Hi guys,
What do you think would be a good strategy for backing up my PC.
The PC has 2 HD labeled "C" and "E"
The "C" drive is the main drive with 300Gb capacity --- I rarely go beyond 100Gb --- It's at 86Gb right now.
The "E" drive is a backup drive with 80Gb capacity.
I also have an external backup HD labeled "H" with 500Gb capacity.
Right now I use Acronis and I have an image of the entire "C" drive onto the "H" drive and I have a task that is schedule everyday at 10pm to make a Incremental backup.
These incremental backup really adds up quick and I think it would take quite a long time to restore each and everyone in case of a "C" drive problem.
How would you deal with this to be most efficient?
Thanks!
BTW -- I use macrium (free edition) and I think this is a good alternative for folks that clone
The gold standard for backups:
- Reasonable time to backup
- Two or more paths to recovery
And the reasons for backups:
- hardware failure
- accidental deletion/modification
The reason you want two or more paths to recovery is because (so says Murphy), there's always a chance that your backup is bad. Think about it... while you make backups constantly, you typically don't actually TEST the recovery process until you need to recover. Any given backup might be bad, so you'd like a couple of ways to get back to where you left off. One typical way of doing this is to take full backups and in between incremental backups. In this manner, you can recover to your latest full-backup (and apply incrementals) or to the 2nd oldest full-backup (and apply more incrementals).
One of the major reason for incremental backups is because of the time it takes to do full system backups. If you can do full backups in a reasonable period of time (where the backup doesn't hurt your performance when you need it), there's no reason not to perform full-backups (assuming you have space)
I'm assuming you use windows... which has relatively decent system recovery options (and a deleted items folder), and office also includes versioning. You might only be looking at drive failure (and may not worry as much for accidental deletion/modification). In this case, drive mirroring is reasonably cost-effective.
In my setup, I do the following:
a. Perform a full and an incremental backup once per week (incremental based on the previous week's full backup). This gives me two ways to recover to "last week's" configuration --> either the 2 week old full + current incremental, or the 1 week old full. I only backup my data once per week because most of my work is server-based, and my automation PC files just don't change that frequently (logs, etc). My backups each take < 1 hr, so I have no real concern with doing more. --> note: I actually tested the recovery approach
b. I decided against mirroring because I'm a bit of a power-consumption snob (and I don't like the extra power required to spin-up the 2nd drive).
c. I utilize off-site storage for my backups (in my case... I burn a few DVDs once every month or so and put them in my safety deposit box)
I should also point out that I separate my C and D drives (C is OS/apps, D is data) so that I can easily distinguish between data and O/S + applications. I only off-site my data (I figure if my house burned down, having an image of the OS isn't going to do me a lot of good, given that I'd need to purchase a new computer anyway)
Michael
