Acronis Backup Saved my Ass

Status
Not open for further replies.
m0rtal

m0rtal

King of the Jungle
Jul 3, 2007
3,007
93
0
Toronto
This software was mentioned here a few times already and is ranked as the top software for backups/imaging all over.

Normally I just had a nightly backup setup of all my files (not the OS).

It just so happened that my hard drive failed the day after getting this software and doing a full image of it. Lucky me.

So, purchased a new drive, restored and voila back in business.

I HIGHLY recommend this to anyone serious about their business. It will save you a lot of time and headaches. Don't be lazy about backups. It seems most of us including me have had to learn the hard way.

Spend the $50 on Acronis True Image 2009 and $100 on an external hard drive and set it up for nightly imaging. Create a boot up cd. Next time your drive dies toss it against the wall and curse it, go get a new one, boot up from the cd and restore your whole computer to the way it was the night before.

Also, I've been told to stay away from Seagate drives right now. Mine was just 5 months old and the guy at the store told me most of their drives lately they send right back because they come in with bad sectors. Of course you can never know with a hard drive. This was my first Seagate and I got it due to their reliability I kept reading about. Hah.
 


Just sayin, but these days even desktop mobos come with RAID. If you aren't mirroring, you should be, especially if you develop/copywrite/design/jerk-off-to-porno.

SATA RAID motherboards are like $100, disks just as cheap. Super easy to replace in the event of a crash.
 
I've looked into RAID before and opted against it. There are many disadvantages to using RAID over a regular backup. It should not be a replacement.

Just off the top of my head, let's say your OS gets corrupted while you were working on it and upon the restart of your machine it doesn't want to boot...you're left with 2 drives with a corrupted OS, awesomeness.

The simple fact that what you are doing is being mirrored to the 2nd drive is just bad if your sole use of RAID is as a replacement for a backup.

I guess you could have both RAID and a backup to be safe but I'd rather get 2 external drives instead. Just my 2 cents.
 
TrueImage saved me from a fucked up hard drive last year, but now I use Norton Ghost. Not sure which is better, but I had a few issues with the old version of TrueImage, and I also couldn't find the install CD any more...

Right now, I back up weekly or so (I'm lazy, and have most of my important docs online, in email, or on my other computer). My main HD is basically just OS and program files, and my secondary is all of my files. I back up my secondary HD to my external HD, and I back up my primary HD to both my external and my secondary drive (but don't include that in the secondary HD image). My laptop is a Macbook, so I have an old external drive dedicated to Apple's Time Machine backups, and I ghost my Windows partition to my regular external.

I've always debated having a file-server for both of my computers, with multiple hard drives and daily backups and/or mirroring, but it's cheaper not to do that.
 
True image is great, it's not just the backup feature to save data... Once you have configured everything and installed all your usual programs you can with just a few clicks make a complete image of your HD in 15 minutes.

And if windows ever gets fucked up you can restore from that image in 15 minutes too. Do you remember the time you last installed an OS and everything that comes with it? I bet you had a great time right? Not. So with true image you'll never have to put up with that again, just hit restore from a working backup, wait 15 minutes and everything is back to fine again with everything set up and installed the way you like it.
 
m0rtal said:
I've looked into RAID before and opted against it. There are many disadvantages to using RAID over a regular backup. It should not be a replacement.

Just off the top of my head, let's say your OS gets corrupted while you were working on it and upon the restart of your machine it doesn't want to boot...you're left with 2 drives with a corrupted OS, awesomeness.

The simple fact that what you are doing is being mirrored to the 2nd drive is just bad if your sole use of RAID is as a replacement for a backup.

I guess you could have both RAID and a backup to be safe but I'd rather get 2 external drives instead. Just my 2 cents.
Click to expand...

IMHO, the OS isn't required in a backup unless it's a quick image. I have 2 1TB drives on my dev box and it's not an easy image to get, if it even images.

