Office 2007 strange prob.

On Fri, 10 Dec 2010 07:50:43 -0800, Alex Clayton wrote:

I know myself well enough to know I will also never be a pro at this. I
should invest more time in it, but it just does not hold my interest, too
many other things on the plate all the time.

That's a completely valid approach, of course. It's just that we're such
geeks that we can't understand it.

(You're supposed to laugh now. Really!)

I decided to take some time off work a while ago to catch up and often
wonder how I had time to go to work. G Doctors told me about 15 years ago
not to make any long term plans and they are still not quite sure why I am
still on this side of the soil. Because of that I take a "different"
approach to life and what I spend my time doing.

That sounds like a real motivator to me...

--
Gene E. Bloch (Stumbling Bloch)

On Fri, 10 Dec 2010 12:16:51 -0600, Char Jackson wrote:
On Fri, 10 Dec 2010 06:25:03 -0500, Stan Brown
wrote:

I do that, and then once a month I burn the backups to DVD and stash
them in a drawer at work. Offsite storage of backups is not just for
businesses.

How many DVD's does it take to store a single backup?

In my case, three. I agree with what you say about "personal
threshold of pain". For me, this is below the threshold. :-)

--
Stan Brown, Oak Road Systems, Tompkins County, New York, USA
http://OakRoadSystems.com
Shikata ga nai...

On Fri, 10 Dec 2010 13:03:18 -0700, XS11E wrote:

Stan Brown wrote:

On Thu, 09 Dec 2010 05:10:11 -0700, XS11E wrote:

"Alex Clayton" wrote:

That was the last thing I tried after removing the software and
reinstalling it failed. When I went to system restore though
the only date available was that day. Apparently they have
changed something in W-7.

There's nothing changed, there are things that will delete
restore points but the most common is that you never set any.
Check that System Restore is turned on for the correct drive, the
Help files will get you started.

IIRC, the change went in the other direction. Doesn't Windows 7
now create a restore point automatically before most software
installs?

Yes but there are things that will delete restore points, Acronis is
one of them.

Say what? I had no idea, but I've just looked and there are no
restore points earlier than my most recent backup. Holy unexpected
consequences, Batman!

--
Stan Brown, Oak Road Systems, Tompkins County, New York, USA
http://OakRoadSystems.com
Shikata ga nai...

"Gene E. Bloch" wrote in message
.. .
On Fri, 10 Dec 2010 12:34:40 -0800, Alex Clayton wrote:

It's really better than that. If you backed up a week ago, then you can
restore to what you had a week ago.

In fact with Macrium (the paid version, as XS11E reminded me), if you
had backed up last week and the week before, and you learned that what
you backed up last weeks was already screwed up, you could back up to
the two-week old version. If you always use an incremental backup, that
is.

One comment on the last: I do a full backup, then I do a series of
incremental backups. Eventually, I do a new full backup in a separate
place adn do the incremental there too. I set the original set aside.
When it's time to do yet another full backup, I get rid of the first set
adn backup there. I continue alternating in that fashion.

Confession time: the last paragraph is, in fact, my good intentions. I
don't do it as neatly as I said. Not even close :-)

I will order the drive and give the built in program a try see what it
does. if it looks OK I should be good to go. If not I guess I will try
one
of the pay programs.


--
Gene E. Bloch (Stumbling Bloch)

I took a look he
http://www.macrium.com/features.asp
and it does look like a pretty cool little tool. For $40.00 I think I will
read up on it and give it a try. I noticed it had a free trial to let you
see how you like it. Looks if I am reading it right, like I can have it
exclude stuff I do not want to waste space backing up, like all the DVD's on
here. Right now 195 Gigs of space is used by saved DVD's. I don't need to
back those up, they already are backed up.
--
Inside every older person is a younger person wondering, 'What the hell
happened?'

"Gene E. Bloch" wrote in message
...
On Fri, 10 Dec 2010 14:53:44 -0500, Seth wrote:

I can't quite figure out your question, so I will wing it and just give
you a couple of ideas, including a partial refutation of what Char
Jackson said.

I think it's a case of Alex is mixing up the 2 kinds of backups being
discussed... An image backup of the system in a preferred state (like
after
you've opened the box, installed the couple of "must have" applications,
customized the desktop, etc...) and before filling it with data for
putting
it back to your desired out of the box state vs. data backups.

The initial image backup, what I would use Acronis for (actually I use
ImageX, but same idea) could be stored on a local server, burned to disk,
put on spouse's computer (and their stored on yours), etc... Don't care
about saving it in case of theft or fire as it wouldn't be applicable to
your new machine once back on your feet.

I make two kinds of backups, an image backup (Macrium Reflect) and a
clone backup (Casper).

