Poll on Backup software

namitutonka · Oct 27, 2024

I hope that ironing out Macrium Reflect problems here is appropriate, and not railroading this "poll-on-backup" thread.

OnesieBackup · Oct 27, 2024

cereberus said:
I leave my devices off to minimise risk of hackers accessing pc.

If this is a real concern, you may need to look into securing your machine better. I mean, what do you do during the day? Watch the screen all the time?

CountMike · Oct 28, 2024

OnesieBackup said:
I never turn off my computers, laptops included. I let them do their backups and things at night.
But if I did, I'd schedule during the day or whenever I think it's most likely to be on.
In Veeam I think I saw an option to run the backup when the computer starts if it missed a scheduled backup.
I'm sure there are also apps that could help you turn it on/off at certain times at night, but not sure it's worth the complication.

Same thing exists in MR and is a default. If PC is not available at scheduled time. it will run at next BOOT about 1-2 minutes later but MR has to run as a service. My main PC runs 24/7 but only windows public version. Insider Dev is on another disk and gets started every few days and then runs scheduled incremental backup. I schedule backups for 9AM so I can do whatever is what I do starting at about 6AM, without interruption. Although PC is powerful enough so backup doesn't make a dent in performance, I let it finish in peace and make cup of coffee during those few minutes. Not real loss of time. Laptop which is older 2 core on the other hand practically stops everything during backup.
Hasleo I started using couple of weeks ago and is still started manually for incremental backup but is noticeably slower and needs couple of Hasleo services to run at all. When shutting PC down it takes almost 2 minutes to shut service down which prolongs restart considerably.
Veem I haven't tried yet.

cereberus · Oct 28, 2024

OnesieBackup said:
If this is a real concern, you may need to look into securing your machine better. I mean, what do you do during the day? Watch the screen all the time?

I do real work with important data. I secure my device in many ways.

It is a specific company policy to turn off pcs when not in use if device contains sensitive data.

Who do you think you are questioning my security habits with a sarcastic reply like this.

namitutonka · Oct 28, 2024

I deep uninstalled Macrium Reflect version 8.0.7783 with Revo uninstaller, removing all registry entries. I believe the original install was identical, but I needed to see if "Incrementals Forever" would still fail as before. Yesterday I used the "Incrementals Forever" template and it created a full backup blazingly fast as before. With medium compression, I/O Performance was Read 6.9Gb/s and Write 13.8Gb/s. It saved a 24.67GB .mrimg file in 00.03:22!!

This morning at 9AM the scheduled incremental failed as before. The Macrium Reflect Free log file stated: "Backup Aborted! - Incremental backups not supported in Macrium Reflect Free" So I'll be using MiniTool ShadowMaker Pro Ultimate for incrementals.

Do "Incrementals Forever" work for any of you using the free version 8.0.7783? The "Schedule Settings" - "Task Scheduler User Credentials" menu does not have an option to delete the Incrementals Forever schedule, so I'm going to uninstall MR again.

OnesieBackup · Oct 28, 2024

FREE does not support incrementals, only differentials. You need a paid version for incrementals. Or use Veeam or Hasleo if you are looking for free.

cereberus · Oct 28, 2024

namitutonka said:
I deep uninstalled Macrium Reflect version 8.0.7783 with Revo uninstaller, removing all registry entries. I believe the original install was identical, but I needed to see if "Incrementals Forever" would still fail as before. Yesterday I used the "Incrementals Forever" template and it created a full backup blazingly fast as before. With medium compression, I/O Performance was Read 6.9Gb/s and Write 13.8Gb/s. It saved a 24.67GB .mrimg file in 00.03:22!!

This morning at 9AM the scheduled incremental failed as before. The Macrium Reflect Free log file stated: "Backup Aborted! - Incremental backups not supported in Macrium Reflect Free" So I'll be using MiniTool ShadowMaker Pro Ultimate for incrementals.

Do "Incrementals Forever" work for any of you using the free version 8.0.7783? The "Schedule Settings" - "Task Scheduler User Credentials" menu does not have an option to delete the Incrementals Forever schedule, so I'm going to uninstall MR again.

You can only do "Incrementals Forever" in paid versions of Reflect. I do not know any free 3rd party tool that would allow the equivalent of "Incrementals Forever".

In any case, I do not entirely trust the concept of "Incrementals Forever".

With conventional full + incrementals, if things go wonky, you always have the tried and trusted full backup to fall backon even if the incremental train fails (never actually happened to me).

Artificially creating fulls by consolidating incrementals sounds great but the artificial full IS NOT a real snapshot in time. It seems to me, you could end up losing all your backups right to the day you first started Incrementals Forever.

I do remember a guy who had been using it for a year and somehow it got corrupted and his last full backup was a year ago.

If I was going to use "Incrementals Forever", I would not put all my eggs in one basket, and would still make a normal Full at least once a month or even weekly to provide damage limitation if things fall over. However, the moment you do that, it then becomes rather pointless using "Incrementals Forever" anyway.

Did you know there is an executable called consolidate.exe where you can manually consolidate a full plus incrementals to create an artificial full.
A sort of halfway house between full +incrementals and "Incrementals Forever". You just clock on the file consolidate.exe in the Reflect program folder.

teroha · Oct 29, 2024

Uranium Backup Gold. Small size (68mb), no background processes and services, EU based.
Created backup image 40 GB - 2-3 minutes. Restored from backup image - 2-3 minutes.
Works great.

