boleyd Posted August 5, 2014 Share Posted August 5, 2014 I was using Norton Backup but it is TERRIBLE for many reasons. Now that it tells me my PC is no longer an active computer I will be moving on. I have many GB of flight files, mostly Orbx. Also the usual personal stuff. With older hard drives backup is essential. I have started a trial of Carbonite backup which seems to be a well known company. An extra cost feature is an Image Backup which allegedly backs up your operating system (Windows 7). I believe most people use Acronis for OS backups. However, the incremental cost of Carbonite's image copy is less than the Acronis package. Does anyone have any comments on the Carbonite Image Backup process? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bruce Hamilton Posted August 5, 2014 Share Posted August 5, 2014 If you can't boot up your system, you can't get online to restore your image. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
olli4740 Posted August 5, 2014 Share Posted August 5, 2014 Western Digital MyBook external drives (as an example) include a limited version of Acronis True Image. You essentially get Acronis (limited version) as a freebie when purchasing an external drive for the backup or image. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
boleyd Posted August 5, 2014 Author Share Posted August 5, 2014 If you can't boot up your system, you can't get online to restore your image. Good point. I would guess that if it is a virus then you need to boot from a recovery disk. That may, or may not, have sufficient software to allow a recovery. Or, load a fresh copy of the Operating System(OS) and then recover the files which would overlay that temporary Windows load. If the image recovery software had a basic boot image with some of the disk and file software that would be good. Regardless there are various process you could probably invoke. The inclusion of a subset of the total Acronis with a new disk looks interesting. I have not really looked in detail at Acronis since I am replacing the miserable attempt by Norton to create a syncing backup system and failing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
windquest Posted August 5, 2014 Share Posted August 5, 2014 Bruce is quite correct and if you have a problem of the operating system, then an image or back up is suspicious. The best course of action is to have the OS on on drive, back up the few files that are loaded on the c drive as a matter of installation on another drive, image all other drives and sleep well. Henry Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gw6aa Posted August 6, 2014 Share Posted August 6, 2014 I've used Acronis for years and several times it's rescued me from disaster. I use a 1T drive just for storing images. C drive holds the OS and apps. D drive has archives of stuff that I have bought and I've just added another drive for all the Prepar3d stuff. An incremental image of each drive is made according to the automatic schedule. I have it set up for once a month. If the drive contents haven't changed much it might only take four or five minutes. If any drive fails it's easy to just put in a new drive and restore the appropriate image onto it. I don't think the Acronis software is particularly expensive. I imagine that if you had just lost a drive with all your expensive flightsim stuff on it you'd think it was very cheap. ) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bruce Hamilton Posted August 6, 2014 Share Posted August 6, 2014 I imagine that if you had just lost a drive with all your expensive flightsim stuff on it you'd think it was very cheap. ) Acronis has saved me from doing a complete reinstall more than once, well worth what I paid for it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rockliffe Posted August 6, 2014 Share Posted August 6, 2014 I agree with Bruce. I've used Acronis many times and have found it very reliable. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stevehowe Posted August 6, 2014 Share Posted August 6, 2014 yep Acronis is what i use and has never let me down. steve Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rockliffe Posted August 7, 2014 Share Posted August 7, 2014 However, the incremental cost of Carbonite's image copy is less than the Acronis package. Do yourself a favour Dick... don't concern yourself with saving a few dollars when considering something as intrinsically important as safeguarding $100's or $1000's worth of software, not to mention all the heartache! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
boleyd Posted August 7, 2014 Author Share Posted August 7, 2014 I am not sure that I have a grasp on a failure scenario. Using Acronis, where do I put the "image" full copy of the disk with the OS? Is the Acronis image saver selective and will not save a full terabyte of C: stuff and only saves the essential OS elements? How often should you refresh the stored image? Is this an automatic function? I have a Western Digital disk in my system. I loaded the free modified version of Acronis image capture/restore. I started it to insure that it works but I have no place to put the image in safe storage if it is very big. My other item is that I want to also use the same program for normal "critical files" backups. This would be incremental when a file's contents change. Both Carbonite and Acronis have an image capture/store. Both do incremental file backups. However, Carbonite offers unlimited storage which grabs my attention. If I assume a 50gb of storage level for files and an image the costs are about equal at $100 per year. This assumes buying storage from Acronis and its cheaper starting price. The other option is to use Carbonite and the Western Digital free abridged version of the Acronis image backup. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rockliffe Posted August 7, 2014 Share Posted August 7, 2014 Dick I have a 1 x 120gb SSD with Win7 OS, 1 x 512gb SSD with FSX and 1 x Samsung 512gb which holds all my addons. Each of these are copied, and automatically kept in separate folders denoting the relevent drives to a 1Tb external HD. While you can backup anything you want to anywhere you like, the important thing is to use a separate hard drive as a backup disc. It is then necesssary to create a boot disc. In following this procedure you will always have a complete backup copy of your entire FSX and OS, even in the event of a broken hard drive. If you simply copy to an existing drive, eg. where the OS is kept, then while this is OK for a software backup, if the drive breaks for any reason then it all goes tits up! It is possible to enable scheduled backups on a daily, weekly, monthly basis or a set time basis. It's also possible to implement a full backup, which is what I perform each time (don't ask why) or an incremental backup. There are lots of options, which I don't bother with, I simply create a full backup of my entire system every few weeks. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Triplane Posted August 7, 2014 Share Posted August 7, 2014 What he said. I, too, use Acronis and it has never failed me. I also run full backups as there is too much chance for failure with restoring incrementals. Besides, you only buy Acronis and an external drive once. No recurring charges. It would take WEEKS to backup just my OS and FSX/P3D (the upload speed is very, very slow) if you have to restore from "the cloud" it's going to be DAYS at best. With Acronis you can be back on the air in 30 minutes. Doug Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
