Acronis Backup and Recover File testing?

[Sam Ceccola]

My questions deal with my previous thread on Acronis as a follow up to some of your comments.

In the past thread, we talked about a good recovery plan and the need to test those recovery files. My questions deal with the "Testing of the Backup and Recovery" files.

I presume most of you because of your professions have more than one PC. These can be rendered as primary, main, test box, etc. My point is there are at least 2 boxes.

I do not have that luxury. One box to be used as a chief-cook, bottle-washer, and take it all type of machine.

Let's assume on June 1st I created a Backup of my "C" drive. After that backup is complete, I can validate the file is not corrupt by running "Check Achieve" but how do I verify the contents of the backup files are good?
If I then ran the recovery and there were problems with the "Backup file CD" I'm back to square one where my system is partially corrupt.

Are their strategies on how to test not only the Rescue Disk but the actual files to associated with Backup and Recovery/

Thanks,
Sam

[PeteF]

Let's assume on June 1st I created a Backup of my "C" drive. After that backup is complete, I can validate the file is not corrupt by running "Check Achieve" but how do I verify the contents of the backup files are good?


Sam, from what I've gathered, you already have multiple hard drives.
Sounds like you are backing up to an external drive.

To verify your backup system you could remove the drive C: while
it's still working perfectly and use a spare drive to try restoring to
using Acronis.

---pete---

[Sam Ceccola]

To verify your backup system you could remove the drive C: while
it's still working perfectly and use a spare drive to try restoring

Does this go back to your suggestion about using "Slide Trays" ? I would think it would.

I know throwing "Slide Trays" into the mix is "another added Possible problem area" -- extra hardware that's not needed. Other than the "extra hardware" and minimum cost for the trays and track, can you or anyone outway the advantages of having them?

I am starting to get confused: From what I am now gathering, In your opinion, I should have 2 slide trays. One for the Backup and Recovery files. This is what we talked about yesterday--being able to physically switch drives for backups of the backup files. The 2nd slide try, would be for the OS. Again the reason--to remove a running OS and test the "Recovery" OS.

Am I losing it again??

[kelly]

To give you some, not total, confidence that your backup is valid try mounting (or pluggin in) your backup image. As was mentioned earlier, this generates a virtual drive on your machine. Once the image is mounted, spot check a few files by dragging them to a test folder on your machine and try opening them.
-td

[PeteF]

From what I am now gathering, In your opinion, I should have 2 slide trays. One for the Backup and Recovery files. This is what we talked about yesterday--being able to physically switch drives for backups of the backup files. The 2nd slide try, would be for the OS. Again the reason--to remove a running OS and test the "Recovery" OS.


Ok from what we talked about yesterday, I said to order 2 drive trays
but that was just to acommodate the 2nd HD in your system to be able
to alternate drives to get one offsite. In this case you'd be using one
tray mounted in the computer and 2 of the carrirers that house the
HDs. This all had to do with BACKING UP.

Today, we are talking about VERIFYING that your backup system actually
works and that means actually restoring to a hard drive. The danger in
this process is that if it fails when performed on your fully functional
drive C:, you end up blowing away your perfectly good OS, so the idea
is to temporarily remove the original drive C: and substitute a spare
drive and try to restore to that. After you've tested & verified your
system can be restored, you can have good confidence in your backup
system and reinstall the original drive C:. This is like a one time test
so you would not to need to use a drive tray for drive C:.

I use the drive trays when I want to get my backups off-site for
safe keeping. I never had a problem with their use and I use the cheap
plastic ones that sell for $15 to $30. I swap drives only a few times
per year. The only disadvantage I can see is that the HD probably runs
a bit hotter in the tray configuration even though the tray has it's own
fan. I use Western Digital drives that run cooler anyway so maybe that's
why I never had one fail in a tray.

---pete---

[mylanta]

Sam
Again if you want to know if it works restore it right after you made it. And not a bad thought to keep a hard drive out of the loop to do so. However you could just restore it from whence it came and if it doesn't well that is the reason to have weekly image files, and then monthly. What I do is make one a week. Then when a month goes by, delete all but the first or last, which then has their counterparts in earlier months going back about 6 months. If the one fails to restore go back a week...and if you have file and data backup also going to the second drive, then you can get pretty close to where you left off. I also occasionally make an image file to an external as well, just in case drive 2 were to fail. But the odds of drive 2 failing as so slight because it never boots, and booting is what kills a drive.
And multiple drives or partiotions for different things, well as I have said, leaves me out in the cold water of "muddiness".