I don't see the point of your "2 kinds of backups". I backup the whole
drive every time with the above programs. I let both programs' ability
to make an incremental backup take care of the data management.

I differentiate between the 2 as I don't believe in image backups (to be
able to restore a system to a specific state) once the machine has been
"used". But that's me. I find it to be no big deal to build a system from
scratch and when I do build from scratch, it's 100% clean.

I also don't believe in system restore for more than a temporary fix to get
immediate use of a machine. Once there is time, rebuild is my rule. I look
at things form an Enterprise support perspective with a mobile work force.
Once a machine becomes "questionable" I don't want the user to be away from
the office where the machine may go down again and not be able to generate
income for the firm.

If I need to restore a particular file, it's available on both disks. If
I want to restore an earlier version of the file, I can use the Macrium
image.

Yup, can do that with ImageX as well. Even many years ago that could be
done with Ghost.

If I need to recreate my boot disk, either backup will work fine.
Moreover, it recreates a *recent* version of my system. The problem with
what you suggest is that you would get a version close to the out-of-box
version, requiring you to reinstall all the programs you installed
later.

Yup, that's a big part of why I don't like image backups after a user has
touched the machine. All the crap left over from things being installed,
tried out, uninstalled, upgraded, etc... If I do a rebuild of a machine (or
reload form a "pristine" image), I don't have any "garbage" on it and only
reinstall the most recent version of what I actually use.

On Fri, 10 Dec 2010 10:42:31 -0800, "Alex Clayton"
wrote:

"Char Jackson" wrote in message
.. .

Assuming you decide to back up the full 240GB, you should note that a
500GB drive will only hold a single backup of your data. (A 500 GB
drive holds about 465 GB of data.) Therefore, I would encourage you to
get the biggest drive you can afford so you can store multiple
backups. A 2 TB drive (over 1800 GB of storage) costs less than twice
the price you found for a 500 GB.

--

Char Jackson

OK, but maybe I am missing something here. I can get any size I want but I
was thinking the whole point of this kind of back up is in case I have to

I assume when you say "this kind of backup" you mean a full image,
which is similar to a snapshot. Restoring such a backup puts
everything back where it was on the day the backup was created.

format this I can just put it back to how it is the day I back it up instead
of taking it back to factory original?

Exactly, and Gene and several others have done a good job of
explaining that there's real benefit to being able to restore your
computer to a more *recent* state than just the one time you decided
to create a full image backup. That's a general case, though. In your
specific case, things may be different and you would know best. If a
single image is good enough, then more power to you.

snip
This would work for me but Wife would be sure to lose something next time I
had to format her machine as I have never been able to get her to back up
stuff and gave up on the battle.

My wife isn't big on administrative things like backups so I take care
of it for her by using the built-in scheduler within Acronis. I have a
15-drive server hanging on the network, with 14 of those drives being
the 2TB variety. Four drives are reserved for backups. In Acronis, I
set up a rotating schedule so that every week a full system image is
created and saved to one of the dedicated backup drives, in rotation.
I have a similar schedule set up on my own computer. If one of the
backup drives happens to fail, there's a 25% chance that it will
contain the most recent image for a given computer. If I needed to
restore or rebuild one of my computers, I would naturally reach for
the most recent image. To me, restoring an image from a year ago would
be unacceptable, but I see that your requirements are different from
mine, and that's fine.

To keep the backup drives from filling up, I only keep the most recent
4 weekly backups for each computer, plus any backups that were created
during the first week of the month. So if I look now, I will find a
full image from the first week of July, (when I set this up), likewise
an image from the first week of August through November, plus an image
from the next 3 weeks in November, and finally an image created last
weekend from the first week of December.

We do other backups, too. The stuff described above only refers to the
system/boot drive, typically the C:\ drive. I have separate backup
jobs set up for photos, digital music, etc.

Lastly, as Gene pointed out, once you do a full image backup you don't
necessarily have to make more full images. You can opt for incremental
or differential backups, which are much smaller. I don't use those
types myself, but they are a valid choice.

--

Char Jackson

On Fri, 10 Dec 2010 11:15:07 -0800, "Gene E. Bloch"
wrote:

On Fri, 10 Dec 2010 10:42:31 -0800, Alex Clayton wrote:

"Char Jackson" wrote in message
...

Assuming you decide to back up the full 240GB, you should note that a
500GB drive will only hold a single backup of your data. (A 500 GB
drive holds about 465 GB of data.) Therefore, I would encourage you to
get the biggest drive you can afford so you can store multiple
backups. A 2 TB drive (over 1800 GB of storage) costs less than twice
the price you found for a 500 GB.

