Poll on Backup software

antspants · Sep 3, 2023

The check boxes appear automatically when you post, if you follow what I’ve posted in your thread..

Draft Poll

I'm trying to devise a poll. So far I've designated it a "Draft". Can I post a 'Draft' so that I can view what it will look like and behave like, without the post going to anyone else? My problems are: a) How do I construct a list of checkboxes? b) Can I combine a checkbox (every checkbox in a...

www.elevenforum.com

jro11 · Sep 4, 2023

glockster said:
Yeah, I've been bitten a couple of times myself. I just like the fact that by reinstalling, I'm getting rid of all the cruft that builds-up over time.

If by reinstalling you're saying you use an image of your drive, doesn't that just reinstall all the 'crud that builds-up over time'?
Ditto to reinstalling using a backup unless you're reinstalling only a few files?

By the way, does anyone do Disk Defragmentation anymore?

Ghot · Sep 4, 2023

jro11 said:
If by reinstalling you're saying you use an image of your drive, doesn't that just reinstall all the 'crud that builds-up over time'?
Ditto to reinstalling using a backup unless you're reinstalling only a few files?

The trick is to only "make" backups when things are clean and running well.

jro11 · Sep 4, 2023

TheMystic said:
I have always been using the built-in Windows System Image utility for a very long time. Now, I prefer cloning from Recovery using DISM.

What does this mean? and how does it relate to sfc /scannow and dism /online /cleanup-image /restorehealth. I get the impression DISM is something one runs when one has created an image that for no good reason at all one suspects is broken.

Downloading Free File Sync seems to get you a Driver!

This thread has been depressing. I'm leaning toward Imaging software (because Backups take so long--hours!!) but wonder if I'll need to do a new image every time I happen to download another program.

The best combo Imaging/Backup software I've heard about is still (the Macintosh) Time Machine--though having had a crisis with Rollback RX makes me wonder. The way Time Machine was hyped to me was:
1) Just buy an external hard drive larger than your C-Drive.
2) Install Time Machine on the new external. It will clone everything on your hard drive and continually resync everything in near-realtime.
3) If the internal harddrive goes down or fails, you replace it with the Time Machine Drive and mount Time Machine on another external drive.
If the Time Machine Drive goes down or fails, you replace it with another drive and mount Time Machine on it.
4) All in all, you always have a machine in working order and you only have to replace one drive if either drive fails--which you would have to do anyway.
(sigh! seems too good to be true)

hdmi · Sep 4, 2023

Carey Brown said:
I'm not aware of any non-imaging software that will backup the hidden boot sector.

MBR Backup: Back up & Restore Master Boot Record in Windows 11/10

MBR Backup helps you create a backup of your Master Boot Record in Windows 11/10. If you need to restore it, you know you will have a valid copy available.

www.thewindowsclub.com

hdmi · Sep 4, 2023

jro11 said:
By the way, does anyone do Disk Defragmentation anymore?

By default, Windows built-in disk optimization automatically defrags HDDs and automatically performs a partial defrag (and retrim) on SSDs only when needed. For heavy workstation/server type of workloads, Condusiv DymaxIO (former Diskeeper/SSDkeeper/V-Locity) is still nevertheless a highly popular choice. Contrary to popular belief, partially defragging an SSD is very much necessary, but Windows already takes care of it automatically for you, and, choosing to manually defrag an SSD shortens the lifespan of the SSD, significantly if choosing to do it on a frequent basis. Whereas if you choose to never let the SSD partially be defragged, you run the risk of it gradually becoming so severely fragmented over time that this not only causes performance to start to suffer, but causes the lifespan to start to suffer also in addition to that. Again... contrary to popular belief. You could actually even lose the data permanently on NTFS as a direct result of letting (very) excessive fragmentation continue to still grow worse. By design, the NTFS filesystem can not support an unlimited number of fragments.

