TI 10 - Backup to DVD Time

Discussion in 'Acronis True Image Product Line' started by ChairmanMAO, Nov 26, 2006.

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  1. ChairmanMAO

    ChairmanMAO Registered Member

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    I just bought TrueImage 10 and was about to do a full disk backup of my 75GB SATA drive when I noticed the predicted backup time was 16 hours when writing to DVD.

    I know that writing to DVD is slower than writing to a hard disk, but 16 hours seems unusually long, even with verification. Is that prediction consistent with what others have been experiencing when backing up to DVD?
     
  2. GroverH

    GroverH Registered Member

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    Projected time far exceeds actual. However, caution is in order. Many--maybe most backups direct to DVD are having problems and if completed--do not work.

    Wait until the problem is solved. In the meantime, buy yourself an external drive (on sale) and save your backups there. It will be quicker and more reliable. Don't forget to validate any and all backups!!

    After you have your backups on the external drive, you can then copy to DVD as a simple data copy.

    As a lessor alternative, create/store your backup on the C drive and then do a data copy from C drive to the DVD. After DVD copy, delete the backup files off the the C drive--otherwise the next backup will include them--for a very large backup.
     
  3. foghorne

    foghorne Registered Member

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    IMHO, storing data to optical media (unless it is a secondary copy) is a bad plan. Forgetting the fact that there is little control over the burn process and that ATI does not do well in this area, optical media are very easy to damage and relatively difficult to store and manage when compared to using a second disk drive.

    F.
     
  4. ChairmanMAO

    ChairmanMAO Registered Member

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    Thanks for the quick replies...but I must say, I'm pretty disappointed that I just bought a product based in large part on an advertised capability which I'm now learning just doesn't work reliably!

    That's not a criticism of any of the posters here -- they don't work for Acronis -- but it's pretty obnoxious of a company to advertise a capabililty for a product that doesn't work.

    Sheesh.
     
  5. foghorne

    foghorne Registered Member

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    I suggest you try it and see if it works for you. Note that there have been issues with optical media which are down to ATI. However, even if this problem did not exist and DVDs were written perfectly every time, I would still find them too fragile to trust my data to. All it takes is one scratch or an accidental drop and you have problems. Because the validation of the images is based on a checksum it only takes one bit to be wrong and the image will not restore.

    Not only that, I keep backups of various partitions, produced on different schedules, some done daily going back over a four week cycle. That means that I would need to be present to ensure disks were inserted - rather than just let it happen automatically to a harddisk when I was asleep. It means that I would need to have some means of physically storing and managing lots of disks in a way which allowed me to know which ones I needed to select that day to overwrite. The fact that I would probably be using RW media would mean that the disks would be being rehandled every few days increasing the chances of wear and tear and damage.

    Constrast that with a second disk drive. Backups can be scheduled and I don't need to be there. Using a simple directory structure the logical groupings of backups are simple and painless to setup. Finally, backing up and restoring is generally quicker too.

    So, yes Acronis have let some people down with their optical media functionality, but my perception is that it is improving all the time, and you will generally find that it either works for you or it doesn't. However in my own view, this is not the significant part of the problem. The problem is that relying on only optical media for important data tends to be risky.

    F.
     
  6. Long View

    Long View Registered Member

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    You can use DVD with Acronis very effectively - just don't burn direct - it will never be a good idea no matter how quickly it can be done.
    Make sure you have a decent burner and most importantly only use quality dvd ( Taiyo Yuden or if not available Verbatim). Make a full image to another partition or second drive. Then burn the image to DVD for long term archival
     
  7. bigfoot96

    bigfoot96 Registered Member

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    DVD backups seems to work OK for me on write once DVDs but they will only work on RW disks if they have never been written to before.I cannot full erase them and use them for backups again.Although I do not see it in the user manual, in the faqs section on the web site they say you can only use the built in disk writing with unformatted disks.I took a long time figuring that out because I was formatting them with Sonic burner in UDF (DLA) mode but when I tried restoring them the files were invisible to Acronis.Acronis uses drag and drop UDF format that some say is less reliable than other writing methods.When I restore from DVD I never restore the master boot record because this generates an error message.Maybe there is a technical reason for this but it is not explained in the manual.If you bought True Image online and are unsatisfied with it I think you can get your money back.I bought Norton Internet Security 2007 at Staples and took advantage of Symantec's 60 day return policy. :shifty: (At fastest burn speed and default compression I would estimate it takes half an hour to backup 10Gs.)
     
  8. GroverH

    GroverH Registered Member

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    foghorne,
    Your post #5 nicely stated.
     
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