issues restoring from optical media?

[ginahoy]

Has anyone had any issues restoring from backup images archived on a CD ROM? Seems like I read something about this, and I'm at the point that I need to move some of my TIB files to another medium.

[DwnNdrty]

Restoring from optical media will take "a year and a day" if the backup is on 4 or more discs.

[ginahoy]

Originally Posted by DwnNdrty

Restoring from optical media will take "a year and a day" if the backup is on 4 or more discs.

Thanks for the response. I hadn't even considered the capacity issue -- I'm a novice at DVD technology. I haven't bought my first burner yet.

My image files typically total 6 or 7 GB (two files). I'm not too concerned about the restore time. I can't imagine I'd ever need to restore an entire image once I've moved it to optical. The only reason I keep old tib files is in case I need to recover an individual file.

I'm more concerned about the time and hassle involved in copying image files to DVD. I just read that dual layer disks can hold 8GB, but take much longer to write to. So to get my image on one disk, it sounds like I'd be better off using two sides, or even two separate disks? Comments?

Question: When an image is spread over two disks (or two sides), I imagine you have to always start with the first disk when recovering a single file, even if it's located on side 2?

David

[jonyjoe81]

First you need to get the best optical media possible. All dvd media is different especially the dual layer, with some being extremely high quality and others very low quality. Low quality media should never be use for backups. Low quality media will trick you by giving you a good burn, but 3 months later the dvd is unreadable.

Below link has good information on what media to use.
http://forums.afterdawn.com/forum_view.cfm/47

When recovering from optical media, if it's on 2 disks, from other people expierences, you will be swapping dvd's in and out. It won't be insert disk1 then disk2 simplicity.

I only backup to dvd, if my c: partition fit's on one dvd. And the times I did it, it work excellent when I use top quality media.

[Acronis Support]

Hello all,

Thank you for choosing Acronis Enterprise Software.

ginahoy, we would not recommend you to use DVD media for large backups. Since it will increase restore time and furthermore, you will be asked to insert one DVD several times (if your backup has more than one). It happens because our software recovers image file by file, and one file can be placed on several DVD's.

The best solution is to get external USB hard drive (500 GB's are enough for most cases) and use it for backup storage.

Detailed information about Acronis True Image Home product can be found in User's Guide.

Thank you.
--
Alexander Nikolsky