Poll on Backup software

Berton said:

Direct copy to a NAS drive on my Network, direct access for the data needed from any computer I desire.

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Hi there - I hope you backup your NAS regularly too -- HDD's in them can also fail !! (fortuantely rarely). Imaging say a 20 TB NAS isn't realistic for home systems - you need some sensible archive type strategy -- e.g Music and video files you want kept don't change much so a single archive to external HDD should be sufficient and you only need to archive new and changed files.

You'd be stuck if you need to retrieve data from the NAS - and then you get the dreaded "File corrupt or Disk I/O error". For NAS though if non windows system use rsync for backing up data to external HDD's or even the cloud.

Cheers
jimbo.

And then your backup drive fails! Just happened to me recently, before I had reinstalled programs back on a new install. I managed to retrieve the files - mostly - the rest I had on an earlier back up on a different drive. It was a nightmare trying to work out what was needed from where though and reorganise all my files. Having reorganised the files more efficiently on the later backup but not the earlier one. So had to then check each individual folder to see what was inside!

So I am now not trusting back up drives! And it's getting expensive. Now bought two more so I have my images and files on four separate drives (two identical for images - which fill up quickly and two identical for files). Meaning I have about 8 external hdd's now. Because not just for computer files - for camera card files and for more than one computer as well.

The one that failed was an ssd drive in an external enclosure - think I'll stick to hdd's for back up. I am seriously thinking about cloud back up as well now. I'm not keen on the cloud idea because the interfaces will probably confuse me (especially if needing to redownload). I had issues using one drive before.

Hazel123 said:

I have about 8 external hdd's now....

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When I bought my first 1TB usb HDD I thought 'that should be enough to last me years'. How wrong could I be.....

[LOSTCOUNTNOW] My collection is into double digits now, mostly 2TB drives[/LOSTCOUNTNOW]

Three are dedicated just to system images.....

Same here. I had a 500gb originally. It started to fill up and I bought a 1TB - which seemed huge! I now have 6 x 1tb, 2 x 2tb and the original 500gb.

Which raises a question. I also had a 2tb external drive fail on me very quickly. Luckily there was nothing much on it! Is it the case that the more tb, the more likely they are to fail? That's two external drives fail in 6 months. I've gone back to getting 1tb drives - but they fill up quickly. My files are over 500gb.

I was tempted with a 4tb drive as it works out a lot more economical - but - is the failure rate higher the larger the external drive? Seen quite a few reviews of 4tb drives failing.

Hazel123 said:

Is it the case that the more tb, the more likely they are to fail? I've gone back to getting 1tb drives - but they fill up quickly.

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I've not had any 2TB drive fail on me (yet). What make was yours? Mine are mostly Toshiba.

It was a transcend rugged one. I've used those for years. This particular one was slightly different to the others though.

These are the ones I have been getting for a few years


This is the one that failed within a few months - only used it twice - I don't know what the difference is apart from a slightly different look to the casing.


So do you recommend the toshiba ones?

Hazel123 said:

This is the one that failed within a few months - only used it twice....

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Hope you got a refund/replacement. Drives and electronics exhibit the classic 'Bath Tub' failure curve....

Hazel123 said:

do you recommend the toshiba ones?

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Well, it's not a very scientific survey. I've stuck with them because my first one was reliable.....

Just for fun - a 5MB hard drive from 1956 (that's mb not tb)

Bree said:

Hope you got a refund/replacement. Drives and electronics exhibit the classic 'Bath Tub' failure curve....

Bathtub curve - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Well, it's not a very scientific survey. I've stuck with them because my first one was reliable.....

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Should have done but life was a bit hectic at the time. Yep my first Buffalo and transcend ones were reliable - I guess some is pot luck. I remember you mentioning the bathtub curve before. So if it's been going strong then it's ok for a while until it starts to fail then?

Hazel123 said:

So if it's been going strong then it's ok for a while until it starts to fail then?

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Yes, that's my experience, for both external and internal HDDs. The first warning sign of impending failure would be a non-zero Reallocated Sector Count in the drive's SMART data. Usually HDDs fail gradually, you'd normally have time to recover the data before it was too late.

The two that failed. The SSD showed up as Raw. The HDD failed to boot. No warning signs! After retrieving date from the SSD, reformatted and tested it and it had multiple errors. The HDD got pulled apart and binned. Not quite sure how to dispose of the failed SSD - but it's been wiped. As it had errors it wouldn't even accept secure erasing, so I encrypted it, formatted it, encrypted it again and then tried to recover to see if anything was left on it. Just 10 files of gobbledegook so that seemed to work to erase it.

