Alternative to True Image (nervous nellie)

Defragging will have the greatest impact on the time it takes to make a fast/scheduled-incremental. It won't have much of an effect on the time it takes to create a manual incremental. For both scheduled and manual incrementals, defragging will dramatically increase the size of the incremental.

If you're using scheduled jobs, with scheduled incrementals, and you do a defrag, it's best to delete the backup jobs on the volumes you're going to defrag and then recreate the backup jobs after defragging them. Or at least disable the backup job and then re-enable it after the defrag and use the Execute Now feature to instruct the job to take a new base image immediately.

 

OK, i'm not a customer, at least not yet , but i already have a feature request:
Image from within GNU/Linux. Even if only a full manual backup.

I'm a GNU convert, but nothing against proprietary software of course. Just a GNU fan, even before using it as the main OS/software!
I still use Windows, but i see myself dumping Windows for good in the near future.

SP would allow me to switch to Windows again if i needed, but not the option to backup from within GNU/Linux. Maybe i'll use the recovery CD and just that, even in Windows, but you should have this anyway for others.

Cheers grnxnm!

 

Thanks for the suggestion! In fact Linux is in our sights. As I mentioned, we currently support backing up Linux partitions through the following mechanism: The user boots the ShadowProtect Recovery Environment CD and backs up the desired partitions/volumes (regardless of whether they are Linux or Windows). We've already done a lot of the the work necessary to backup Linux within a live booted Linux OS, but there is still work to be done, and we don't yet have the market incentive to prioritize this. When the demand/need is there, we'll do it. The majority of our underlying imaging tools are written to be completely platform independent, so they easily port to Linux.

I enjoy using GNU tools as well. Fortunately it's not necessary to switch to Linux to enjoy the benefits of the GNU tools. They've been ported to a variety of operating systems, including Windows, so you can use all of the GNU tools within Windows itself. Just go to Cygwin's site.

In all fairness, if you are interested in backing up Linux volumes then True Image is likely the best choice at this point in time. While ShadowProtect supports this from the bootable CD ShadowProtect Recovery Environment, it does not yet allow you to exclude free space when backing up ext2/ext3/reiser volumes. I suspect (although I don't know for sure) that True Image likely allows you to exclude free space when backing up Linux volumes. Does anyone know for sure?

 

Good to hear!

I'll surely look into that. But i am determined to quit Windows all together. Too much...

Hummm... Thanks for the tip. I'm going to check SP, TI and IFL/IFD/IFW (or even BING) at least, and some freeware/ free software too. Most likely i'll end up using 2, one free, and one comercial.

But it's not a must, imaging from inside, at least for me, at home. Imaging will save my configurations on the OS, programs, etc, from a drive failure, or even to just roll back for some reason. For a regular backup, it's more important to save files and folders, than the whole drive. Again, this is a home scenario.
It's much better to be able to image inside the OS, but... not the essential part IMO.

 

Good to read even before trying something. From the IFL manual:

Basically, what i gather from this, is that IFL won't image from within either... So it has no advantage??
Peter, you used this, any comment? TIA

 

Yeah, that sounds like an accurate assessment. To support imaging of live/hot (mounted and active) Linux volumes from within Linux itself, you would need to have a snapshot device driver installed as part of your Linux kernel.

It looks like IFL doesn't have such a driver, which explains why they require you to image from an alternate boot enviornment if you wish to capture good images.

StorageCraft doesn't yet have such a driver, however a lot of the code for our Windows snapshot driver is portable code and could be used in the creation of a Linux snapshot driver. It's just a matter of priorities. Right now Linux isn't yet a priority for us. We design and implement things with Linux (and other platforms) in mind, in case we need to use our tools on other platforms in the future. This helps to minimize the required effort to provide solutions on other platforms.

 

Image for Linux is very similar to Image for DOS. Both are ran outside of Windows in their own environment. Only Image for Windows (used with Phylock) will create images from within Windows. (Restores are still outside of Windows for IFW.)

 

I have now done a full restore with Shadow Protect. I had two incremental files. I chose the latest. I guess one could call these incremental files "snapshots" right? So I could delete the first if I want because the second incremental includes all the changes done in the first. Which is great. My fear of incremental backup starts to wear off
I can see the advantage with them now.

First I got a bit nervous when I saw the transfer rate drop from 9.xMB/s to 2.88MB/s and from 20 minutes restore time to 1 hour and 8 minutes. I dont know what happened there, was it when SP started to copy the incremental file?

Anyway that didnt last long, the transfer rate went up to over 16MB/s after that, the overall restore time was 21 minutes for 24GB, which is awesome imo.

So this sw is a keeper for me. Looking forward for version 3

 

If the incremental image files you created were made by a scheduled backup job, then you should not delete intermediate incremental files. Each new incremental image file will be dependent upon the previous incremental image file. This means that if you delete the previous incremental image file, you have broken the chain of files necessary to recreate that, and any subsequent, points in time.