--

Char Jackson

OK, but maybe I am missing something here. I can get any size I want but I
was thinking the whole point of this kind of back up is in case I have to
format this I can just put it back to how it is the day I back it up instead
of taking it back to factory original?
If I can back it up to where it is now, so that if I re do it I don't have
to go back to Vista, then go to W-7 again that's great. If it lasts another
year or so I guess I could delete the old back up and do it again assuming
by then I have made some more changes I do not want to have to re do?
If you mean things like files pictures and what not that is all backed up
daily so I an not worried about losing any of that, just want to make it
less time consuming if I FUBAR this and want to just start over.
I just looked again at Amazon and they have a 2 TB for $109.00. Right now
I have an 80 GIG in the safe with "important" stuff on it and a WD 100 Gig
and WD 500 Gig. I paid as much for each of them over time as the 2TB one is
now so getting the 2TB is no big deal if I have use for it. Hell for the
price of both of our Carbonite subs for one year I could buy the 2 TB one.
This would work for me but Wife would be sure to lose something next time I
had to format her machine as I have never been able to get her to back up
stuff and gave up on the battle.

I can't quite figure out your question, so I will wing it and just give
you a couple of ideas, including a partial refutation of what Char
Jackson said.

1. With a program like Acronis or Macrium Reflect, the backup is:
a. Compressed a bit, so it's smaller than the original file system.
b. Later backups (if you chose "incremental") add only changed data to
the current backup, so they are quick and small.
c. You can even, if you choose, restore a file or the system from an
earlier backup rather than being able to use only the image from the
latest backup.
d. Tools in those backup programs let you look at the backed-up file
system in Windows Explorer. They also let you look at any of the earlier
backups.

2. I make my second backup on a second drive, so that if one drive
fails, the other is still good (at least, if Murphy is on vacation!) -
so the capacity of the backup drives is not an issue. They needn't be
twice the size of the original.

3. Both of the above programs let you make a boot CD. This lets you
restore to the original hard drive (or a replacement hard drive) in the
computer from the external drive even when the drive in the computer
won't boot (e.g., a corrupted or virus-ridden drive or a new drive)

4. When you restore from a backup, you choose which backup set (which
date) to restore, and your computer becomes what it was on that date. No
data or software is lost, you return to exactly where you were when you
backed up. Much better than a system recovery to the new-from-factory
condition!

HTH,
Gino

No worries, Gene. Thanks for the clarifications. I agree with
everything you've added.

--

Char Jackson

On Fri, 10 Dec 2010 15:36:49 -0800, "Gene E. Bloch"
wrote:

On Fri, 10 Dec 2010 13:03:18 -0700, XS11E wrote:

Stan Brown wrote:

On Thu, 09 Dec 2010 05:10:11 -0700, XS11E wrote:

"Alex Clayton" wrote:

That was the last thing I tried after removing the software and
reinstalling it failed. When I went to system restore though
the only date available was that day. Apparently they have
changed something in W-7.

There's nothing changed, there are things that will delete
restore points but the most common is that you never set any.
Check that System Restore is turned on for the correct drive, the
Help files will get you started.

IIRC, the change went in the other direction. Doesn't Windows 7
now create a restore point automatically before most software
installs?

Yes but there are things that will delete restore points, Acronis is
one of them.

That reminds me of why I switched to Macrium...

I have never used System Restore (I make sure it's disabled) so it's
not an issue for me and I get to stay with Acronis. :-)

--

Char Jackson

On Fri, 10 Dec 2010 18:47:41 -0500, Stan Brown
wrote:

On Fri, 10 Dec 2010 12:16:51 -0600, Char Jackson wrote:
On Fri, 10 Dec 2010 06:25:03 -0500, Stan Brown
wrote:

I do that, and then once a month I burn the backups to DVD and stash
them in a drawer at work. Offsite storage of backups is not just for
businesses.

How many DVD's does it take to store a single backup?

In my case, three. I agree with what you say about "personal
threshold of pain". For me, this is below the threshold. :-)

Cool. Like Clint Eastwood said in one of his movies, "A man's
gotta know his limitations." Mine is 1 and yours is 3.

--

Char Jackson

"Gene E. Bloch" wrote:

On Fri, 10 Dec 2010 13:03:18 -0700, XS11E wrote:
Yes but there are things that will delete restore points, Acronis
is one of them.

That reminds me of why I switched to Macrium...

I didn't know that Macrium could restore restore points when restoring
an image? How do they do that?


--
XS11E, Killing all posts from Google Groups
The Usenet Improvement Project:
http://twovoyagers.com/improve-usenet.org/

On Fri, 10 Dec 2010 16:21:04 -0800, Alex Clayton wrote:

"Gene E. Bloch" wrote in message
.. .
On Fri, 10 Dec 2010 12:34:40 -0800, Alex Clayton wrote:

It's really better than that. If you backed up a week ago, then you can
restore to what you had a week ago.