RD Mercer · Sep 4, 2023

As a rebel, I hardly ever follow the crowd, I have found in my 71 years, they can lead you down a rabbit hole. Maybe I'm just to old school, but Acronis has been working for me since XP Pro was introduced.

cereberus · Sep 4, 2023

hdmi said:
By default, Windows built-in disk optimization automatically defrags HDDs and automatically performs a partial defrag (and retrim) on SSDs only when needed. For heavy workstation/server type of workloads, Condusiv DymaxIO (former Diskeeper/SSDkeeper/V-Locity) is still nevertheless a highly popular choice. Contrary to popular belief, partially defragging an SSD is very much necessary, but Windows already takes care of it automatically for you, and, choosing to manually defrag an SSD shortens the lifespan of the SSD, significantly if choosing to do it on a frequent basis. Whereas if you choose to never let the SSD partially be defragged, you run the risk of it gradually becoming so severely fragmented over time that this not only causes performance to start to suffer, but causes the lifespan to start to suffer also in addition to that. Again... contrary to popular belief. You could actually even lose the data permanently on NTFS as a direct result of letting (very) excessive fragmentation continue to still grow worse. By design, the NTFS filesystem can not support an unlimited number of fragments.

About twice a year I defrag my SSDs and it tidies up the NTFS file fragments.

I do this for good housekeeping but before I did it I have never actually reached the NTFS fragmentation limit.

I suspect for us mere mortals, it would take a long time to reach actual limit.

RD Mercer · Sep 4, 2023

jro11 said:
If by reinstalling you're saying you use an image of your drive, doesn't that just reinstall all the 'crud that builds-up over time'?
Ditto to reinstalling using a backup unless you're reinstalling only a few files?

Images are ok, now that SSD's are so cheap, on a couple of my everyday drivers, I just clone those drives, and "sometimes" follow up with an image. Of course I don't have 200 terabytes to have to back-up. just very basic stuff.

hdmi · Sep 5, 2023

cereberus said:
About twice a year I defrag my SSDs and it tidies up the NTFS file fragments.

I do this for good housekeeping but before I did it I have never actually reached the NTFS fragmentation limit.

I suspect for us mere mortals, it would take a long time to reach actual limit.

Generally, running a manual defrag on an SSD every so many months is somewhat less than ideal. Windows built-in automatic disk optimization is a scheduled task in Task Scheduler that runs as part of Automatic Maintenance in such a way that it gets interrupted (ended) immediately as soon as the system no longer is idle, which then causes this scheduled task to fail, but on Windows 11 by default it is scheduled to run on a weekly basis so as a result should be automatically retried soon enough.

If the maximum number of consecutive failed attempts is reached for this task, this task becomes part of Emergency Maintenance. So, normally, you shouldn't have to run a manual defrag on an SSD, as the Emergency Maintenance already should eliminate the potential risk of this task getting interrupted each time for a prolonged period that could potentially keep growing far too long. This is assuming that nothing is wrong with the Emergency Maintenance of course. But then, if something goes wrong with that, then, as the "Emergency" in "Emergency Maintenance" already suggests, you probably might want to try to fix that immediately, not waste time trying to cure some of the symptoms. Choosing to manually run the built-in disk optimization e.g. via the Optimize button that's on the ~~Extra~~ Tools tab of the Properties panel for the drive(s) in question can't hurt, though, as it still doesn't start defragging the drives until after the analyze part of the optimization task detects that the level of fragmentation exceeded a certain default threshold.

This specific default threshold was defined by Microsoft to strike a balance between multiple factors including SSD lifespan and performance related factors. Disk optimization doesn't defrag an SSD fully. It's only a partial defrag the purpose of which is just to keep fragmentation on an SSD from building up to a point where, finally, it hurts both performance and lifespan of the SSD, and hurts them enough to justify doing the partial defrag. It also doesn't defrag an SSD more frequently than really should be needed to avoid problems. All it usually does is just retrim with no defrag. Excepting of course if you use your SSD in such a particular way that fragmentation builds up much more quickly than what's common for the average user, like doing lots of small sized random write operations through some kind of heavy database application that you've constantly got running or whatever. For that, I would strongly consider using DymaxIO anyway. It isn't free software, but very often is a worthwile investment under these specific circumstances where ROI (Return On Investment) is of critical importance.

For the average user with SSDs, using DymaxIO is severe overkill. But the average user also shouldn't disable Windows built-in automatic disk optimization nor should increase the scheduled time interval for this task to something beyond reasonable. The default weekly schedule is still going to be very much reasonable for most. That is, even though it is true that the average user typically doesn't do anything with their SSD that could cause the number of file fragments to reach the actual NTFS limit. The performance and lifespan alone are reason enough for the average user to want to keep the automatic disk optimizer of Windows turned on for the SSDs... and still want to keep it turned on regardless of whether they have arrived at the conclusion, that they can't very easily reach the actual NTFS limit.

cereberus · Sep 5, 2023

hdmi said:
Generally, running a manual defrag on an SSD every so many months is somewhat less than ideal. Windows built-in automatic disk optimization is a scheduled task in Task Scheduler that runs as part of Automatic Maintenance in such a way that it gets interrupted (ended) immediately as soon as the system no longer is idle, which then causes this scheduled task to fail, but on Windows 11 by default it is scheduled to run on a weekly basis so as a result should be automatically retried soon enough.

