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In search of ... reasonable backup software

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barney:
Looking for effective working reasonable real backup solutions.

Just ran across this, Backing Up Gets You Only Half Way There by Dana Cardwell, and I'm pretty close to full agreement - just don't think he went far enough  :P.

The assessment mirrors a problem I just encountered.  I had some browser-affecting bit(s) of software on a system that brought up independent ads for almost every page I actuated.  Browser - and system - slowdowns were significant.  Tried all manner of suggestions - some of 'em here on DC, all to no avail.  So I used RollbackPC to revert to a [very] much earlier state.  That worked.  Aha!, sez me, "I'll just restore the lost data bits from a recent [daily] backup".

Considering my history with backups, the backup restore - not unexpectedly! - failed.  So, I've lost a pregnancy (~nine (9) months) of data, some of which I'd consider to be critical to my usage(s).

I've had trouble with backup since DOS 2.1 - I think 3.2 was the only one (1) that ever worked for me.  I've tried - and actually bought - any number of Windows backup systems, but none have performed.  (Don't get cocky, Linux users, same problem(s) there  :P.)

OK, how do ya test a backup?  Ya restore it, of course.  And that has caused more OS reinstalls than I care to consider.  I'm willing to accept that I'm doing something wrong at any given time, but c'mon, ~28 (twenty-eight) years of failed backups?  I'm willing to accept that the only common denominator is me during that period, but I don't thimk I could do it wrong that many times.

So I'm still/yet/again in search of a backup system that will work reliably in most all conditions.

I used Acronis True Image - don't recall version - to backup a Dell system with a dying hard drive.  The restore would not restore to a different hard drive - hardware signature issues I suppose.  I understand that Acronis has since addressed that issue, but it doesn't help me now.

I've tried several *nix variations of backup capability, all for naught.

So.  I'd really like to find a [functional|effective] backup resolution.

Any suggestions?

mwb1100:
I have become convinced that full system backup/restore utilities are really just a pipe dream.

I've moved to much simpler backup schemes that copies my data files to one or more network locations and/or external drives. If I need to perform some sort of system restore due to a failed system drive or pernicious malware infection, I'll reinstall the system from scratch then reinstall all the programs I want/need from the backed up installation files.  Then restore my data files (which are ultimately just plain-old file copies). I believe this to be more reliable than 'full system backups'.  I haven't yet had to perform a restore under duress, but I have recovered the occasional file that got mistakenly deleted.  Since the backups were just copies of the files, the restore was just a matter of find the location of the backup file and copy it over.  I didn't even bother with the backup utility's 'restore' functionality.

The last couple of times I've reinstalled the OS were not due to a failed drive, so what I did was buy a new hard drive, pull the old one out of the machine, install the OS, then attach the old drive to the secondary SATA connection (or in one case to a USB adapter - which was admittedly slow), then copy the data files over to the new drive.

Then I stashed the old drive on my bookshelf in case there was something I neglected to copy over.

So in those system reinstalls, I technically didn't even use my backups.  But I did make sure to have the backups in case I did something stupid that would have caused the original drive to be erased or something.

I'm using SyncBack Pro which copies files as plain old files.  As long as those copies aren't corrupted, there's no reason I shouldn't be able to recover them.

There are many similar backup/sync utilities that use non-proprietary formats.

tomos:
+1 to seperating data from OS/programmes. The data backups being ultimately the most important.

I dont fully understand the details of you losing the data, but it hurts to read it :(

When you say "I'll just restore the lost data bits from a recent [daily] backup"
   1) what backup software did you use?
   2) was that backup not incremental - i.e. did you not have older versions of it?


I'd recommend some sort of incremental backup. One that stores the files in zip so that tthe backup can be easaily manually browsed.
Incremental backup will build up, so, probably worthwhile investing in software that can weed out backups, saving one per week or whatever.

Giampy:
We know that several people get a bad restore from an image.

An user said an interesting thing: the image must be created from a not running OS, I mean from outside, from a backup program functioning in an USB key.
May that advice be the way to create a safe/safer image?

tomos:
Acronis had a nice feature that you could browse the image/backup and copy out files from that. But yeah, Acronis gets a lot of bad press. I havent used it for a few years - before that I was lucky and it worked for my purposes.

People always do say to check the image by restoring. I prefer to hope for the best with the image-backup - and then have multiple backups of important data. Backing up data is a pain though, unless you have a data partition and backup the whole thing regularly. My backup has grown organically, which means it's a bit of a mess and some things get more neglected than other. Might make a spreadsheet (or add info to outliner) to make sure everything is being backed up.

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