to do backup ?

In message , VanguardLH
writes:
[]
but do remember that snapshots weren't available in the free version of
[]
Their free version also only does full and incremental backups. The
longer the chain of incremental backups (incrementals are based on the
last full backup or the next incremental which means incrementals are
chained to incrementals) the more unreliable was a restore. If one
incremental was defective then the whole chain of incrementals from that
point, and later, were unusable. Differentials are always based on the
last full backup. The maximum differential chain length is 2: 1 full
[]
Full I understand.

Incremental I understand (though not too sure how it does it [knows what
to save] - does it need to see the last full and all others in the
chain, or does it keep a complicated log?).

Differential I understand (presumably it has to be able to see the last
full).

What's a "snapshot"?
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

Can you open your mind without it falling out?

J. P. Gilliver (John) wrote:

In message , VanguardLH
writes:
[]
but do remember that snapshots weren't available in the free version of
[]
Their free version also only does full and incremental backups. The
longer the chain of incremental backups (incrementals are based on the
last full backup or the next incremental which means incrementals are
chained to incrementals) the more unreliable was a restore. If one
incremental was defective then the whole chain of incrementals from that
point, and later, were unusable. Differentials are always based on the
last full backup. The maximum differential chain length is 2: 1 full
[]
Full I understand.

Incremental I understand (though not too sure how it does it [knows what
to save] - does it need to see the last full and all others in the
chain, or does it keep a complicated log?).

Differential I understand (presumably it has to be able to see the last
full).

What's a "snapshot"?

An incremental is based either on the last full backup (if its the first
incremental backup) or on the full backup plus all subsequent
incrementals performed before the incremental you want to create.
Incrementals are small because they only record what has changed from
the prior backup (full or incremental, which is the type performed just
before the incremental you want to run). That's why incrementals are so
small. Differentials are based only on the prior full backup.

Many companies run a grandfather-father-son scheme for backups where the
grandfather is the full backup ran once per month, the fathers are the
differentials ran once per week (except if the full runs on that day),
and the sons are the incrementals ran during the week (except on the
days of the full and differential backups). This lets the company
conserve space by only doing full backups once per month instead of lots
of full backups throughout the month. They save even more space with
the much smaller incrementals performed daily so as to minimize how must
user data gets lost in case of having to do restore. The differentials
are a shorter chain since they are always based on the last/prior full
backup so they are more reliable. The longer the chain then the less
reliable is a restore. They want to use incrementals to catch daily or
even hourly changes so not a lot of disk space gets consumed but they
want those incremental chains too long. This scheme evolved back when
companies were still using tape for backups (and some still do). If a
tape went bad, it minimized the data lost from that point in the chain
onward. Well, files still get corrupted, too, no matter what media they
are recorded so the shorter the chain the more reliable is the restore.
Doing full backups everyday would waste a terrible amount of disk space.
Doing differentials would be smaller but still waste a lot of space.
Incrementals are smallest but chain together and a link that breaks in
the chain drops recovery from the later links.

full (big)
diff (captures delta from full)
incr (captures delta from full, diff, or incr - whatever is the type
just before this incr job)

full+full+...+full+full for a month consumes a lot of disk space.

full+diff would waste much less but is still a disk eater.

full+diff+incr+incr+...+incr+incr wastes the least space but is more
fragile.

If you lost the 1st incr in a chain, you lose everything past that time
and only have the full+diff from which to restore.

If you lost a diff, you lose everything during that day but can use the
full+diff+incr chain where the diff was the week before to recover up to
but not including the day the lost diff was ran. If the lost diff were
the first one after the full, you would still have the full+incr chain
to get you up to the day before the lost diff.

If you lost the full, you can get up to the day before it using the
prior full[+diff[+incr]]. The fulls are so important that often a
company has the backup software save a duplicate copy of it somewhere
else to provide a redundant copy.

A full backup every day would give you the best restore method but at
the worst cost on disk space. Incrementals severely reduce the disk
consumption but at the cost of increasing fragility as the chain grows.
Differentials mediate the fragility of incrementals by giving you
something less then a full backup but with a very short chain.

I schedule backups to run every day. I don't want to lose more than a
day in my data. I want high but reasonable granularity to restore my
data. Incrementals that run every hour or when the system goes idle
would protect better but incur too much overhead even for a tiny backup
size (the whole backup program has to run). The differentials reduce
the fragility of my incremental chains.