If the maximum number of consecutive failed attempts is reached for this task, this task becomes part of Emergency Maintenance. So, normally, you shouldn't have to run a manual defrag on an SSD, as the Emergency Maintenance already should eliminate the potential risk of this task getting interrupted each time for a prolonged period that could potentially keep growing far too long. This is assuming that nothing is wrong with the Emergency Maintenance of course. But then, if something goes wrong with that, then, as the "Emergency" in "Emergency Maintenance" already suggests, you probably might want to try to fix that immediately, not waste time trying to cure some of the symptoms. Choosing to manually run the built-in disk optimization e.g. via the Optimize button that's on the Extra tab of the Properties panel for the drive(s) in question can't hurt, though, as it still doesn't start defragging the drives until after the analyze part of the optimization task detects that the level of fragmentation exceeded a certain default threshold.

This specific default threshold was defined by Microsoft to strike a balance between multiple factors including SSD lifespan and performance related factors. Disk optimization doesn't defrag an SSD fully. It's only a partial defrag the purpose of which is just to keep fragmentation on an SSD from building up to a point where, finally, it hurts both performance and lifespan of the SSD, and hurts them enough to justify doing the partial defrag. It also doesn't defrag an SSD more frequently than really should be needed to avoid problems. All it usually does is just retrim with no defrag. Excepting of course if you use your SSD in such a particular way that fragmentation builds up much more quickly than what's common for the average user, like doing lots of small sized random write operations through some kind of heavy database application that you've constantly got running or whatever. For that, I would strongly consider using DymaxIO anyway. It isn't free software, but very often is a worthwile investment under these specific circumstances where ROI (Return On Investment) is of critical importance.

For the average user with SSDs, using DymaxIO is severe overkill. But the average user also shouldn't disable Windows built-in automatic disk optimization nor should increase the scheduled time interval for this task to something beyond reasonable. The default weekly schedule is still going to be very much reasonable for most. That is, even though it is true that the average user typically doesn't do anything with their SSD that could cause the number of file fragments to reach the actual NTFS limit. The performance and lifespan alone are reason enough for the average user to want to keep the automatic disk optimizer of Windows turned on for the SSDs... and still want to keep it turned on regardless of whether they have arrived at the conclusion, that they can't very easily reach the actual NTFS limit.

I still keep normal optimiser on. Maybe .the full defrag is pointess but who cares - the drives are going to outlast me.

hdmi · Sep 5, 2023

cereberus said:
I still keep normal optimiser on. Maybe .the full defrag is pointess but who cares - the drives are going to outlast me.

Well if you use the standard method to defrag a drive on Windows 11 as explained in Brink's tutorial and you always keep normal optimizer on, then what you are doing is make it retrim a little bit sooner and sometimes maybe also make it defrag a little bit sooner, but not necessarily make it defrag more frequently or make it defrag more thoroughly, as it still only defrags when needed, and when it does it still only performs a partial defrag. That's just because fragmentation on an SSD doesn't, in any way that can be significant enough for it to become a real concern, start to degrade performance and lifespan until after fragmentation on it reaches a certain threshold that is one heck of a lot higher compared with fragmentation on an HDD. So, in determining whether this threshold is reached, by default the standard method from the tutorial also causes it to take these same performance and lifespan related factors well into account, same as the normal optimizer that Windows 11 runs on a weekly schedule by default, i.e. just how (for most users anyway) it ideally (or almost) should be.

