. If you are asking about > their True Image product then you also need to specify WHICH version > you are considering. Their Home version sucks: > > - Does not save *physical* images (sector-by-sector) to allow > restoring a partition/disk back to the EXACT state as before. It only > saves logical images; i.e., it has to open and read files through the > file system. A logical image may get an OS partition back up and > running okay. It won't be exactly in the same state as before. There > is no option to force True Image Home to do a physical image. It will > only do a physical image if it does not recognize the file system or > the file system is corrupt. > > - Unlike DriveImage used to be (before Symantec grabbed it) that could > save a physical image by rebooting the system and running the image > program outside the OS (so the volume was static), TrueImage Home runs > under a currently running OS. It saves a *logical* image while the OS > is running (and while files are open and being changed). Rebooting to > use their rescue CD to run TI Home (without Windows running) is the > closest I can get it to do something like a physical image backup. > However, and if using rewritable CD/DVD discs to save the image, make > damn sure you have enough of them already wiped (formatted) before > starting as TI Home can write to rewritable CD/DVD media but it won't > format it. If you have 10 DVD-RW already formatted and ready for the > backup but it takes 11 of them then you are screwed by having to abort > the almost finished backup, reboot into Windows, and reformat the 11 > discs needed (and probably several more just in case). > > - I and other users have encountered file read errors. The file on > which the error occurs will change in every backup. This means, at a > minimum, that you will lose that file. It could also mean you lose > the entire rest of the backup. When the error occurs, a window pops > up announcing the file read error which hangs the backup. You come > back the next morning to find the backup got hung. You need to use > your computer so you have to kill off the backup (see below on why due > to poor data bus bandwidth control). You've lost the backup because > they halted it to show a file read error instead of skipping past to > continue the rest of the backup and then show the error in a log. One > suggestion to reduce (but not eliminate) file read errors is to run > the backup job at low priority. That means, for example, that a > backup that might've completed in 2 hours will now take 15, or more > hours. Of course, you'll still have to be there to close the file > read dialog windows so the backup will actually continue and > eventually complete. > > - The Home version does not support volume shadow copying to > reliability save a snapshot of open files. Besides the above file > read errors, it also leads to out-of-sync files that were open at the > time they got backed up. VSS has been available in Windows XP and > Windows 2003 from their beginning and supported by the crippled NT > Backup utility included in them. Acronis hasn't managed to figure out > VSS should be supported in the Home version. They suggest you pay > more for the Workstation version. They say VSS will be supported in > some future version of TI Home (but Windows XP has been out for years > and Acronis still doesn't include it in the Home version). > > - You can specify a priority for a backup job. That does NOT affect > the task priority for the processes ran for the backup. The processes > still run at Normal priority. Priority in TI Home is a crude and > poorly designed control for regulating the data bus bandwith. At low > backup priority, your host is barely usable. You will get infuriated > at the halted and jerky response of your host, and the backup will > take like 15 hours to complete so your computer is farked the whole > time. At normal backup priority, you will have long periods of > waiting for your host to respond. Obviously a faster computer would > help but you probably don't want to be doing much when the backup > runs. At high backup priority, forget using your computer for > anything else. > > - They tried to include quotas in pre-defined backup locations. You > define a backup location (i.e., drive and path) where TI Home then > will take care of renaming the backup files so they don't overwrite > each other (there is no option to keep backups from overwriting if > they specify the same base filename). That's nice but the quotas are > supposed to protect out-of-disk problems. Supposedly you can set the > max disk space used for backup files in the backup location, how many > maximum backup files to keep there, and how long before they expire. > The quotas are not honored. I was told this was a new feature. It > doesn't work yet. > > - The renaming of backup files in the backup location is handy. When > defining a backup policy, you can specify "Create a full backup after > N backups". That way, you could define an incremental or differential > backup so the first one would be a full backup, then N more > incremental or differental backups are saved, and the cycle repeats. > It helps in not having to define multiple policies that will manage > the backup files properly. However, this option is not honored