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#76
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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) |
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#77
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Office 2007 strange prob.
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... |
#78
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Office 2007 strange prob.
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... |
#79
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Office 2007 strange prob.
"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?' |
#80
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Office 2007 strange prob.
"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. |
#81
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Office 2007 strange prob.
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 |
#82
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Office 2007 strange prob.
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 |
#83
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Office 2007 strange prob.
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 |
#84
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Office 2007 strange prob.
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 |
#85
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Office 2007 strange prob.
"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/ |
#86
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Office 2007 strange prob.
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) |
#87
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Office 2007 strange prob.
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) |
#88
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Office 2007 strange prob.
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... |
#89
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Office 2007 strange prob.
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... |
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