Incidentally I've been using my EaseUS licence (courtesy of Eleven forums!) for recent images. I had a query. The interface has changed since I last used it. It has icons as opposed to words. So I clicked on the disk Icon. This gave me the option to either back up the c drive or also tick to back up a Fat32 petition. I ticked both. So is that a full system image? I later discovered that if you want to just back up the C Drive, you select the OS icon, not the disk icon.

So that got me thinking? Do I just need to do an image of the C Drive or the whole drive with all partitions? Always assumed you needed to image the entire drive.

I've been a Macrium Reflect user for over a year and a half. Awhile back I saw a post on this board where someone mentioned Terabyte Image for Windows. Curious, I gave it a try and really liked it. Hence, I'm now a Terabyte Image for Windows user.

Interesting. I knew Macrium was popular, but this poll result in this forum makes me actually want to check it out more extensively.

Hazel123 said:

Incidentally I've been using my EaseUS licence (courtesy of Eleven forums!) for recent images. I had a query. The interface has changed since I last used it. It has icons as opposed to words. So I clicked on the disk Icon. This gave me the option to either back up the c drive or also tick to back up a Fat32 petition. I ticked both. So is that a full system image? I later discovered that if you want to just back up the C Drive, you select the OS icon, not the disk icon.

So that got me thinking? Do I just need to do an image of the C Drive or the whole drive with all partitions? Always assumed you needed to image the entire drive.

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You should always backup fat32 and C drive as a minimum as fat32 contains boot files. I recommend you backup all partitions. If you have data partitions you can ba k those up separately if you prefer.

cereberus said:

You should always backy fat32 and C drive as a minimum aa fat32 comtains boot files. I recommend you backup all partitions. If you have data partitions you can ba k those up separately if you prefer.

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one of the advantages of using vhdx files - simply save the vhdx file - doesn't matter what backup you use -- even Windows explorer !!! -- Keep data and OS separate then you can have a small OS vhdx file - My W11 file is only about 30 GB with quite a few applications e.g Photoshop, Office 2021 etc. I keep multi-media and office type files either in the cloud or on other HDD's / SSD's.

I used to image via Macrium but I rarely bother now -- I simply just save the vhdx files and even in a VM these can be copied and boot loader re-installed via bcdboot.exe.

But whatever mechanism you use -- always take some reliable backup -- AND TEST IT !!!!! No point backing up if the restore fails !!!!.

Cheers
jimbo

Bree said:

I've not had any 2TB drive fail on me (yet). What make was yours? Mine are mostly Toshiba.

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The only hard drive I've ever had fail was a Hitachi. I've had great results will all my Seagate's all the way back to 1986, I guess we all have different experience's.

Acronis 2018 and Microsoft SyncToy (how about that blast from the past!). I have 2 desktop PC's and a laptop. The 2 desktops have 3 SSDs in them. System, data and backup. The 2nd desktop PC is just a backup. My main PC powers up the backup PC every evening at 7:30 pm. 15 minutes later, task manager runs SyncToy so that the email and data on the backup PC gets caught up with the main PC. The backup PC powers itself down an hour after it is powered up. Every Sunday morning, I run Acronis and backup the system and data SSDs in the desktops to the backup SSD in them. The laptop has an M.2 system SSD and a SATA backup SSD in it. I run Acronis on it as well. I have a 4 disk RAID 0 array in each desktop to move older images to when the backup SSDs fill up. I delete the oldest image on the arrays when they run out of room. I rarely have ever needed to go back as far for a file as the images on the arrays, so I'm not concerned about them being RAID 0. I understand the risks. I have an offsite external SSD to keep a copy of an image from each PC. I don't update that as often as I should.

As far as HD failures go, I've only experienced 2 and both were Seagate drives. Because of that, I've only been purchasing Western Digital drives for the last 10 or so years without issue. Only had one SSD failure which was recent with a Crucial SSD. In the years around 2005 Acronis backup used to be rock solid with their window's product. However, some years back the product let me down bigtime during a verified restore and since I've sworn off it. Regarding freeware backup utils. I've used Clonezilla for years up until about a year ago and it's always been fast and reliable.

Been a Macrum user since the W7 days. I think v4 of MR was my first.

I also use FreeFileSync for data backups, also since the W7 days.