Below this same threshold, defragging an SSD hurts its lifespan in exchange for the kind of performance gain that some prefer to jokingly call homeopathy. But personally, I, wouldn't necessarily always call it that (just most of the time, I would... lol), as there can still be exceptions to this, like, maybe you are running some "non mainstream" type of stuff on your computer that makes it several dozens of times more sensitive to fragmentation induced loss of performance under some circumstances. It could be a heavy database application. It could be something else or some combination of various different things. Essentially, people can use an average PC in so many different ways, an average PC doesn't have enough system resources to be able to calculate how many different ways there are. Performane monitoring combined with experimentation and running some tests can help to get a handle on what can or can't be gained from doing those specific kinds of things that the people who buy from Apple never do.

cereberus · Sep 5, 2023

hdmi said:
Well if you use the standard method to defrag a drive on Windows 11 as explained in Brink's tutorial and you always keep normal optimizer on, then what you are doing is make it retrim a little bit sooner and sometimes maybe also make it defrag a little bit sooner, but not necessarily make it defrag more frequently or make it defrag more thoroughly, as it still only defrags when needed, and when it does it still only performs a partial defrag. That's just because fragmentation on an SSD doesn't, in any way that can be significant enough for it to become a real concern, start to degrade performance and lifespan until after fragmentation on it reaches a certain threshold that is one heck of a lot higher compared with fragmentation on an HDD. So, in determining whether this threshold is reached, by default the standard method from the tutorial also causes it to take these same performance and lifespan related factors well into account, same as the normal optimizer that Windows 11 runs on a weekly schedule by default, i.e. just how (for most users anyway) it ideally (or almost) should be.

Below this same threshold, defragging an SSD hurts its lifespan in exchange for the kind of performance gain that some prefer to jokingly call homeopathy. But personally, I, wouldn't necessarily always call it that (just most of the time, I would... lol), as there can still be exceptions to this, like, maybe you are running some "non mainstream" type of stuff on your computer that makes it several dozens of times more sensitive to fragmentation induced loss of performance under some circumstances. It could be a heavy database application. It could be something else or some combination of various different things. Essentially, people can use an average PC in so many different ways, an average PC doesn't have enough system resources to be able to calculate how many different ways there are. Performane monitoring combined with experimentation and running some tests can help to get a handle on what can or can't be gained from doing those specific kinds of things that the people who buy from Apple never do.

Evidence of ruining ssd life is a decade old lol.

Josey Wales · Sep 5, 2023

I use Macrium Reflect Home and have been since Windows 7 and I will continue to use it forever.

hdmi · Sep 6, 2023

cereberus said:
Evidence of ruining ssd life is a decade old lol.

It's probably much closer to a decade and a half. Despite this, old myths about the logical relationship between file fragmentation on SSDs and SSD life + performance continue to persist strongly to date.

On topic: not too long ago a survey concluded that some 37 percent of respondents had fallen victim to failed backups at least one time in the past. To me, personally, this seems to indicate rather clearly that education about backups and backup strategies hasn't been working very well either, as the evidence of how it can be made possible to make backups more reliable is at least three times older compared to that of ruining SSD life. Some would say it's the dumbing down of America. Me, I think I'll just keep pretending like I don't know. Or maybe I still won't... I haven't decided yet.

jro11 · Sep 6, 2023

Would someone like to debunk the following (if for no other reason than: "so I won't bring it up anymore").

The best combo Imaging/Backup software I've heard about is still (the Macintosh) Time Machine--though having had a crisis with Rollback RX makes me wonder. The way Time Machine was hyped to me was:
1) Just buy an external hard drive larger than your C-Drive.
2) Install Time Machine on the new external. It will clone everything on your hard drive and continually resync everything in near-realtime.
3) If the internal harddrive goes down or fails, you replace it with the Time Machine Drive and mount Time Machine on another external drive.
If the Time Machine Drive goes down or fails, you replace it with another drive and mount Time Machine on it.
4) All in all, you always have a machine in working order and you only have to replace one drive if either drive fails--which you would have to do anyway.

p.s. If the criticism is something along the lines of, what about if you make errors within the "near-realtime"...my answer would be (something along the lines of) I don't mind losing 20 minutes of work.

Wynona · Sep 6, 2023

jro11 said:
Would someone like to debunk the following (if for no other reason than: "so I won't bring it up anymore").

The best combo Imaging/Backup software I've heard about is still (the Macintosh) Time Machine--though having had a crisis with Rollback RX makes me wonder. The way Time Machine was hyped to me was:
1) Just buy an external hard drive larger than your C-Drive.
2) Install Time Machine on the new external. It will clone everything on your hard drive and continually resync everything in near-realtime.
3) If the internal harddrive goes down or fails, you replace it with the Time Machine Drive and mount Time Machine on another external drive.
If the Time Machine Drive goes down or fails, you replace it with another drive and mount Time Machine on it.
4) All in all, you always have a machine in working order and you only have to replace one drive if either drive fails--which you would have to do anyway.

p.s. If the criticism is something along the lines of, what about if you make errors within the "near-realtime"...my answer would be (something along the lines of) I don't mind losing 20 minutes of work.