if any > of the quotas are enabled in the backup location. Since the quotas > are not honored anyway, there is no point in using them. Define the > backup location, turn off all its quotas, and use the "Create a full > backup after N backups" option to keep the total count and size of > backups under your disk's free space. > > - If quotas are enabled on the backup location, TI Home doesn't merely > delete the full backup (and its incremental or differentials tied to > that full backup) when disk space needs to be freed up. Instead they > consolidate the incrementals so there are less of them to store with > the associated full backup. This safety measure is trying to keep as > much of the old backups as possible but it incurs a big hit in time. > Consolidation can take many hours, so your 2-hour backup could end up > taking 8 hours, or more. It's a bit tough to setup schedules of tasks > in their scheduler and also in Windows' own task scheduler when it is > unknown how long maximum the task should take. > > - They have a Secure Zone to hide backup files under the mistaken > premise that hidden partitions are safe from malware. Nope, malware > does not require using a drive letter to access a partition that is > recognized by the OS. However, it has value in keeping them out of > sight from you or other users to prevent accidental deletion. Handy > and not handy. Not handy in that you cannot access the backups in the > Secure Zone even through True Image itself. Say you find out that you > are infected or included the wrong partitions in a backup. The latter > can happen if you change the number of partitions on a disk because TI > Home first selects all drives on a disk rather than what you specify > (i.e., if you have 1 partition and select it, TI Home selects the the > whole disk so adding a partition later will also include it). You now > have backups in the Secure Zone that you don't want. You don't want > the infected backup there because you might restore from it and get > reinfected again. If a 2nd partition got created after defining the > backup policy but which you did not want to include (i.e., you put > files there that you don't want TI Home to backup from that disk) and > which made for a huge backup, you can't delete it (and update the > backup policy to reflect just the original partition to redo the > backup). The Secure Zone is hidden from normal access but it > shouldn't be hidden when using TI Home itself. You can mount the > backup image but that doesn't let you delete it. If you mount in > write mode, it says another backup gets saved with the changes (so you > still don't end up deleting the unwanted backup should you, say, mount > that backup image and delete all files and instead you still have the > unwanted backup and now another one with zero files in it). > > I gave up trying to use TI Home for logical file backups. I don't > like logical image backups, especially when the OS is running. So I > only use the bootable [rescue] CD to start TI Home (and not within the > OS) to save a logical image (although I'd prefer a physical image). > For logical file backups, I went to PC Backup from Migo Software (was > Stompsoft) which is a rebadged version of Novastor's NovaBackup. It > supports VSS, never has had an file read errors, causes some impact on > responsiveness of the host but is still a very usable host. However, > as with many backup programs, you will need to manage the backup files > to eliminate the old ones so you don't run out of disk space. > NovaBackup has an overwrite option for backup so you can start a set > of backups from scratch, like having an incremental w/overwrite run on > Tuesday (to start them all over), incrementals w/append on Wed to Sun > (so they append to the same backup file), and a full w/overwrite on > Mon (or you could have an incremental w/overwrite specifying a > different file for each day). With the append option (and overwrite > if not specified), you can figure out when you want to restart the > backups. TI Home tried to do something the same with their quotas on > the backup location but they don't work. > > There was only a couple reasons why I quit using crippled NT Backup > included in Windows XP: (1) It won't compress the backup file when > saving it to a hard disk (it can only turn on *hardware* compression > is supported by the backup device, like a tape drive that has its own > hardware compression option), so backups are much larger when using > this backup program; and, (2) It doesn't support spanning the backup > across multiple CD/DVD media (but will support spanning across tapes). > NT Backup was a crippled version of Backup Exec Desktop from Veritas > who sold it off to Stompsoft (which, I think went to Ahead as Nero > Backup while Stompsoft, now Migo Software, switched to Novastor's > NovaBackup). > > So I dumped TI Home for doing logical file backups and went with PC > Backup (aka NovaBackup). I still have TI Home to do *logical* image > backups but am now checking the alternatives to see which ones do > physical image backups (like DriveImage did although it still could > skip unused sectors by reading the file system). > >