In fact with Macrium (the paid version, as XS11E reminded me), if you
had backed up last week and the week before, and you learned that what
you backed up last weeks was already screwed up, you could back up to
the two-week old version. If you always use an incremental backup, that
is.

One comment on the last: I do a full backup, then I do a series of
incremental backups. Eventually, I do a new full backup in a separate
place adn do the incremental there too. I set the original set aside.
When it's time to do yet another full backup, I get rid of the first set
adn backup there. I continue alternating in that fashion.

Confession time: the last paragraph is, in fact, my good intentions. I
don't do it as neatly as I said. Not even close :-)

I will order the drive and give the built in program a try see what it
does. if it looks OK I should be good to go. If not I guess I will try
one
of the pay programs.


--
Gene E. Bloch (Stumbling Bloch)

I took a look he
http://www.macrium.com/features.asp
and it does look like a pretty cool little tool. For $40.00 I think I will
read up on it and give it a try. I noticed it had a free trial to let you
see how you like it. Looks if I am reading it right, like I can have it
exclude stuff I do not want to waste space backing up, like all the DVD's on
here. Right now 195 Gigs of space is used by saved DVD's. I don't need to
back those up, they already are backed up.

Yes, you can set up "file filters".

Filtering out the already safe DVDs is sure to speed up your backups :-)

--
Gene E. Bloch (Stumbling Bloch)

On Sat, 11 Dec 2010 10:50:10 -0700, XS11E wrote:

"Gene E. Bloch" wrote:

On Fri, 10 Dec 2010 13:03:18 -0700, XS11E wrote:
Yes but there are things that will delete restore points, Acronis
is one of them.

That reminds me of why I switched to Macrium...

I didn't know that Macrium could restore restore points when restoring
an image? How do they do that?

I was not addressing the issue you asked about. I have no idea whether
Macrium can restore Restore Points, or how it chooses to do it. To me,
the obvious guess is that, if it did so, it would be by backing up the
shadow files with the rest of the drive, and by copying them back during
a restore operation.

In my case, Acronis lost Restore Points when it was doing a backup. On
one occasion I managed by luck to see evidence of it as it was
happening. That was the end of my relationship with Acronis.

--
Gene E. Bloch (Stumbling Bloch)

On Fri, 10 Dec 2010 18:49:51 -0500, Stan Brown wrote:

On Fri, 10 Dec 2010 13:03:18 -0700, XS11E wrote:

Yes but there are things that will delete restore points, Acronis is
one of them.

Say what? I had no idea, but I've just looked and there are no
restore points earlier than my most recent backup. Holy unexpected
consequences, Batman!

Acronis Support tells me that True Image 11 does not remove restore
points. I've downloaded it but haven't installed it yet. (Luckily,
I bought TI 10 exactly 30 days before the release of TI 11, so I
qualify for a free upgrade. It would certainly rankle if I had to
pay for the fixing of such an obvious flaw.)

I really liked True Image 8 (I think that was my version), but I've
not been so happy with TI 10. Since I back up to an external drive,
I never run a scheduled backup. But even unscheduled backups require
not one but two Acronis scheduler services to be running. And Acronis
support says that's still true in TI 11. Also, TI 10 and (according
to support) 11 require full elevation, which makes no sense to me at
all.

--
Stan Brown, Oak Road Systems, Tompkins County, New York, USA
http://OakRoadSystems.com
Shikata ga nai...

On Sat, 18 Dec 2010 08:10:39 -0500, Stan Brown wrote:

On Fri, 10 Dec 2010 18:49:51 -0500, Stan Brown wrote:

On Fri, 10 Dec 2010 13:03:18 -0700, XS11E wrote:

Yes but there are things that will delete restore points, Acronis is
one of them.

Say what? I had no idea, but I've just looked and there are no
restore points earlier than my most recent backup. Holy unexpected
consequences, Batman!

Acronis Support tells me that True Image 11 does not remove restore
points. I've downloaded it but haven't installed it yet. (Luckily,
I bought TI 10 exactly 30 days before the release of TI 11, so I
qualify for a free upgrade. It would certainly rankle if I had to
pay for the fixing of such an obvious flaw.)

I really liked True Image 8 (I think that was my version), but I've
not been so happy with TI 10. Since I back up to an external drive,
I never run a scheduled backup. But even unscheduled backups require
not one but two Acronis scheduler services to be running. And Acronis
support says that's still true in TI 11. Also, TI 10 and (according
to support) 11 require full elevation, which makes no sense to me at
all.

I've run a backup with True Image 11, and I can confirm that it
doesn't delete restore points.

--
Stan Brown, Oak Road Systems, Tompkins County, New York, USA
http://OakRoadSystems.com
Shikata ga nai...