I have never heard of Time Machine as a backup solution. So, I'm going out there to try to check it out. I'll be back in a bit.

Wynona · Sep 6, 2023

Wynona said:
I have never heard of Time Machine as a backup solution. So, I'm going out there to try to check it out. I'll be back in a bit.

OK, I'm back . . . what I found is that Time Machine is a Mac OS app. I'm not sure it will even work on a Windows machine.

Everything I saw was related to Mac, not Windows.

Just in case you're using an Apple computer, here's a February 1923 link that shows how to use Time Machine.

Back up your Mac with Time Machine :scream:

pparks1 · Sep 6, 2023

Yes, time machine is for a mac. It's built into the OS. I've always wondered why MS Windows didn't have something similar that just "worked". Mac also had time capsule, which was storage built into the apple router and you could backup your mac to this network attached storage device.

I use Time Machine on my mac and it's great. If your mac ever dies or you buy a new one, you start it up, connect your drive, tell it you want to restore from Time Machine and all of your stuff is back. It's not a super fast restore....it usually takes a few hours.....but it usually just works.

hdmi · Sep 6, 2023

jro11 said:
Would someone like to debunk the following (if for no other reason than: "so I won't bring it up anymore").

The best combo Imaging/Backup software I've heard about is still (the Macintosh) Time Machine--though having had a crisis with Rollback RX makes me wonder. The way Time Machine was hyped to me was:
1) Just buy an external hard drive larger than your C-Drive.
2) Install Time Machine on the new external. It will clone everything on your hard drive and continually resync everything in near-realtime.
3) If the internal harddrive goes down or fails, you replace it with the Time Machine Drive and mount Time Machine on another external drive.
If the Time Machine Drive goes down or fails, you replace it with another drive and mount Time Machine on it.
4) All in all, you always have a machine in working order and you only have to replace one drive if either drive fails--which you would have to do anyway.

p.s. If the criticism is something along the lines of, what about if you make errors within the "near-realtime"...my answer would be (something along the lines of) I don't mind losing 20 minutes of work.

It simply doesn't meet the definition of the term "backup". Both drives can still fail at once, as they are hooked up to the same computer (so if the motherboard fails, then there's always a pretty good chance you're done...), and, even if you decide to hook the 2nd drive up to a separate computer or NAS, a power surge or lightning strike can still destroy both drives at once. This is regardless of whether you use good surge protection throughout, and, in addition, there's also the potential risk of a hacker/virus attack, software error, user error and whatnot. As long as the external storage device in question isn't physically disconnected both from the wall outlet and from the computer/NAS/router/etc., it isn't a backup. As long as it hasn't been moved to a safe location away from the computer/NAS/router/etc., it isn't a backup either. You can make exceptions of course, as cloud backup space can use multiple drives that are spread across multiple different geographical locations in such a way that the redundancy factor also plays a role. (Especially if you also combine multiple different cloud backup services.) But if all you have for backups is just an external USB drive that you can plug into the USB port on the computer or on the NAS or on the router, then immediately as soon as you plug it in you no longer have a backup of any kind whatsoever. Any backups that you had already stored on it from a previous backup session will become vulnerable copies as opposed to remain backups. Granted, after you verified the integrity of such a copy and you unplugged the drive again and you moved it to a safe location again, it resumes its previous role of being a backup again, BUT... until these criteria are met, no. Just no.

An affordable, easy way to avoid this particular problem with external drives is to just use multiple ones so that you can then swap the drives around by moving only one drive at a time i.e. without ever taking all of the copies away from the safe spot at once. The downside of this is that you have to always remember to always have at least one of the copies present in the safe spot. A safe spot also has its limitations. You could decide to go for multiple geographical locations. But then, this isn't always very practical. Cloud storage doesn't have any such problems/drawbacks. But it does have several other shortcomings. The same holds true about choosing to combine both strategies into one strategy, even though it is still true nevertheless that such a combination can be in many ways superior (for a variety of reasons).