Microsoft → Why bother with OS-level backup (and other thoughts)?

I've been rethinking my backup strategy at home (or lack of it, to be more precise) and came to these conclusions (I only need to backup one computer running Windows 7 x64):

1) Why bother with OS backup at disk image level?

I just don't see a point in doing OS backup at disk image level at home. Within past 15 years I could've benefited of it once. Since I didn't have it I spent about a day and a half re-installing OS from scratch, which I was OK with plus it's always good to reinstall OS from scratch to get rid of accumulated "crud"

Other reasons why this is a hassle:

2) What software to do it with?

I just don't trust anything that claims to be able to backup OS while it is running. To do this backup program has to integrate itself with Windows at OS level, install drivers and/or services that run all the time and cosume CPU resources and often mess up whole OS. Just check out review for Acronis 2012 at Amazon - 2.5 out of 5 (~100 reviews). The other popular contender is Macrium that has 3.5 out of 5 at Download.com. IMO anything under 4.8 is not acceptable for the backup application. Please recommend if you know something better.

So the only feasible option is to use some kind of bootable media and backup when OS is not running. This takes a long time and you can't use your computer until it is done and backup is verified. Plus it still takes large amounts of disc space. As of now my compressed OS image would be about 40 GB. Say you do this once a week - this is 160GB per month, which will add up fast.

Do this less often? Might as well not do this at all. Or maybe only keep a couple latest images - this way it won't eat up disk space that fast.

3) Do you trust the restore of OS level backup?

OK, so you did backup and verified it (that is files were compared with originals on disk). But you don't really know if your backup will work until you restored it (on a different disk, because you don't want to mess up your primary OS) and used your OS for while. Who has time/patience to do this? So you won't. So why even bother backing it up?

Does anybody do their OS level restore often enough to comment on reliability of some consumer level backup applications?

So my conclusion is that OS image backup is not worth it in my case. Please let me know if I miss something (that is if OS image backup saves you anything but time) .

And this brings us to the second part of my post - Data Backup at file level.

4) One must backup your own data. There is no way around it. The only question is to come up with efficient backup strategy (and keep in mind that you have no backup until you restored it)

What I need for my purposes seem to be some kind of glorified file copier/verifier (paid applications are OK). The closest thing to this that I found is SyncBack Pro (»www.2brightsparks.com/sy ··· pro.html , has free version as well). You can read about all features on the website but in a nutshell it allows me to ZIP a bunch of files with a password and upload this ZIP to FTP and/or cloud services like Amazon S3 or Google storage. I haven't found if it in itself supports MD5 (or other checksum) verification but if I use ZIP this is not an issue since ZIP archive can always be verified and verfication can be easily scripted/automated.

Are there any other applications like this that don't install any crud that runs in the background?

5) What to backup?

I am looking for guides on what personal data to backup at file level. I can think of "My Documents", browser bookmarks, Outlook .PST file, Photos, Music, a couple SQL Server databases that I use for development (my source code is backed up via separate backup process at SVN repository level). Am I forgetting something important? Of course it will be unique for everybody but I am asking about "unversal" stuff here that everybody needs to backup.

1) It somewhat depends on how customized you have your computer set up. Doing everything from scratch can take a very long time, assuming you can even find all the installs disks or files you need. You may also need to re-authorize some software, which may be a hassle.

Generally, I do only a quarterly image backup using Ghost. I use Microsoft's Sync Toy to do weekly backups.

A disk image is quite handy for when you want to get back to where you were very quickly. Say you try out a preview of the next version of Windows. Or try out Linux. Or try to turn your Wintel box into a Hackintosh. Or you send your laptop off to be repaired by the manufacturer (they WILL slap a factory image on it).

Okay okay, I've only used it in the first and last scenarios, but you get the idea.

Admittedly I'm horrible about backing up my home PCs. In fact, I pretty much imaged them right before wiping to try out Win 7 (still haven't gotten around to 8 yet...) or sending the lappy off to HP... and haven't really bothered since. I should fix that, especially since I have Win 8 right here...

For the most part though, I guess you're right. If you're willing to go and spend time re-tweaking things and getting everything back the way you like it, fine, don't bother backing up your OS. Toss your data on SpiderOak or some other online storage, or another drive, or hell, replicate it across all your computers--most of mine is.

What other forums (other than DSLR) would you recommend posting this at?

Windows 7 built in backup (system image) works just fine and has, in my case, saved lots of hours. Several time over.

Cudni

Windows Home Server.

But apart from that, anything else that understands file system snapshots should be able to do whole-file-system backups without interfering with the running system.

Step 1) Tell the file system to make a snapshot
Step 2) Back up everything in the snapshot.