The problem is most of these consumer-grade backup programs really
aren't geared to run grandfather-father-son backup schedules. With
Easeus Todo, I couldn't get around running a full, differential, and
increment all on the same day, and moving them to different days led to
other scheduling conflicts. So I scheduled to full to run at 5 AM on
the first Monday of the month, differentials to run on Mondays at 5:05
AM, and incrementals to run everyday at 5:10 AM. This sounds like the
full, diff, and incremental would overlap and be running at the same
time. The program will not start another backup if one is currently
running. So the full has to complete before the differentials starts
and the inremental won't start until the differential is done. So I end
up with a full backup, a very tiny differential since there would be
little changed between the end of the full backup and when the
differential start, and the incremental would be really only a container
to record the backup job and have almost nothing in it because nothing
changed between the end of the differential to when the incremental
started. So the full ran on Monday early morning and the differential
and incremental ran in succession thereafter held almost nothing in
them. This was doing as I was trying to conserve disk space, not on the
number of backup files.

Acronis TrueImage is even harder to configure than Easeus ToDo. I can
specify to run a full+diff+incr but the day the full backup runs can
change. That's due to how they they count backups instead of
associating them with days of the week. If a backup gets missed (and
there's no point in running a missed backup when the computer is powered
back on since the next backup captures the same changes and I'm running
a backup every day), the day of the week when the full backup gets moved
out a day. So I don't really know on which day of the week the full
backup gets ran. There is a way to explore into the backup image to see
what type it is but that is a hassle and clumsy. Also, TrueImage
doesn't let me do differential backups, just Full and Incremental. So I
have to run weekly fulls with incrementals to cover the rest of the
week. I paid for TrueImage but for the money I could get differentials
with Easeus ToDo Workstation (well, in the Home version but the $10
difference for Workstation makes it worth expense).

The only reason I went back to TrueImage is their rescue disk works
better in finding networked drives and other external drives and most
importantly lets me hide the backup location to help prevent malware
from finding them and doesn't expose the partition during a backup. I
could something similar with pre- and post-backup commands in ToDo
Backup using devcon (which is more reliable than diskpart because
relative numbering can change depending on how you boot which means
diskpart might disable the wrong partition). The partition where
backups got stored got exposed during a ToDo backup but that still
limited the exposure instead of always having that partition visible.

I decided to try to emulate TrueImage's SecureZone in ToDo Backup using
the pre- and post-backup commands to unhide and hide the drive when I
got hit with rogueware that first changed the attributes on the files to
'hidden' (so files started disappearing everywhere), then would've
renamed them, and then would've tried to encrypted them so you'd have to
pay their ransom to decrypt those files. Luckily I caught the pest
during the file attribute change process and killed it before it got to
encrypting the files. So I unset the hidden attribute on the files.
This pest would look for files on any attached or network drives so it
also have set hidden and renamed my backup files on another drive in
that partition. That's when I realized I needed to do some protection
of the location for the backup store. I couldn't use a USB-attached
drive because it would still have to be powered up and available when
the scheduled backups occurred. No command I know of can force a USB
drive to power up or down. So it being USB-attached did not afford any
protection for a drive that had to be always up (and I didn't want to
schedule backups to run only when I was at the computer). I needed to
hide the partition. There is malware than can scan the hardware to find
your files but the vast majority just use the file systems on the drives
to access their files. Just having a drive's partition not assigned a
drive letter is sufficient to thwart the typical pest. Using devcon to
disable the device is even better. So I could get Todo to hide the
device after a backup, enable the device before a backup, and exposed
only during the backup (and since it was scheduled when I wasn't there
then rogueware typically snagged via web browsing doesn't happen).
Yeah, I have anti-virus software but the rogueware was new and its
behavior not detected quickly enough.

I use TrueImage because of it protecting the backup store but, alas, no
differential backups with that product. I have toyed several times
going back to ToDo Backup but will have to use the pre- and post-backup
commands with devcon, not something simple for most users, to afford
some protection of the backup store. I asked Easeus about this failing
and they acknowledge it but have no plans to address the vulnerability
of backup files to malware. The user has to figure that out.

On Thu, 30 Jan 2014 19:23:53 -0600, VanguardLH wrote:

Macrium Reflect Free only does full backups. No incremental or
differential backups.

Easeus ToDo Backup Free will do full and incremental backups.

I don't like/need incremental backups. If I make a backup and then
remove certain data/programs, I will have to remove them /again/ when I
restore the image.

--
s|b

On Thu, 30 Jan 2014 15:04:27 -0800, Todd wrote:

Never heard of it. I always use Macrium Reflect Free.

http://www.macrium.com/pages/downloads.aspx

i am only finding a 30 day trial

I thought the screenshot on the webpage explained itself:
http://www.macrium.com/uploads/dlversion.png

--
s|b

On Fri, 31 Jan 2014 10:12:54 -0800, Todd wrote:

They are not making that very clear. I wonder after
the 30 day trial period, if they mean it keeps working
with reduced functionality.

AFAIK that is the case.

