Rob K

Hi,

I have been browsing the hard-drive forum for a solution to my backup needs, but I have not found what I am looking for. A lot of the threads seem to be involving imaging or cloning, which is not necessarily what I am after, plus my system is a bit more complicated. Could anyone advise me as to a suitable software package for the following situation...?

I have a small home network, consisting of two desktops and a laptop. All hard-drives are formatted as NTSC.

My main desktop has two hard-drives:-

One is IDE, 500GB, two partitions, (C: is 128 GB and bootable with XP pro, SP3, E; is 362 GB, for data only), other hard-drive is 500 GB SATA for data only.

Second desktop has two hard-drives:-

One is IDE, 80 GB bootable with XP Pro SP3 and some data, other hard-drive is IDE 60 GB, data only.

Laptop has two internal hard-drives, 149 GB each, split into four partitions:-

One partition is the C; drive, 40 GB, bootable with Vista (which I almost never use)

Second partition is E: drive, 73 GB, data only.

Third partition is H: drive, 34 GB, bootable with XP Pro, SP3

Fourth partition is a whole (single partition) drive, D: drive, 149 GB, data only

I have two NAS drives, each 500 GB, NTFS.

All are connected together with a Netgear FS116 switch.


I want to be able to back up my data from my PCs to my NAS drives and another USB external 500 GB drive that I have available, (but so far, unused). I tried backing up data a few days ago, using EZbackitup, but it took about 24 hours to back up 150 GB! I tried to perform the same operaion today, to see if it would backup incrementally, or try and do the whole thing again. It tried to do a full 150 GB backup, which would have taken another 24 hours. (24 hours for 150 GB, is that realistic???) This is not what I want.

Can anyone advise me of a suitable package that can do ALL of the following ?:-


1) Back up a pre-selected combination of files and folders from any/all drives on eack PC to the NAS drive(s), preserving file/path/folder structures,
2) Compare the current content of the "folders of interest" with their most recent backups, and ONLY backup files or folders that have been modified SINCE the last backup (i.e. all susequent backups will be quick, INCREMENTAL backups, not laborious full backups, overwriting identical files)
3) Include a programmable scheduler, so that backing up can be done automatically at 3am or 4am, when I am asleep, without stopping or needing intervention from me.
4) The software should be easy to use and configure, with good "help" functions, or a very intuitive interface, so that I can get it to work without having to solicit too much help from this forum.
5) I am not sure what to do about previously backed up files/folders that have been deleted from the PCs themselves after that last backup was performed. (Leave in the backup, or delete from the backup??) I would like the option to leave them intact in the backup, if possible, just in case...
6) A reasonable price, or freeware, if that is possible, but I suppose that is asking a bit much (!)
7) I do not need to backup my XP operating systems. If my (bootable) hard drive dies on me, I will be installing a new hard-drive, formatting NTSC and installing XP Pro from CD ROM in the usual way, then restoring my data from the most recent backup. As I understand, this is what "cloning" is, and I don't think I need this; just quick, reliable, AUTOMATIC, selective backing up of important data.

Does anyone have a similar situation to this? How do you perform backups like this? What software do you recommend?

Cheers,

Rob

linderman

Acronis is probably the most advanced back-up solution provider ............. I didnt say the cheapest though ............. but then again when you get into this realm ........ cheap isnt really the focus any more .................. its data protection

