Main Area and Open Discussion > General Software Discussion
In search of ideal backup utility
Dormouse:
But nowadays, newer HDD's capasity is growing much faster than their speed ...
I think is time to resort to RAID 1 or RAID 1+0 if hardware budget is not tight.
-tslim (August 24, 2008, 11:12 AM)
--- End quote ---
Agreed; I've given up cloning. Not so sure about the advantages of RAID. I have it on a network drive, but will it work if there is a crash? I don't know - so I can't really rely on it - too many reports of it not having been in working order when needed.
tslim:
By archiving, I meant that it is stuff that you want to keep safe permanently, with limited changes but more frequent additions.
-Dormouse (August 24, 2008, 11:26 AM)
--- End quote ---
Ok, I see.
Not really worried at all about reinstating my system. I redo that from scratch every few years anyway.
-Dormouse (August 24, 2008, 11:26 AM)
--- End quote ---
I can't afford to lost utility data for quite a number of programs: like ACDsee database, MacroExpress macros, True LaunchBar's bar sets etc.
For general application settings, I have to admit, they won't be a concern for most people. It is sort of my hobby - I mean I enjoy very much by setting utilities in Windows... kind of playing empire building game... :)
tslim:
Agreed; I've given up cloning. Not so sure about the advantages of RAID. I have it on a network drive, but will it work if there is a crash? I don't know - so I can't really rely on it - too many reports of it not having been in working order when needed.
-Dormouse (August 24, 2008, 11:30 AM)
--- End quote ---
Lets say you got a mobo with RAID ready.
1) Find 2 160GB SATA HDD raid them 0, I can assure you a great feel of performance boost.
then
2) Try them for Raid 1, get yourself some confidence of how a mirror system can help, just unplug one of them while Windows is running.
finally
Go buy 4 500GB SATA HDD and build your ultimate Raid 1+0 system, you are fast and safe by then.
Darwin:
Everything is becoming bigger and bigger and it takes longer and longer to clone a full disk.
-tslim (August 24, 2008, 11:12 AM)
--- End quote ---
I run notebooks, so I just partition the drive and set aside about 30 GB for Windows and programmes and the rest as E: for Documents and everything else. I use Super Flexible File Synchronizer to backup the important stuff on E and Acronis True Image to make incremental image backups of the Windows/Programmes partition... Both of these are done to a 500GB USB drive. The whole process, if I do it back to back (and I don't, as a rule), takes about 25 minutes for the entire 120GB over USB 2.0 connection. I usually backup documents every couple of days* and only image the harddrive if anything significant is changed (as in, installing software that requires a lot of setup and/or activation).
NB all my important data and settings files, such as Outlook data files, are also kept on the Documents partition (E:) and are automatically backed up along with my documents...
I understand, of course, that if I had a TB drive full of data to backup I might be approaching this differently!
*REALLY important stuff, like e-mail and PhD crap gets backed up to a Thumbdrive daily... just in case!
Softland:
in an "ideal" backup
-tomos (August 23, 2008, 04:44 PM)
--- End quote ---
it sounds to me like #2 the way it was described
-
in an "ideal" backup programme It would be great to be able to simply Control+DragDrop to create a copy of a backup.
-tomos (August 23, 2008, 04:44 PM)
--- End quote ---
Indeed #2 is what I meant. In Backup4all you can select a backup job, press Ctrl+L (this will create a duplicate of the existing backup job) and then drag-drop it into a different group (only in version 4 in the Tree view). Thanks tomos for the suggestion of the Ctrl+drag/drop, this will be added in the next beta update since it's easy to implement and seems an useful way of duplicating backup jobs across other groups.
If a job to be shared is complex, repeating the same definition in many groups is a waste of time and future change/remove of such job will become very difficult, because any change will have to be repeated in all the N groups and that is provided one can still remember exactly what are the groups that need to be changed.
-tslim (August 22, 2008, 07:29 PM)
--- End quote ---
I'll suggest this to our developers, but I don't see how useful would it be to have the exact backup job in two different groups and have them both sharing the same centralized settings. If that source is important and want to be sure it gets backed up, you can set up a scheduler for it.
If Backup4All strictly requires one to create plugin first in order to backup selective registry key(s), then that is too bad. I don't even agree with any claim that it supports registry key(s) backup. I can easily quote you an example which also sounds like a trick or workaround than a real support of such feature:
-tslim (August 22, 2008, 07:29 PM)
--- End quote ---
It can back up registry keys only if these are part of a created plugin, we don't claim on the site that Backup4all backs up and restores registry keys. This will be a feature in another version when we'll restructure the way the Sources are used (so that registry keys, ftp sources, email sources, ... could be added) and figure out a way to make this secure for regular users too. The registry backup feature has lower priority compared with other features we want to implement, because other than using it for backing up applications (which can be done with plugins too) it doesn't have much applicability.
Backup4all does not meet your requirements (at least for now). I'm sure we'll get there but it takes some time, mainly because it's a matter of priorities rather than willingness. The focus of this new version has been to improve handling large amounts of data, and it's a thing we've been working for quite a while now (with the final version it should work just fine to back up millions of files without having Backup4all crash, which I cannot say about many of our competitors - at least based on our tests, details to be included in the final version).
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page
[*] Previous page
Go to full version