boleyd Posted August 8, 2014 Author Share Posted August 8, 2014 Thanks for all the responses. It seems that the Acronis product is the best option. An all-in-one solution for a reasonable price. The only drawback is that the external drive is not the answer if there is a fire. A very small chance of that plus the trauma of the event should take your focus from the PC flight and other functions. Besides the insurance should (check your policy) allow you to recreate the system. I will use the cloud for things I simply cannot ignore for 30 days. In that case I can grab some laptop and restore valuable documents and records rapidly. Perhaps one final question - the frequency of your full image backups - are they automatic or manual and how often? Have you ever had to resort to their use? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bruce Hamilton Posted August 8, 2014 Share Posted August 8, 2014 I also run full backups as there is too much chance for failure with restoring incrementals. I only run full backups when my hard drive is filled by too many incrementals, just to consolidate and remove anything I've deleted from my system from the backup, like no longer wanted photoreal. I've never had an issue restoring an incremental backup, just right click it and select restore. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Triplane Posted August 8, 2014 Share Posted August 8, 2014 Thanks for all the responses. It seems that the Acronis product is the best option. An all-in-one solution for a reasonable price. The only drawback is that the external drive is not the answer if there is a fire. A very small chance of that plus the trauma of the event should take your focus from the PC flight and other functions. Besides the insurance should (check your policy) allow you to recreate the system. I will use the cloud for things I simply cannot ignore for 30 days. In that case I can grab some laptop and restore valuable documents and records rapidly. Perhaps one final question - the frequency of your full image backups - are they automatic or manual and how often? Have you ever had to resort to their use? I run a full backup of the OS drive every night. That takes care of all the "daily" stuff. I backup the FSX/P3D drive every Sunday. Both these backups are scheduled. As I never turn the computer off, I run them in the middle of the night. If, however, the computer should be down at the scheduled time Acronis will run the backup the next time the computer is turned on. I retain the last three backups as I once had a recovery fail due to a corrupted backup file. (Acronis has an option to keep however many versions you wish to save and will automatically delete the older ones). And, yes, I've had to restore several times for various reasons. It's easy and quick. I understand your concern about a fire or other natural disaster An off-site backup is always preferable but often just too impractical. In one of my former lives I spend several years as a Certified Disaster Recovery Planner for a major corporation and have seen most every scenario possible. If you look at the probabilities of a fire in the house the situation isn't all that dire. Don't hold me to these numbers as it's been a few years since I dealt with this stuff, but.....You can expect a fire of some sort in your home every 12-15 years. There is only a 25-30% chance that the fire will be big enough to call the fire department. The chance of the fire totally destroying your house is roughly 1-in-1000. So.....the risk isn't all that high. Of course is doesn't help if the fire starts in your computer room (LOL). But since about 60% of home fires are caused by a faulty heating system or cooking in the kitchen, the risk falls even more. If it were me, I wouldn't worry about it. Doug Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Triplane Posted August 8, 2014 Share Posted August 8, 2014 I only run full backups when my hard drive is filled by too many incrementals, just to consolidate and remove anything I've deleted from my system from the backup, like no longer wanted photoreal. I've never had an issue restoring an incremental backup, just right click it and select restore. The risk only comes with a very large number of incremental files Bruce. It looks like you do a full replacement often enough to avoid the issue. I've seen systems, though, where folks have run an incremental every day for months on end. When that happens the risk of a failed recovery goes up exponentially. Doug Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
boleyd Posted August 8, 2014 Author Share Posted August 8, 2014 I would plan on incremental backups each night. But, I do not have more than a few large (Gb+) files. Right now I am "practicing" backing up to an internal disk. I did find that an Acronis backup of my Windows Live mail file resulted in the the most recent emails not being recorded. However, they were in the Windows Live Mail folder when I looked. Since I use the Live Mail client from Microsoft this means that the original emails are always on the ISP (Comcast) so this is more of a curiosity than an issue. Right now the 5gb of free (1Yr) is ok for financial files and documents. Things like Orbx can easily be reloaded from the store. I do need, however, someplace to store periodic images of the C: drive. This has to be an external drive that I can grab as I escape the fire. A question does arise regarding Acronis. They want more money for the ability to restore an image onto a brand new, never used, PC. I can only guess that means no OS and a perfectly clean set of drives. However, if I took a clean PC and installed Windows would I need the extra cost function? In that case a normal Acronis C: image should be sufficient - I hope. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dexthom Posted August 8, 2014 Share Posted August 8, 2014 You might look at Lap Link Disk Image. I use an external driver and have an emergency file on a thumb dirve to boot from and restore the drive from the image. It has saved me a couple of times. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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