»en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sh ··· dow_CopyWindows Home Server. I don't mess around with telling it to back up this, not back up that. I back up all fixed-disk file systems on all computers (five of 'em, not counting the backup server itself) in the house, every night.

Naturally, it only has to actually copy the changed blocks each day, though the appearance is that there is a complete image for each day. Blocks common to more than one volume (e.g,, similar versions of the OS on multiple computers) get copied only once.

I agree that one should test ones backups by restoring, and have done so. But once I satisfied myself that the method worked, I don't feel the need to test it again. I'm using a standardized method of creating the backup: what worked to restore it yesterday will work tomorrow.

Yeah, the disk holding the backup data could go bad, but I'm willing to take the chance that not all logical images of computer X are corrupt at the same time that computer X's disk itself goes bad.

To backup of OS partition or not - the answer depends on the your way how you use your computer.

If you don't customize it - you can make fresh installation at any time. As you have noticed - it makes OS runs faster (without accumulated "crud"). But if you do - you'll have to spend time (and sometimes, significant time) to customize it again. And the more customization you do - the more time you have to spend on that process every time you reinstall your OS. Second, many programs in Windows OS (unfortunately, IMHO) require installations and depending on the program it may take a lot of your time (for example, MS Office, or Visual Studio, others similar). From the other side, if you install new OS, made your customization, install those programs that you always going to use and create backup of OS partition at that time, next time an accident happens (bad HD, or a virus, or other serious problem occurs) it'll take about 30 min of restoring that backup and everything is back to normal (or close to normal, in case if you constantly work on customization of OS).

One more point, in case you did not noticed that yet, backup of OS is different than backup of other data on your computer. At least I see it that way. That's why I always make separate small size OS partition, where I keep only OS and installed programs. The rest data is located on second "Data" partition. The second partition requires more often backups (I do it weekly) and utilizes different methods. I don't do it as an image backup. It's always a file synchronization method, which takes less time and actually backups only changed files...

And finally, the advantage of an old OS like Windows XP (and it's one of the reasons why I still use it) is its small footprint. My WXP OS partition, for example, has 16 GiB only and its whole backup image is usually 7 - 7.5 GiB. As you could imagine - backup of that partition is quite fast and takes less space in backup storage too. I'm not advising you to go back and install WXP. No. What I'm saying is - think why the OS partition in your computer is so big, that it takes 40 GB (even if it's compressed image). Make it smaller, remove bloat. As a bonus (additionally to faster backup procedure), you'll have less files to check with your AV (if you ever need it) or search your files there...

I like to take a whole os level backup after I'm done installing my crud. Kind of a "clean checkpoint" after I've spent all the time getting Visual Studio, Photoshop, Office, Nero, etc. installed.

Honestly, i would rather spend 45 minutes restoring my C drive with Acronis, than spending hours loading 20 programs and then you have to re do all the tweaks. I have a FTP proggy with 12 or so links with built in passwords, probably 12 or so passwords to web sites and I add the password in the Description in the bookmark shortcuts.

I also have a commercial phone program that insists that the data files reside right in the program directory. (terrible programming)

I backup C: every week. My XP install is 7 years old and I have had a few viruses and a couple of system quirks over that time span and probably restored 4 or 5 times.

Simple. I install the OS, create an image of that. Then I install all my programs then create another image of that. Then I do images of my main system drive every few weeks and or before I install any major updates or upgrades.

Now if I want to go back to a clean fresh install I use the original image, about 15 minutes of time. Or if I want to go back to a clean fresh install of OS and programs I use the second image I created, about 18 minutes of time. If I want to go back to a point before an update or upgrade I use the last image I created just before doing those UPS, about maybe 20 minutes time.

Sure beats the 2.5+ days of getting everything back to how I like it if I have to re-install everything from scratch.

I don't have an image program installed on my system. I use a boot USB stick with the imaging program on it, along with other programs.
I save the images to an internal drive and then copy them to an external when I have the time. imaging to and from the internal is FAST.

What imaging program do you use on USB stick? How many times did you do a restore and have you ever been unable to restore from backup?

Good topic. Let me add my thoughts and my backup process so you get another view.

I will say that there is no 100% correct answer for a backup solution. Everyone of us will have a different set of steps and suggestions as to what they feel should be backed up, and how they do it. You just have to find the one that fits your needs, and is one you are comfortable doing.

Here is how I do it. I will point out that I'm running Windows 7 Enterprise, x64.

First, I have 2 physical hard drives in my system. The first is 1 TB in size, and the 2nd is 500 GB. The 1 TB is where the OS, programs, and my active data is stored, in essence, my main system. I don't have it partitioned. Its just one solid drive at 1 TB.

