Re: Backup--OT

[Bill Troop billtroop@xxxxxxxx]

Harry, I am totally with you in the idea that the only Windows backup
worth having is a complete bootable one. However, I do it differently:
automated and in software. I use ShadowProtect. This creates a bootable
image file (I split it into 640MB segments) that is incrementable and
automatable (I do a full backup every week; an incremental every 3
hours).


So how do you get a bootable drive out of this? In case of disaster, you
boot up with a ShadowProtect CD (or simply invoke ShadowProtect on
another computer) and restore your image to your target hard drive.


The result will be a perfect duplicate.


I have done this several times with complete success. ShadowProtect is
the only such system that has ever worked for me. (Acronis is not
a patch on it.) I have complete confidence in it.


Are there any gotchas? I would say that you have to watch the numerous
hidden partitions (more and more!) that modern computers are beginning
toi have. (For example there are seven partitions on my plain
vanilla Dell XPS 15 late 2013. Why so many? Heaven knows.) Once or twice,
I have lost one of these partitions, but it has not affected me in any
visible way.


SSDs are great but they can benefit from maintenance and they do in the
end fail.


Why not use both? Continue to use the hardware solution but only once
every couple of months? Meanwhile use the software solution regularly.
You will then have the convenience of up-to-the-minute backups (as long
as the backup drive is connected of course).


These images are complete total, total, total duplicates of your hard
drive state. There is no need to worry about losing any value whatever.


NB: This is just one user's experience over the past few years.



At 17/04/2014 22:11, you wrote:

> I have a technical question that
> maybe one or more of you would be so kind as to help with.
>
> I've been bitten by disaster too many times not to be very concerned with
> backup. I have now what is the ideal solution, except for one flaw: I
> take the SSD drive out of my Lenovo Thinkpad (fairly easy to do, but
> requires unscrewing one screw), and put it with the backup drive into a
> toaster-like drive-duplicator from Aluratek that duplicates the SSD,
> sector by sector, onto the backup drive. The result is a completely
> substitutable, bootable dupe of my SSD (which I then replace in my
> Thinkpad).
>
> The only problem is that I can't do this, of course, as a scheduled
> task.
>
> I am doing physical drive duplication because via software, you can't
> produce a bootable drive. But is making a clone image good enough? I have
> tried Acronis, EaseUS, and Carbonite for making "images," but
> they aren't bootable. As I understand it (through a glass, darkly), you
> boot your system some other way, then "restore" the image. It's
> all smoke and mirrors to me. I don't trust "booting some other
> way," even though the Thinkpad has a system recovery partition on
> the main drive (i.e., my SSD). So, am I being a scaredy-cat? Should I
> rely on images and just "get over it" re my bafflement at what
> the restore process is? Would the end result be not just the return of my
> data files but of all my OS settings, including the registry?
>
> A final thought: is the image, like a virtual machine, just one file that
> you only need a running computer to activate?
>
> Thanks for the hand-holding.