Guest none Posted September 20, 2007 Posted September 20, 2007 Re: Acronis / backup question VanguardLH Your response was very detailed and appreciated. You reinforced the backup solution I've used for the last, oh, 15 years or so; Novabackup. Although, I must say Novabackup took a major leap in many regards when they moved from ver 6 to 7. I do not particularly care for ver 7 (7.5??). Tried ver 8 and uninstalled it because I saw NO difference between it and their new release (ver. 8), except for a different color interface! Went looking on their web site for a 'history' of changes and didn't find it. In fact I have not seen anything detailing the changes from ver. 7 ... which bothers me because I wonder what they are trying to hide! With regard to Acronis; will have to throughly go through their information for TI Home and Workstation before making a choice. Thanks for the input! Vic ___ "VanguardLH" <VanguardLH@mail.invalid> wrote in message news:urgiqRo#HHA.1416@TK2MSFTNGP03.phx.gbl... > "Vic" wrote in message news:e2o5Pfm%23HHA.4184@TK2MSFTNGP05.phx.gbl... > > I've read a lot about the virtues of Acronis on this newsgroup. > > However, people continually talk about IMAGING as a backup. I don't > > want to do that. > > > > Can Acronis use a completely different size hard drive to simply > > backup selected files/directories (not a cluster by cluster clone)? > > Acronis is a company, not a software product. If you are asking about > their True Image product then you also need to specify WHICH version > you are considering. Their Home version sucks: > > - Does not save *physical* images (sector-by-sector) to allow > restoring a partition/disk back to the EXACT state as before. It only > saves logical images; i.e., it has to open and read files through the > file system. A logical image may get an OS partition back up and > running okay. It won't be exactly in the same state as before. There > is no option to force True Image Home to do a physical image. It will > only do a physical image if it does not recognize the file system or > the file system is corrupt. > > - Unlike DriveImage used to be (before Symantec grabbed it) that could > save a physical image by rebooting the system and running the image > program outside the OS (so the volume was static), TrueImage Home runs > under a currently running OS. It saves a *logical* image while the OS > is running (and while files are open and being changed). Rebooting to > use their rescue CD to run TI Home (without Windows running) is the > closest I can get it to do something like a physical image backup. > However, and if using rewritable CD/DVD discs to save the image, make > damn sure you have enough of them already wiped (formatted) before > starting as TI Home can write to rewritable CD/DVD media but it won't > format it. If you have 10 DVD-RW already formatted and ready for the > backup but it takes 11 of them then you are screwed by having to abort > the almost finished backup, reboot into Windows, and reformat the 11 > discs needed (and probably several more just in case). > > - I and other users have encountered file read errors. The file on > which the error occurs will change in every backup. This means, at a > minimum, that you will lose that file. It could also mean you lose > the entire rest of the backup. When the error occurs, a window pops > up announcing the file read error which hangs the backup. You come > back the next morning to find the backup got hung. You need to use > your computer so you have to kill off the backup (see below on why due > to poor data bus bandwidth control). You've lost the backup because > they halted it to show a file read error instead of skipping past to > continue the rest of the backup and then show the error in a log. One > suggestion to reduce (but not eliminate) file read errors is to run > the backup job at low priority. That means, for example, that a > backup that might've completed in 2 hours will now take 15, or more > hours. Of course, you'll still have to be there to close the file > read dialog windows so the backup will actually continue and > eventually complete. > > - The Home version does not support volume shadow copying to > reliability save a snapshot of open files. Besides the above file > read errors, it also leads to out-of-sync files that were open at the > time they got backed up. VSS has been available in Windows XP and > Windows 2003 from their beginning and supported by the crippled NT > Backup utility included in them. Acronis hasn't managed to figure out > VSS should be supported in the Home version. They suggest you pay > more for the Workstation version. They say VSS will be supported in > some future version of TI Home (but Windows XP has been out for years > and Acronis still doesn't include it in the Home version). > > - You can specify a priority for a backup job. That does NOT affect > the task priority for the processes ran for the backup. The processes > still run at Normal priority. Priority in TI Home is a crude and > poorly designed control for regulating the data bus bandwith. At low > backup priority, your host is barely usable. You will get infuriated > at the halted and jerky response of your host, and the backup will > take like 15 hours to complete so your computer is farked the whole > time. At normal backup priority, you will have long periods of > waiting for your host to respond. Obviously