raptor_pa

Windows backup wil do most everything you are looking for, no software looks at existing files tho for incremental backup, they simply check to see if the archive bit is set in the file attributes. You can do differential or incremental backups after a full backup. After a backup, the archive bit is toggled to 0. So you do a full backup, all bits toggled to 0. Any files change, Archive bit is toggled on, file is backed up. Now the differences between differential and incremental.
After your full backup, all archive bits are reset, when the file is changed, the archive bit is turned on, and the differential or incremental backup will backup that file to the new backup container. The differential backup will NOT reset the archive bit, it leaves the bit turned on so the file gets backued up every time a differential is run, until the next full backup. An incremental backup resets the archive bit on the file after it is backed up, and it will not be backed up in the next incremental backup unless it changes again, and the archive bit gets turned on.
So it sounds like incremental would be faster and smaller and it is, but there is a downside.... To do a restore, with incremental, you need EVERY backup created since the last full backup and they must be applied in order. With a differential you need only the last full backup and the last differential backup.
I don't know of any backup software that wil look in an existing backup container ( usually a file) and replace changed files... the size will almost always be different when the file changes so it won't fit in the same space, and any new files would have to be added, the directory structure would have to be adjusted and the file meta data would be different. To use Windows backup to the NAS you would just have to map a drive letter to the NAS drive on each client, and then point the client to that mapped drive, and have a directory on that drive for each client. There will be a point with diminishing returns, but you could probably have two clients writing to the drive at the same time. The backup software will have liitle to do with the speed, the slowdowns will be in the network transfer and the NAS's write speed.

Rob K

Hi, again,

From what I have read from the replies from you both, it sounds like a differential backup is what I need, as I want to only have one single "depository" (...is that what Raptor means by a "container" ??...) for the backed-up file structure. Essentially, I want the backup software to emulate what I would (should/could) be doing manually, i.e. IF I were to save any altered file (simultaneously) to both the local drive and the "archive (NAS)" drive in every "save" operation, but done automatically, with all altered files backed-up in one hit.

This would keep one "archived" copy of everything in one place, that could be restored in one single "copy-back" restoration, and not require me to restore any sequential backups of incremental data, in a piece-meal fashion.

Raptor, you used the expression:-

"...and the differential or incremental backup will backup that file to the new backup container".

This sounds to me like the backup software will be claiming and filling "fresh" chunks of the NAS drives with every new incremental/differential backup, and not "editing" the existing directory/file structure on the NAS. Is my understanding of that correct? Would this not cause the backed-up data to exist in multiple locations, with multiple, sequentially altered states for the files that have been edited on many different days, with each subsequent "version" of the file in a "new container" on a new chunk of the NAS? I think I don't understand this point...

Does Acronis allow for differential and/or incremental backups to be scheduled? (I did not realise that there was a difference between "differential" and "incremental" in backups...)

I would like any restoration to a newly formatted (blank) hard-drive to be a single "copy" operation of a complete directory structure, regardless of it's size, complexity, or nesting of folders, etc...? Eventually, I would expect to have upto 300GB of data on any drive that I would want to backup, and keep up-to-date on a daily basis, (if the backup operation is quick enough to be done during the night). Very little would actually change from one day to the next, but all of the day's changes (and ONLY that day's changes...), however trivial, would be backed up every night, automatically.

Cheers

Rob.

raptor_pa

Container definition is correct, nothing I know of will modify or add to the existing container. The backup is not a copy of the folder structure you can browse directly. It is usually one ( or multiple files) built by the backup software. The catalog for each session contains all the information about that files contents. Since the catalog refers to offsets within the backup file to locate specific files and folders, then you can't modify that structure. I follow what you want to do, but it's not really backing up, you want to write select files to multiple locations, almost like a 'real time' backup. Not sure that is going to happen. Also, your single container strategy does not allow for recovering from file corruption. If i repalces the file at backup, and the file is corrupt between the last edit and the next backup, then your backup is also corrrupt. With incremental or differential you can go back one more edit and get back previous changes. Know what you are looking at, but two things are true about backups... they aren't fast and they aren't small, and we hope we never need them. But when you do, you will want lots of options....

Rob K

I have discussed this problem with a few other folk, and they are implying that what I want to do is more like running a RAID in real time, rather than a backup operation.

I reckon I will buy a copy of Acronis and do the differential backup option. This should cover me for most of what I need.

However, as hard drives are now rather cheap, and my new PC can take 5 SATA drives, I wonder if installing a RAID would be an option for the future? Thats another thread, I think!

Thanks for this advice anyway.

Acronis it is...

Cheers,

Rob

raptor_pa

Raids have a place, their protection however is from physical failure of the drive, not a logical failure in the operating system, or multiple drive failures.