BrianInEngland · Oct 29, 2024

cereberus said:
You can only do "Incrementals Forever" in paid versions of Reflect. I do not know any free 3rd party tool that would allow the equivalent of "Incrementals Forever".

In any case, I do not entirely trust the concept of "Incrementals Forever".

With conventional full + incrementals, if things go wonky, you always have the tried and trusted full backup to fall backon even if the incremental train fails (never actually happened to me).

Artificially creating fulls by consolidating incrementals sounds great but the artificial full IS NOT a real snapshot in time. It seems to me, you could end up losing all your backups right to the day you first started Incrementals Forever.

I do remember a guy who had been using it for a year and somehow it got corrupted and his last full backup was a year ago.

If I was going to use "Incrementals Forever", I would not put all my eggs in one basket, and would still make a normal Full at least once a month or even weekly to provide damage limitation if things fall over. However, the moment you do that, it then becomes rather pointless using "Incrementals Forever" anyway.

Did you know there is an executable called consolidate.exe where you can manually consolidate a full plus incrementals to create an artificial full.
A sort of halfway house between full +incrementals and "Incrementals Forever". You just clock on the file consolidate.exe in the Reflect program folder.
View attachment 114453

View attachment 114454

I've never used incremental forever, I do a weekly full backup of the system drive on a Sunday morning, then daily incrementals Monday to Saturday

Marie SWE · Jan 17, 2025

Disk backup: Live CloneZilla... supports most filesystems out there.

File sync backup: FreeFileSync... Works on Windows, Mac and Linux

antspants · Jan 17, 2025

Marie SWE said:
File sync backup: FreeFileSync

Couldn’t live without it.

Marie SWE · Jan 17, 2025

antspants said:
Couldn’t live without it.

yeah its nice.. i wish you could set up so you got 4-5-6-7 duplicates of files thogh.. just in case you notice a wile after a file was changed and you want an older back.... and if there is such function.. then i have missed it

pseymour · Jan 17, 2025

Marie SWE said:
yeah its nice.. i wish you could set up so you got 4-5-6-7 duplicates of files thogh.. just in case you notice a wile after a file was changed and you want an older back.... and if there is such function.. then i have missed it

I haven't used this software, but it looks like it has macros you could use. You could, for example, set the destination folder to have the current date in it, so each time you run the backup, a new folder gets created.

FreeFileSync

Download FreeFileSync 14.12. FreeFileSync is a free open source data backup software that helps you synchronize files and folders on Windows, Linux and macOS.

freefilesync.org

Marie SWE · Jan 17, 2025

pseymour said:
I haven't used this software, but it looks like it has macros you could use. You could, for example, set the destination folder to have the current date in it, so each time you run the backup, a new folder gets created.

FreeFileSync

Download FreeFileSync 14.12. FreeFileSync is a free open source data backup software that helps you synchronize files and folders on Windows, Linux and macOS.

freefilesync.org

Thanks for your input

But i dont want duplicate folders, just the changed files side by side.. Like when you copy files in windows and you have a file with that name.. it sets a (1)(2)(3) etc behind the name.. Then its easy to see what files have duplicates and not.
I have been way to busy... and also lazy those times i have had time to really look in to it.. it has bugged me for almost 2years now. *lol*

and as @Bree in here would say... only so short time.

man00 · Jan 18, 2025

I tried Active Disk Image few times, seem to work okay it is free.

SIW2 · Jan 18, 2025

man00 said:
I tried Active Disk Image few times, seem to work okay it is free.

Free version doesnt create boot media, though it is likely not too difficult for an enthusiast to make it.

if you need to restore a system partition to another disk, you have to attach it first to the system with working Windows and restore image.

Disk Image freeware. Windows & Servers Backup Software. Windows 7, 8, 10, 11, Windows Server 2003, 2008, 2012, 2016, 2019, 2022

Disk Image freeware - Active@ Disk Image Lite. A fully functional free disk image backup software.

www.disk-image.com

MultiDoc · Jan 24, 2025

I might have missed it but which software for backup is better to use in terms of reliability and ease of use ? Regardless if paid or not (if pricing is reasonable and not subscription based)

Apologies in advance if this has already been answered and I missed it.

kelper · Jan 24, 2025

Please read the thread!

man00 · Jan 25, 2025

SIW2 said:
Free version doesnt create boot media, though it is likely not too difficult for an enthusiast to make it.

Disk Image freeware. Windows & Servers Backup Software. Windows 7, 8, 10, 11, Windows Server 2003, 2008, 2012, 2016, 2019, 2022

Disk Image freeware - Active@ Disk Image Lite. A fully functional free disk image backup software.

www.disk-image.com

How would one go about making this bootable USB that the backup/restore program would start up, like Reflect ?

SIW2 · Jan 25, 2025

I dont know yet. I would have to install the thing to have a look. cba at the moment.

Poll on Backup software

Which imaging program do you use for backups?

Macrium

EaseUS todo

Aomei

Windows 7 system imaging in Windows 10 or 11

Acronis

Ashampoo

Paragon

Cloud based

Other (please post to explain)

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