a faster computer would > help but you probably don't want to be doing much when the backup > runs. At high backup priority, forget using your computer for > anything else. > > - They tried to include quotas in pre-defined backup locations. You > define a backup location (i.e., drive and path) where TI Home then > will take care of renaming the backup files so they don't overwrite > each other (there is no option to keep backups from overwriting if > they specify the same base filename). That's nice but the quotas are > supposed to protect out-of-disk problems. Supposedly you can set the > max disk space used for backup files in the backup location, how many > maximum backup files to keep there, and how long before they expire. > The quotas are not honored. I was told this was a new feature. It > doesn't work yet. > > - The renaming of backup files in the backup location is handy. When > defining a backup policy, you can specify "Create a full backup after > N backups". That way, you could define an incremental or differential > backup so the first one would be a full backup, then N more > incremental or differental backups are saved, and the cycle repeats. > It helps in not having to define multiple policies that will manage > the backup files properly. However, this option is not honored if any > of the quotas are enabled in the backup location. Since the quotas > are not honored anyway, there is no point in using them. Define the > backup location, turn off all its quotas, and use the "Create a full > backup after N backups" option to keep the total count and size of > backups under your disk's free space. > > - If quotas are enabled on the backup location, TI Home doesn't merely > delete the full backup (and its incremental or differentials tied to > that full backup) when disk space needs to be freed up. Instead they > consolidate the incrementals so there are less of them to store with > the associated full backup. This safety measure is trying to keep as > much of the old backups as possible but it incurs a big hit in time. > Consolidation can take many hours, so your 2-hour backup could end up > taking 8 hours, or more. It's a bit tough to setup schedules of tasks > in their scheduler and also in Windows' own task scheduler when it is > unknown how long maximum the task should take. > > - They have a Secure Zone to hide backup files under the mistaken > premise that hidden partitions are safe from malware. Nope, malware > does not require using a drive letter to access a partition that is > recognized by the OS. However, it has value in keeping them out of > sight from you or other users to prevent accidental deletion. Handy > and not handy. Not handy in that you cannot access the backups in the > Secure Zone even through True Image itself. Say you find out that you > are infected or included the wrong partitions in a backup. The latter > can happen if you change the number of partitions on a disk because TI > Home first selects all drives on a disk rather than what you specify > (i.e., if you have 1 partition and select it, TI Home selects the the > whole disk so adding a partition later will also include it). You now > have backups in the Secure Zone that you don't want. You don't want > the infected backup there because you might restore from it and get > reinfected again. If a 2nd partition got created after defining the > backup policy but which you did not want to include (i.e., you put > files there that you don't want TI Home to backup from that disk) and > which made for a huge backup, you can't delete it (and update the > backup policy to reflect just the original partition to redo the > backup). The Secure Zone is hidden from normal access but it > shouldn't be hidden when using TI Home itself. You can mount the > backup image but that doesn't let you delete it. If you mount in > write mode, it says another backup gets saved with the changes (so you > still don't end up deleting the unwanted backup should you, say, mount > that backup image and delete all files and instead you still have the > unwanted backup and now another one with zero files in it). > > I gave up trying to use TI Home for logical file backups. I don't > like logical image backups, especially when the OS is running. So I > only use the bootable [rescue] CD to start TI Home (and not within the > OS) to save a logical image (although I'd prefer a physical image). > For logical file backups, I went to PC Backup from Migo Software (was > Stompsoft) which is a rebadged version of Novastor's NovaBackup. It > supports VSS, never has had an file read errors, causes some impact on > responsiveness of the host but is still a very usable host. However, > as with many backup programs, you will need to manage the backup files > to eliminate the old ones so you don't run out of disk space. > NovaBackup has an overwrite option for backup so you can start a set > of backups from scratch, like having an incremental w/overwrite run on > Tuesday (to start them all over), incrementals w/append on Wed to Sun > (so they append to the same backup file), and a full w/overwrite on > Mon (or you could have an incremental w/overwrite specifying a > different file for each day). With the append option (and overwrite > if not specified), you can figure