--
s|b

On 1/31/2014, s|b posted:
On Thu, 30 Jan 2014 19:23:53 -0600, VanguardLH wrote:

Macrium Reflect Free only does full backups. No incremental or
differential backups.

Easeus ToDo Backup Free will do full and incremental backups.

I don't like/need incremental backups. If I make a backup and then
remove certain data/programs, I will have to remove them /again/ when
I restore the image.

That has been explained in several threads here.

An incremental backup describes the state of the drive at the time that
the incremental backup was made. If the deleted file wasn't there at
that time, the incremental backup knows that.

I have reported here that I have verified that fact experimentally, but
feel free not to believe me :-)

(Obviously I have the paid version.)

--
Gene E. Bloch (Stumbling Bloch)

On Fri, 31 Jan 2014 11:57:16 -0800, Gene E. Bloch wrote:

That has been explained in several threads here.

An incremental backup describes the state of the drive at the time that
the incremental backup was made. If the deleted file wasn't there at
that time, the incremental backup knows that.

I have reported here that I have verified that fact experimentally, but
feel free not to believe me :-)

I must have missed that discussion, but I believe you. :-)

--
s|b

On 1/31/2014, s|b posted:
On Fri, 31 Jan 2014 11:57:16 -0800, Gene E. Bloch wrote:

That has been explained in several threads here.

An incremental backup describes the state of the drive at the time
that the incremental backup was made. If the deleted file wasn't
there at that time, the incremental backup knows that.

I have reported here that I have verified that fact experimentally,
but feel free not to believe me :-)

I must have missed that discussion, but I believe you. :-)

Thanks :-)

Part of why I made that remark (which not meant to be nasty, but...)
was that several people in those discussions were doubtful of those of
us who made the above claim.

To tell the truth, it had never occurred to me that it would be
otherwise. I had always assumed that an incremental backup contained
information about the current contents of the drive, but the discussion
led me to do the experiment and report it here.

I didn't restore the drive, I just used Macrium's tool to mount backups
as virtual drives. By mounting two incrementals, one before and one
after a known deletion, it was easy to see that the deleted file was
not in the second backup.

--
Gene E. Bloch (Stumbling Bloch)

On Thu, 30 Jan 2014 12:04:29 -0800, Todd wrote:

On 01/30/2014 11:52 AM, Todd wrote:
Hi All,

Have any of you guys used ToDo Backup? What did you
think of it?

http://www.todo-backup.com/products/...p-software.htm

-T


I have been watching their videos:
http://www.todo-backup.com/document-download.htm

Every recovery option starts with "First launch
the program". AAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHH !!!!

I want to know how to do it when the main hard drive
is crashed. Do I have to first reinstall Windows,
then run their program??????

Best to do the following immediately after you install ToDo backup
program. Please DON'T wait until you have crashed :-((

1. "First - Launch the program" !
2. Click on "TOOLS".
3. Click on "Create emergency disk" (With the Free version, you will
only have a Linux option).

Then I opt to create an ISO on the desktop, then burn a CD.
I then create my own label design and print this on the CD.


Can you recover using a Win PE disk?

No - WinPE is not supported in the Free version.
Refer http://www.todo-backup.com/products/comparison.htm

Frustrated.

-T

On 1/31/14 12:57 PM, Gene E. Bloch wrote:
On 1/31/2014, s|b posted:
On Thu, 30 Jan 2014 19:23:53 -0600, VanguardLH wrote:

Macrium Reflect Free only does full backups. No incremental or
differential backups.

Easeus ToDo Backup Free will do full and incremental backups.

I don't like/need incremental backups. If I make a backup and then
remove certain data/programs, I will have to remove them /again/ when
I restore the image.

That has been explained in several threads here.

An incremental backup describes the state of the drive at the time that
the incremental backup was made. If the deleted file wasn't there at
that time, the incremental backup knows that.

Hi, Gene. (Or, should it be Hygiene... LOL)

I don't know what to say about some of the posts here, from people whom
I consider far more knowledgeable about computers than myself. I guess
saddened and dismayed fit best.

Backups, be they incremental, full, system image, whatever, always store
the status of the drive(s), file(s), and/or system at that time and date
in the universe. And that particular state is what you will get if you
use that information for a restore. You return the the way the computer
was on that date and time, nothing more, nothing less.

What's so hard to understand??? shaking head in disbelief

The advantage of an incremental backup is you only save files that have
changed. You don't continually write new copies of unchanged data. Period.

I have reported here that I have verified that fact experimentally, but
feel free not to believe me :-)

(Obviously I have the paid version.)



--
Ken

Mac OS X 10.8.5
Firefox 24.0
Thunderbird 24.0

s|b wrote:

On Thu, 30 Jan 2014 19:23:53 -0600, VanguardLH wrote:

Macrium Reflect Free only does full backups. No incremental or
differential backups.