[dbarrow]

Weekly plus incrementals continuously overwrite and update the set.
The "backup job" has the same title and the incrementals created as 2,3,4,.tib.
If your weekly runs Sunday, that is backup(name.tib) and then the incrmentals add backup(name)2.tib for Mon, backup(name)3.tib for Tues, etc.
Process starts over again on Sun. and progresses overwriting the previous weeks.
No bothering to delete.

For fast testing, create/use a small partition.
As I have a 3g P: for the page file, it is a perfect test that runs in 5 minutes. Having a Page File partition is good anyway (explained before).
Testing from USB external to internal HD restore is a must.
After all, that is what you will be restoring to.

Mounting a volume from the Windows GUI is one way to verify. If you can open it, it should be good.
This is where I have seen a bad incremental show up as it will mount a previous day or the one prior to the bad one in the set. If you try to mount one that has a corrupted file, it tells you.

But... this is again a false sense of security!
Daughter's machine, using a Raid 0 array, was doing regular backups and incrementals as scheduled just fine.
I could mount them and restore individual files from them from the Windows GUI.
The little slip I made (slaps self upside head) was not testing a restore from the Rescue boot cd.

The problem was a blown HAL reg file that crashed out on a shutdown/reboot cycle.
It would have been a 2 minute job to replace it from the Repair Console which is what I was going to do but I didnt have the XP cd with me.
Being pressed for time, I fired it up with the Acronis Rescue boot cd.
It correctly identified and found the backup I had purposely run before shutting down the machine (done remotely with Remote Desktop).
It ran the restore without a hiccup and told me it was successful.

Yep! It was quite successful in writing the restore to 1 of the 2 drives on the array thus blowing away both of them at once. Array gone and the backup with it!
At that time, the machine did not have an external backup.
I was totally screwed!

I did have a six month old NTbackup at home.
The machine at that time was not connected to my network (from Phila) and was not doing external backups.
NTbackups had not been running as scheduled due to the problem with the CMOS real time clock which was crapped on the mobo (which lead to a 3 month RMA to get a new board).

Once I got it home, I was able to rebuild from the older set I had on my network machine.

I have since given up on Raid as almost all backup programs have difficulty with Raid, Acronis included.
I don't see the speed difference that benchmarks indicate are there and can live just as well without it.

The machine, and daughter, are now living with me.
I had bought an external USB just prior to that and one of the first things I did with it (besides chucking the frustrating and worthless backup software that came with it) was test it out using the Rescue Boot cd.
That works.
It is now also doing backups to the network machine as well along with the internal backups to the other drive.

The whole backup system will soon get a total revamping as son is building his new box and his current one will get demoted to the network machine to replace the oldest one.
That one will have added capacity and be expanded for even more storage.

As daughter has some large "work" files that get considerable daily change, I am still exploring the "real time" backup options for those files along with the daily incrementals.
I had been trying out Smartbackup for a remote FTP solution before the move. It worked.
The Acronis Workstation version has some similar capabilities and I look forward to testing that as well preferring to stick to Acronis.
The objective is "real time" file change backups to the network machine, totally automated of course.

If anything, the issues made me even more paranoid about my backup plan and yes, I still have automated NTbackups churning out regularly. NTbackup has saved the bacon more than once and while not an ideal solution, it certainly has proved its worth as a backup to the backup!

Vista is promising a much more enhanced backup solution.
I have not seen any good details written about it yet but hints are they will actually include a real working backup solution without the flaws and drawbacks of NTbackup.
That remains to be seen and is at least a year away (as I don't plan on moving to Vista until the bugs are worked out).

When calculating the time, labor, and misery factor of rebuilding a machine from scratch, with all those hours of labor getting it the way you wanted it and loss of all the stuff you accumulated over time, there is no good reason to be stingy about your backup plan. Buy whatever capacity you need for storage and keep multiple versions in multiple places.
If you need an external ... buy one!
If you need more internal ... add another drive!
If you need additional backup software or a more expanded version ... buy it!
Whatever it takes!
It is certainly worth your time and money the day you are faced with a dead machine and all your work flushed right down the drain!

It is often difficult getting people to realize this until the day they wear those shoes!