Access to the filesystem is the name of the game. IF you have a corrupt OS, big deal, you still have access to your data. The OS is easily installed via CDROM/updates, no? Just takes for fucking ever.

The data redundancy and fault tolerance, along with a decent backup of your data/webs/program settings is all you really need. Everything else is wasting time because you can recover pretty much anything aside from a disk mechanical failure quite easily.
 
jeanpaul1979, that's exactly what I was referring to in my post, so much better than just a regular backup.

bb_wolfe said:
IMHO, the OS isn't required in a backup unless it's a quick image. I have 2 1TB drives on my dev box and it's not an easy image to get, if it even images.

Access to the filesystem is the name of the game. IF you have a corrupt OS, big deal, you still have access to your data. The OS is easily installed via CDROM/updates, no? Just takes for fucking ever.

The data redundancy and fault tolerance, along with a decent backup of your data/webs/program settings is all you really need. Everything else is wasting time because you can recover pretty much anything aside from a disk mechanical failure quite easily.
Click to expand...

The OS was just one example, there are plenty more issues with RAID when using it as a backup solution. A simple search on google will satisfy anyones curiosity.

Doing it the way you say is creating more work IMO since you have to image your OS partition + backup your data.

As for your 2 1TB drives I don't see why it wouldn't be able to image them. The first run would probably take a long time, true, but after that you can just do incremental backups which won't take longer than 10-20 minutes assuming you're not replacing half a TB a day with new data.

I don't know what kind of operation you got going there so whatever you're doing may be a better fit for your business. In my understanding of RAID it should NOT be a replacement for backups but rather a more effective solution for networks/servers so you can just hot swap a drive while everything keeps running meanwhile STILL making backups of everything.
 
m0rtal said:
jeanpaul1979, that's exactly what I was referring to in my post, so much better than just a regular backup.



The OS was just one example, there are plenty more issues with RAID when using it as a backup solution. A simple search on google will satisfy anyones curiosity.

Doing it the way you say is creating more work IMO since you have to image your OS partition + backup your data.

As for your 2 1TB drives I don't see why it wouldn't be able to image them. The first run would probably take a long time, true, but after that you can just do incremental backups which won't take longer than 10-20 minutes assuming you're not replacing half a TB a day with new data.

I don't know what kind of operation you got going there so whatever you're doing may be a better fit for your business. In my understanding of RAID it should NOT be a replacement for backups but rather a more effective solution for networks/servers so you can just hot swap a drive while everything keeps running meanwhile STILL making backups of everything.
Click to expand...

You're totally right, it's not a full backup solution. My point was only that RAID should be a part of any disaster recovery plan, server or workstation. Your points are valid as well.

The 1TB drives are 80% full, and I doubt a 800 gig image would last very long without corruption. When it comes to me, if it can go wrong, it does!
 
bb_wolfe said:
The 1TB drives are 80% full, and I doubt a 800 gig image would last very long without corruption. When it comes to me, if it can go wrong, it does!
Click to expand...

Damn, that's a lot of fucking porn!

Shit, now you got me worried about backups. I don't keep up with it like I should. Time to look into some options.
 
+1, TrueImage saved me this morning.. Restored an entire drive in 25 minutes, plugged it in and booted and it worked perfect. I only lost the last 18 hours of changes which were minimal. Now i'm thinking of continuous backup sfw. The cheapest method and wise is the backup to an external drive because you can easily restore with the acronis boot disk. I've done this even with a laptop hd crash a few months ago. HD's are cheap, back your stuff up daily...

Norton should work also but don't go through the pain and agony of HD failures, the $100 for that external drive is nothing when your confronted with the thought of losing all your data.
 
glad to hear- for mac folks anyone have experience restoring via timemachine backing up daily to an external drive?

I'm about to move to a firewire external 2 disc raid array so there will be 2 mirrored dedicated backup drives- seems decently sufficient? (oh boy- famous last words)
 
yeah, I became an Acronis fan recently too. It s fast, a lot of options and does the job. I am happy I have discovered them on time :)
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Top Bottom
Back