In my case, I just backup my data, and I am one who is very careful to only store files in the "users" directories (my documents, my music, my videos, etc). My 500 GB drive is my backup drive. On the root of it, I have a folder called "System Backup", and inside of it, are sub-folders for each thing I backup: Documents, Music, Videos, and so on. I then wrote a batch file that performs an x-copy of each area. Below is the commands to backup the "My Documents" folder.

REM --------------------------------------------------------
REM Backup all files in the Documents folder
REM --------------------------------------------------------
REM
CD\Users\Brian A. Plencner\Documents
xcopy /E /Y *.* "D:\System Backup\Documents"
 

I then setup a scheduled task to have this run every night at 1 AM.

The other things I backup are the profiles for both Thunderbird and Waterfox. The nice thing about both of these programs is that if you have a full directory copy of the profile, you can drop that into a new install, and everything just works. All your bookmarks, cookies, e-mail structure, passwords, etc, etc just work.

So, I don't do an OS level backup. When I install the OS, I try to keep it as close to "default install" as possible. I make very little changes to the actual OS. I also do not mind re-installing all of my applications. Speaking of that, I also have stored on that 500 GB drive all of my application installs (minus the few that are on actual DVD, which is the OS itself, Office 2010, and Visual Studio). Everything else resides on that hard drive, complete with install instructions, and license keys (if needed). On that drive as well is the installs for all my hardware drivers. I keep everything organized by program and version. As an example, I have a folder called Microsoft, and inside of it I have one called Internet Explorer, and then inside of that, I have 2 folders (8 and 9), and inside of those are the actual install exe's (or MSI's) depending on the OS, and if it is the 64 bit or 32 bit version.

When I do re-install the OS, I then go to that folder on my 2nd hard drive, and install all the programs I need.

I've had to this on occasion, and I can usually go from initial format during the OS install to having all my applications installed and the data put back in around 12 hours. Again, while a complete OS backup may be faster, I like being able to verify the installs, as it does give me a cleaner OS IMHO. The other thing I do from time to time is perform these steps, if I know I have done a lot of updates / upgrades to different applications. Take Adobe or Java for example...they are good for coming out with quite a number of versions...and we all know that doing a "uninstall" never fully removes everything. So, I re-install the OS so that I get the "most current" versions of my applications installed without having 3 or 4 (or more) upgrades. Again, just a personal preference, but I find things run better this way.

As I said above, there is no right or wrong way to backup your data. In my case, I probably should do some kind of external backup in the event my 2nd hard drive was to crash, so I do feel that I am at risk in that case. Outside of that, I am happy with how I have things setup.

--Brian

I use both Acronis True Image 9 and 2011 with the plus pack that gives you the option of doing a Universal reinstall to any hardware. At one time I installed the program on one of my computers and then used both the built in Win PE system to create a bootable DVD and then a Thumb drive. And I also use Bart PE for TI 9 and Mustang PE for 2011. With the newer TI I have that on a USB stick that I used Yumi Multiboot to include TI 2011, Disk Director 11, a host of other utilities and a universal install of Win 7 (with which I can install any version of Win 7 except the Enterprise version as that version is only available with a corporate site license).

TI 9 is only used for older hardware with XP installed and TI 2011 I use for Win 7. I also have the newest version, 2012 W/+ Pack, but have not bothered to install it and make a USB key from it.

No I have never been Unable to restore my systems using them.

Personally I don't care to have any imaging program installed as it wants to take over parts of the system. I run a very clean and lean system without all the junk most software today want to install and wants to run every time you start your system.

I appreciate your response.

Have you ever tried to restore to dissimilar hardware? I find it difficult to believe that result will be running just as smooth as fresh install considering all old drivers will still be in OS and new drivers may or may not install properly.

Also - how about Windows activation after installing on dissimilar hardware? I own retail version of Windows 7 Ultimate that I have activated on my computer (x64 version).

Yes when I first installed Win 7 it was on my older C2D CPU computer and then shortly after that I built a new system. I used the Universal restore feature to move the OS from the older system to the newer. Worked very well. But in the end, because of my own screw up, mucking around with permissions, I ended up doing a clean reinstall on the new hardware. That was about 16 months ago. I have since reloaded that same base image, OS and programs, 2 times and used the other images I had made to get rid of software that I installed that I didn't care for.

Some would find having to Reboot the computer to the USB stick to image and restore a pain. But as I see it that way you are always working with a system that is not using what you are imaging or trying to restore to.

I do OS level backups with Windows Backup on my forensic computer. I can't be down for more than a few hours if there is a problem.