out when you want to restart the > backups. TI Home tried to do something the same with their quotas on > the backup location but they don't work. > > There was only a couple reasons why I quit using crippled NT Backup > included in Windows XP: (1) It won't compress the backup file when > saving it to a hard disk (it can only turn on *hardware* compression > is supported by the backup device, like a tape drive that has its own > hardware compression option), so backups are much larger when using > this backup program; and, (2) It doesn't support spanning the backup > across multiple CD/DVD media (but will support spanning across tapes). > NT Backup was a crippled version of Backup Exec Desktop from Veritas > who sold it off to Stompsoft (which, I think went to Ahead as Nero > Backup while Stompsoft, now Migo Software, switched to Novastor's > NovaBackup). > > So I dumped TI Home for doing logical file backups and went with PC > Backup (aka NovaBackup). I still have TI Home to do *logical* image > backups but am now checking the alternatives to see which ones do > physical image backups (like DriveImage did although it still could > skip unused sectors by reading the file system). >
Guest M.I.5¾ Posted September 20, 2007 Posted September 20, 2007 Re: Acronis / backup question "VanguardLH" <VanguardLH@mail.invalid> wrote in message news:urgiqRo%23HHA.1416@TK2MSFTNGP03.phx.gbl... > "Vic" wrote in message news:e2o5Pfm%23HHA.4184@TK2MSFTNGP05.phx.gbl... >> I've read a lot about the virtues of Acronis on this newsgroup. However, >> people continually talk about IMAGING as a backup. I don't want to do >> that. >> >> Can Acronis use a completely different size hard drive to simply backup >> selected files/directories (not a cluster by cluster clone)? > > Acronis is a company, not a software product. If you are asking about > their True Image product then you also need to specify WHICH version you > are considering. Their Home version sucks: > [snipped] Whilst most of the points you make about True Image are valid, the average home user probably couldn't care less. For a home user, True Image is a perfectly viable way to make a back up of a system as insurance against recovery. The disadvantages that you point out may be of interest to professional users, in a company environment, but I wouldn't consider True Image (or any imaging application) as a backup option in such an environment anyway. By the way, although True Image runs under the operating system it is backing up, it nevertherless produces useable backups, provided it is the only application running (though I have not had a problem if applications are running but not doing anything). Essential system files are imaged before being backed up so changes during imaging aren't a problem. I have had to restore my True Imaged backup several times on my home machines and have never had a problem using the restored image.
Guest VanguardLH Posted September 20, 2007 Posted September 20, 2007 Re: Acronis / backup question "none" wrote ... > VanguardLH > > Your response was very detailed and appreciated. You reinforced the > backup solution I've used for the last, oh, 15 years or so; > Novabackup. > Although, I must say Novabackup took a major leap in many regards > when > they moved from ver 6 to 7. I do not particularly care for ver 7 > (7.5??). Tried ver 8 and uninstalled it because I saw NO difference > between it and their new release (ver. 8), except for a different > color > interface! Went looking on their web site for a 'history' of changes > and > didn't find it. In fact I have not seen anything detailing the > changes > from ver. 7 ... which bothers me because I wonder what they are > trying > to hide! > > With regard to Acronis; will have to throughly go through their > information for TI Home and Workstation before making a choice. You won't be happy with the Home version. You'll have to spend twice as much to get their Workstation version. While I tested their product under a VM (in VMWare) to trial it, that doesn't run it in a production environment where you perform actual backups. So I got to see some of the features but didn't get to put it through its paces to perform actual backups (beyond tiny trial backups). Some question asked of Acronis were so delayed until I had to move on and decided to buy their Home version. Well, I didn't lose too much money on it. In fact, I got PC Backup (NovaBackup rebadged by Migo/Stompsoft) for just $4 in an HP bundle from eBay (PC Backup 7.5, Recover Lost Data, Digital Vault, and Digital File Shredder - although Digital Vault is crap and I already have Heidi's Eraser). PC Backup (NovaBackup) version 8.0, per NovaStor, only adds Vista support and I'm still on Windows XP (a new fluffier GUI and more fluffware does not a new OS make - and I may not be sticking with Windows much longer on my home computer). While I don't like the way that they hide the scripts and there isn't any real file management (to expire old backups because they don't use a catalog to search on files rather than dig through backups), I have yet to encounter any file read errors - but I do have the "open file" option enabled to use VSS which Acronis says should be available in their Workstation version.
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