Comments on: Beyond Backup: Creating an image of your hard drive

By: Sal Avalos

Sal Avalos — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 21:04:13 +0000

Great post, I’m just recovering from a system crash and it’s taken me a week to get back up and running. At the same time I decided to upgrade my old machine, added complexity but very doable if you have the patience.
Now I’m searching for effective ways to back-up my machines.

Thanks for sharing your experience and advice

By: Steve Eyton

Steve Eyton — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 16:05:44 +0000

Thanks for letting me chime in, Kathy! I certainly understand the balancing act of a solution versus cost. Some solutions sound expensive but are really affordable. Some really are expensive!

By: Kathy

Kathy — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 14:50:58 +0000

Thank very much for your comment, Steve. Please feel free to chime in any time. Your solution is one with which I am not familiar…I am not one of the technical people here at SOS Software…but it certainly sounds like an outstanding one. One challenge a small organization always has is balancing the cost of a solution with the cost of recovering from a disaster. That is just one reason to discuss multiple options. Thans for offering yours!

By: Steve Eyton

Steve Eyton — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 03:16:47 +0000

I found your comment from following Dan Harrington on LinkedIn. I hope you don’t mind me chiming in?
These two are great examples of keeping a backup of a desktop. We use Acronis for desktops and have had great success. Keeping multiple copies of backups is always best. One may fail and it will fail when you need it most. Most people don’t even worry about backups until they’ve already had a disaster. If you don’t plan for a disaster and you have one it is too late. If the hard drive crashed it may be possible to retrieve the data but it is usually expensive and certainly not guaranteed.

I thought I’d share what we use for those organizations that use a server. Acronis has a backup for a server but it is not our preferred solution. We use a Backup Disaster Recovery (BDR) server that connects directly to a server. The BDR takes an image of the server (bare metal, which includes the entire server setup, policies, security and users/passwords etc.). After the initial bare metal backup, the BDR can be set up to take incremental backups as often as every 15 minutes forever. The BDR also can be set up to securely (256 AES military encryption) send the backups offsite over the internet to two collocations, one on the East Coast and the other on the West Coast. If the server fails and it’s going to be a while before it is repaired (waiting for part or whatever), then the BDR can be set up as a virtual server within as little as an hour. This allows the office to run while the “real” server is down. Another cool benefit is while the BDR is running the office in virtual server mode, the BDR still takes backups as before and sends them offsite over the internet. If you had a fire or someone breaks in and steals your IT equipment, your backups are still intact offsite. The backups can be sent to you via Fed Ex and restored to a new server even with dissimilar hardware. This can be accomplished within 24 hours.

I hope this is useful information.

By: Kathy

Kathy — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 15:28:03 +0000

Thank you for your detailed process, Tom! It should certainly help someone who wants to know just what steps to follow to be protected. One of our programmers uses Acronis and is very pleased with it.

By: Thomas Pollack

Thomas Pollack — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 15:02:49 +0000

I am an obsessive believer in multiple backups in multiple formats. As you discovered, an actual restore of a backup when the operating system itself is defunct is a particularly nasty nightmare — you think you are covered only to discover that first you have to reinstall the operating system. I use Acronis Echo Workstation (the business version of True Image)to avoid exactly this kind of problem. Following is what I do:

First, when I set up a new computer and I have everything working exactly how I want it to work — all updates in installed, etc., I create a new partition on the hard drive — and name it “Data”. There are many utilities that can partition the hard drive, I use Partition Magic — which I now think is owned by Norton.

After partitioning the hard drive, the computer will look as if it has two hard drives — one is already labeled “Data”; the other I name “WinXP”. Next, I move the “My Documents” folder to the “Data” partition (use Google to find out how to move the “My Documents” directory). I also make sure that all data files are on the “Data” directory (e.g. SOS Data, Quick Books, etc)

Now I use Acronis Echo Workstation to make an image of the “WinXP” partition onto an external hard drive. For added safety Acronis will create the image in a series of “parts” — each part will be the size of a DVD. You can then copy the parts onto separate DVDs.

There are a variety of strategies for maintaining backups of the Data partition. I use Mozy online backup. I also use an old utility program made by Iomega called QuikSync. When I first setup QuikSync, I tell it to copy every file on “My Documents”, everything on my “Desktop” (C Drive>Document and Settings> “your username”> Desktop), and any other data folders. Once setup, QuikSync will copy, on the fly, every addition or change to My Documents, Desktop, etc, to the my external hard drive. It will also keep copies of previous versions. It will maintain any number of revisions that you tell it to. If some file changes are going to be very big (e.g. SOS Data), you can set up QuikSync to copy once a day rather than on the fly.

Now if when disaster strikes, I can reinstall the image of the operating system. It takes no more than 30 minutes. If the Data drive was unaffected by the operating system failure, there is nothing more to do other than going on line to get all necessary program updates. If the Data partition too, the backups are on the external hard drive.

Acronis also has a nifty feature called Universal Restore. This will allow you to install the image on an entirely different computer. This is great if you are replacing a computer. It only makes sense the original image was pristine — otherwise you will be bringing old problems to your new computer.

Finally, Acronis allows incremental image backups to keep the operating system up to date. I actually don’t use this because I want to make sure that if I have to reinstall the image it is clean and new. This means I will have to get updates after the reinstall. It also means you may have to reinstall programs that were installed after the original image. Typically, I will make a new image if I make a major change.