Please Help this noob find a backup strategy thats right

I'm a noob to backing up and wanted to see if someone could guide me to the best backup practice. I'm a home user with 10gigs of MP3's, a ton of photos, and some doc's. I have done 1 full backup to a network drive and had the image verified (Which took hrs!) To backup 30 gigs. So now I have one perfect image in case of disaster. Now not much changes, maybe some new photos or a song or two in a month. How should I backup? Do I do Full backups once a week? Or maybe once a month. Do I keep that perfect image (which has everything, MP3's, photos,docs, OS,) separate? Do you see how confused I am, lol. Please help this noob with a backup solution, I own TI v10. Thanks to all that help!

 

anyone?

 

I'm another new user with substantially the same issue. Here's what I decided to do:

I created a backup location defined for max 30 days backup, max 150 gb backup size, max of 14 generations backup. I run differential backups, not incremental. The idea here is that I want to always be able to go back to any of 14 days looking for stuff. I do have some stuff, like word docs, that change from time to time, but not much.

I'm still experimenting with how it works and haven't gone through a full cycle of 14 days yet, to see how long it takes with verification, etc. It's also almost totally unclear to me what TI will do on day 15, ie, is it smart enough to delete my oldest differential and keep the base, etc.

If it's not clear what I'm doing let me know.

 

Tryton,

What is your HD configuration? Do you have everything on your C partition, or split up on different partitions?

 

Have a look at this thread:

https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=154964

The point is do you really need to assemble them all together in an archive to back them up. If you do differentials or incrementals the entire archive is valdiated if a validation is requested, not just the last bit added. On your network you will be taking "hours".

 

"Hi Tryton

How often you do backup's can only be answered by you. It depends on what changes and how critical it is.

The one thing I am going to burst your bubble on is you don't mention restoring your one image. Until you actually restore it all you can say is "I THINK" I have a perfect image. The only test of any image that really is valid is restoring it.

Pete"

Great Point! I will try to restore the drive after work today.

/catfan, everything is on the C: partition, so I only have the one image. I know peopel usually partition there drive and keep data on one and there os on another. I just figured 1. if I get a virus, it would prob get into the data partition, and 2. if the hd fails it woulden't matter how many partitions I have anyhow . /if my thinking about this is incorrect, please let me know..

 

Tryton,

Yes, if your HD fails, you stand the risk of losing everything. You indicated you are backing up to a network drive, so you are protecting yourself there.

Let’s say, for example, you partitioned your HD into C, D, and E. You keep the O/S and application installations on C. You put all the data files (My Documents, etc) you can (a few programs won’t let you choose) on D. Then you put all your mp3 and photo files on E.

I'm a firm (fanatic perhaps) believer in partitioning your drives. Here are a few reasons:

Fatal software crashes requiring a complete restore of your C partition are much more common than a HD failure. If your data (My Documents, etc) are on D, you can restore C and know your data are right where you left them, even if your most recent image isn't a recent as you might like.

Regarding E, mp3s and photos, I also have thousands of photo files that I back up to an external HD using a file synchronizing program. The first sync takes quite awhile, after that you are just copying changes and the process is very fast compared to a full backup, or even an incremental backup. You have the added benefit (to me, anyway) of the files still being separate entities on the backup HD, rather than in one large .tib file.

Which leads me to this. The easier and faster your backup procedure is, the more likely you are to keep it current and understand what you have. It’s imperative that you Image your C partition, other backup methods, True Image, a sync program, simple copy, are options for your other partitions. If your O/S partition is as simplified as you can make it, the imaging process will be a fraction of the time it is currently taking.

Just my thoughts, bottom line is what works best for you, and that you do indeed backup.

Thanks for asking,
CatFan

 

Thanks Catfan, That sound like a VERY Smart idea, I think I will do it! THanks everyone for all your help