"two step" dvd backups

I am still evaluating the trial version of Acronis True Image Home 9.0

So far I think I have come to grips with backing up to external USB drives.

With DVDs, I gather from searching this forum there can be some problems.

With optical disks, I have always tried to avoid trouble by keeping things simple:
(1) Never use RW
(2) Never use multi-session
(3) Never use InCD
(4) Never go above half drive speed
(5) Never touch the machine while disk is being written.

Would it be sensible to add to this
(6) Never try to burn directly from ATI
(Edit - typo fixed)

I am quite happy to do my backups (broken into "1492" chunks) to a hard disk and then burn to DVD if I wish to archive a particular backup.

Questions:
For ATI to be able to restore directly from these DVDs,
(1) Is it critical which chunks go together on each disk?
(2) Do the DVD volume labels have to be set to anything special?


Other questions:
(3) If I wish to validate a segmented backup, do I have to do each segment (MyBackup1.tib, MyBackup2.tib...) separately or if I just specify the first segment, will ATI get the idea and validate the whole series?

(4) If I wish to do a files and folders backup, when I am specifying which files and folders to use by checking the appropriate boxes, is there any way to see a running tally of how much data I have selected?


(5) When doing a restore to a new location, is there any way of creating the new target location on the fly or does it have to be created before hand?

Edit...
question added

(6) When burning my segmented backup to dvd (I should perhaps mention that I use Nero OEM 6.6.1.4) am I likely to run into problems with overlength path/file names?

 

I think your rules are good ones and are the same I follow although I don't always knock the speed down to half. I also never try to burn from TI. I like to have control of the burn parameters and I always use Nero's "Verify disk after creating" or whatever it is called. A speck of dirt on a DVD when burning can mean disaster for a backup. Note that every bit has to be faithfully reproduced for a good backup - not like a music CD/DVD.

On a personal note, for which I'll likely get criticized, I don't know why people fret over creating a quality backup for disaster recovery and then want to burn it directly onto a RW DVD - doesn't make sense to me. I'm not saying it doesn't work but it sure isn't a confidence builder, IMO.

I find working with DVDs to be very slow. It often is quicker to copy the DVD contents to a HD and verify or restore the backup from the HD. I keep my backups on a second HD in my PC and I burn a backup to DVD "every now and then" to have in case the whole PC catches fire or some disaster in that category. If you have rapidly changing personally created data files of importance you may want to do better than that.


1. TI will request the volumes it requires. Note that TI considers each .tib file a volume; the DVD with more than one .tib file is not a volume. Somebody posted that they put the last .tib file on the first DVD when burning which seems like a good idea although I haven't tried it. The reasoning is that TI wants the last volume first because it contains data about the backup structure it needs to assemble the restore.

2. No

3. Just pick one of the files and TI knows it is part of an archive and will verify the entire archive.

4. I don't use Files and Folders so I don't know
5. Same as 4.

6.I use Nero OEM and I haven't had a problem. The only path and filename Nero will know about is the one to the location of your .tib files; it has no knowledge of anything inside your backup.

 

Hello Hiawatha,

Thank you for choosing Acronis Disk Backup Software.

Please be aware that it does not matter which image archive volumes reside on the DVD, in case you restore the image file from there the program will ask you what volume it needs and you will need just to insert the appropriate DVD.

Actually, you should not change the volume labels manually. Acronis True Image will do this automatically.

When you validate image archive split into several parts then you should start the validation from the last created volume and the process will ask you to insert previous volumes consequently. You will not be able to check each volume separately.

I'm afraid that it is not possible to see what size of data you have selected during the file/folder backing up. We will certainly consider this enhancement and probably it will be implemented ion future versions/builds of Acronis True Image.

I'm afraid that you are unable to create new folders in the dialog, when you are restoring an image to a new location. So you should create such folders before hand. We have also forwarded the suggestion to implement such feature to our Development Team.

Please be aware that Acronis has not received any complaints on this matter yet, so we do not expect any problems with it. However if you experience any similar issues then please feel free to contact us by submitting a request for technical support and we will certainly do our best in order to help you.

Thank you.
--
Kirill Omelchenko

 

Are we talking about the same thing?

How does TI automatically handle volume labels in the 2-step burning method - or are you referrng to filenames?

Thanks

 

Thanks seekforever and Kirill for your responses.

Just to clarify a few of things

Re (2), Volume Labels. You indicate that ATI will set volume labels automatically, but if I am burning the DVDs using Nero as partof the "two step" approach, I would expect them all to finish up with a rather uninformative label like "My Disk". Does this matter?


Re (3) - Validtion of multi segment backups. If the segments are on a hard disk, does the rule of having to select the last tib file still apply? Will ATI then step down througth all the segments without further operator action?


Re (6) Long path names. The reason for my question was that I have a vague feeling that the ISO spec (my understanding of which is rather hazy) imposes some limit on the path length that can occur with a folder structure.
Since I assume the tib files would always be in the root directory of the DVD I guess this is really a non-issue except to say that maybe it is another benefit of using ATI rather than attempting simply to copy deep folder tree directly to a DVD.

 

Definitely do not leave the volume name as the default My Disk. Use something short and meaningful to you. Perhaps incorporate the date in the name and something to indicate the order in the sequence if there is more than one dvd.

 

I guess it's just another "way of working" thing. I sometimes change the DVD label to something meaningful before I burn it but my real identifier is writing on the surface of the DVD. FileName, date, disk x of y, "verified", etc. I want to know what I have before I insert the disk. Being from the old-school I limit my labels to 11 characters; I think that is still a restriction.

 

Hi seekforever,

Could be that there is some confusion here () because True Image calls each separate .tib file a "volume". Hence if the archive is split into, say, 7 chunks then TI will expect to find 7 sequencially numbered "volumes" corresponding to the order that the .tib files were created in.

Regards