Easeus ToDo Backup Free will do full and incremental backups.

I don't like/need incremental backups. If I make a backup and then
remove certain data/programs, I will have to remove them /again/ when I
restore the image.

Same for uninstalling programs after doing the full backup from which
you install. You haven't obviated the chore despite which type of
backup you perform.

You restore a lot? You don't restore just the files you need but slap
the entire image back on the partition?

On Sat, 1 Feb 2014 01:13:30 -0600, VanguardLH wrote:

I don't like/need incremental backups. If I make a backup and then
remove certain data/programs, I will have to remove them /again/ when I
restore the image.

Same for uninstalling programs after doing the full backup from which
you install. You haven't obviated the chore despite which type of
backup you perform.

I looked up "obviate" and it still doesn't make any sense. But I
understand what you're saying.

You restore a lot? You don't restore just the files you need but slap
the entire image back on the partition?

I create a monthly image of my C: drive (every Patch Tuesday and an
extra one when there is a program update of avast! Free Antivirus) and
every week I copy files that I need (My Documents, ... , TB and Fx
profiles, ...).

I rarely uninstall a program, but I do install updates, so if I would
"slap the entire image back" I would have to install those updates
again. I see your point...

--
s|b

On 1/31/2014, Ken Springer posted:
On 1/31/14 12:57 PM, Gene E. Bloch wrote:
On 1/31/2014, s|b posted:
On Thu, 30 Jan 2014 19:23:53 -0600, VanguardLH wrote:

Macrium Reflect Free only does full backups. No incremental or
differential backups.

Easeus ToDo Backup Free will do full and incremental backups.

I don't like/need incremental backups. If I make a backup and then
remove certain data/programs, I will have to remove them /again/
when
I restore the image.

That has been explained in several threads here.

An incremental backup describes the state of the drive at the time
that
the incremental backup was made. If the deleted file wasn't there
at
that time, the incremental backup knows that.

Hi, Gene. (Or, should it be Hygiene... LOL)

No, it shouldn't be.

I don't know what to say about some of the posts here, from people
whom I consider far more knowledgeable about computers than myself.
I guess saddened and dismayed fit best.

Backups, be they incremental, full, system image, whatever, always
store the status of the drive(s), file(s), and/or system at that time
and date in the universe. And that particular state is what you will
get if you use that information for a restore. You return the the
way the computer was on that date and time, nothing more, nothing
less.

What's so hard to understand??? shaking head in disbelief

The advantage of an incremental backup is you only save files that
have changed. You don't continually write new copies of unchanged
data. Period.

Not period.

With incremental backups you can retrieve earlier versions of a file.
I've never done differential, but that should have that ability too,
for the same reason.

I don't do it often, but it's nice when needed.

I have reported here that I have verified that fact experimentally,
but
feel free not to believe me :-)

(Obviously I have the paid version.)

--
Gene E. Bloch (Stumbling Bloch)

On 1/31/2014, VanguardLH posted:
s|b wrote:

On Thu, 30 Jan 2014 19:23:53 -0600, VanguardLH wrote:

Macrium Reflect Free only does full backups. No incremental or
differential backups.

Easeus ToDo Backup Free will do full and incremental backups.

I don't like/need incremental backups. If I make a backup and then
remove certain data/programs, I will have to remove them /again/
when I restore the image.

Same for uninstalling programs after doing the full backup from which
you install. You haven't obviated the chore despite which type of
backup you perform.

Not so, for the same reasons as the deletions problem. The restore
represents exactly the state of the disk when the backup was made. If
not, you're using a buggy program.

Already explained many times.

You restore a lot? You don't restore just the files you need but
slap the entire image back on the partition?

--
Gene E. Bloch (Stumbling Bloch)

Gene E. Bloch wrote:

On 1/31/2014, VanguardLH posted:
s|b wrote:

On Thu, 30 Jan 2014 19:23:53 -0600, VanguardLH wrote:

Macrium Reflect Free only does full backups. No incremental or
differential backups.

Easeus ToDo Backup Free will do full and incremental backups.

I don't like/need incremental backups. If I make a backup and then
remove certain data/programs, I will have to remove them /again/
when I restore the image.

Same for uninstalling programs after doing the full backup from which
you install. You haven't obviated the chore despite which type of
backup you perform.

Not so, for the same reasons as the deletions problem. The restore
represents exactly the state of the disk when the backup was made. If
not, you're using a buggy program.

Reread sb's post. If he uninstalls (or even installs) new software
after an image backup and then (after the uninstalls or installs)
restores that image then all those uninstalls will reappear and all the
installs will disappear. Like you said, an image restore puts the
partition (or drive) back to a prior state, and that would be the state
BEFORE those uninstalls or installs made after the backup was saved.