If you are using the Manual incremental feature, then you noticed that you are allowed to specify the image file upon which your new image file is dependent. So, in this case, just make sure you don't delete any of the dependencies.

 

Ok, thanks for clarifying that.

 

Ok got that: ie a fully automated system back-up.
Can an incremental be added manually into that sequence at any time?

Ok the tinfoil hat got in the way a bit here. Could that be translated into kindy speak please.
Is that multiple individual back-ups?

 

Longboard: it means that when you make a manual-incremental image, you specify the image you want to increment . If you want the last incremental before this, the one before that, the last full image, the one before, etc. Whatever you want, i guess, only i think you have to turn off the scheduler.

 

Hi Peter,

So how many 'full' images can you cram on to your storage device? I'm currently using TI10 & can get many weeks of increments on my USB drive. Do you not, need increments, as you don't care, or are old images/increments not useful to you? Perhaps if i understand your preference for full images as opposed to increments, I may adapt my BU strategy.

Thanks & Take Care
Rico

PS Waiting for ShadowProtect v3, to dump TI10

 

Good point Pete. I think I managed to further muddy the waters.

When using ShadowProtect, it's best if you don't mix job types for a particular volume. Use either the "Backup Now" or the "Schedule Backup" job type on any particular volume, but *not* both. Your backups will still be good if you mix manual jobs (backup now) and a scheduled job for a particular volume, but it can cause a lot of confusion from the user's perspective, figuring out which image is which. However, with the current release of ShadowProtect, do not create more than one scheduled job for any particular volume. You'll run into problems if you do this. Version 3 will prevent users from doing this.

If you have already created a scheduled backup job, and you wish to immediately take a new base image of the volume(s) that are being backed up by that job, then just select the existing scheduled job in the job list and in the toolbar above the job list click on the down arrow by the "Execute" button on the toolbar, and select "Full". This will execute a new full image immediately. You can also tell the scheduled job to take a new incremental immediately instead of waiting for the job's schedule to trigger the next incremental.

The terms "incremental" and "differential" are a bit confusing, and are loosely used as well (adding to the confusion). I prefer to think of an incremental as an image containing the changes that occurred since some previous point in time. I like to think of a differential as an incremental which was generated using some type of "diff" technique (comparing data at a previous point-in-time with the current point-in-time in order to generate a new incremental (a differential) for the current point-in-time which is dependent upon the specified previous point-in-time).

If you have some existing image files of a particular volume, you can always create a new differential image for the current point-in-time by comparing the data in those existing images with the data in a current snapshot of the volume, and then generate the new differential using the differences (changes since the specified point-in-time). This is how ShadowProtect works when you have existing image files, and you run the "Backup Now" wizard (manual, non-scheduled, backup) and select Differential - it will ask you which volume to backup and which image file will be the point-in-time upon which the new differential will be dependent.

Because the generation of a differential requires a comparison of all volume data against a previous point-in-time, generating a differential image file can take significant time. ShadowProtect's scheduled backup jobs use stcvsm.sys's built in diff tracking mechanism (internall we call this VDIFF - it's a very fast all-in-memory bitmap of sectors which have changed since a previous snapshot) to quickly generate (often within seconds) incremental images. As this bitmap is in memory, it can be lost if the server crashes, so in this case the scheduled backup job, when it's signalled to take the next backup, will take a base image, or if the user specified to use 'crash-proof incrementals' in the job's advanced options then the job would generate another incremental image but would use the diff technique (much slower than vdiff) to make the next incremental, after which subsequent incrementals would again be vdiff/fast incrementals.

Although diff-generated incrementals are slow (as slow as a full/base image), they do have the advantage that each time the new incremental is made, all of the dependent files (the base and previous incrementals) upon which the new diff-generated incremental depends are tested for validity, using CRC-32. So if you successfully make your new differential image file then you can be sure that all of the files necessary to restore that point in time are good.

I should have been more specific in my previous post, and said "manual differential" rather than "manual incremental." Sorry about that.

 

Hello,
I'm wondering if anyone has any opinions on the reliability of ShadowProtect Desktop scheduling functions. I'm currently trialing True Image 10 Home on 2 separate systems and the scheduling feature seems to be next to useless based on my experience and reading posts on the Acronis forum.
I've requested and received the ShadowProtect download for the full evaluation version which I intend to trial once my True Image trial ends. Scheduling reliability will be a key issue for me.
Thanks in advance for any feedback.
Bill

 

You seem to be asking about two things. Scheduling reliability, and scheduling features. As far as reliability goes, I can tell you that there are currently zero outstanding bugs for the job scheduler in ShadowProtect. It takes the backups exactly according to the schedule you specify. As to scheduling features, well, this is a somewhat subjective matter, and you really need to just compare the ShadowProtect scheduler with the schedulers in other backup products to see if it is flexible enough to meet your needs.

 

Thanks for the response. Reliability is the most important for me, ie; will the program do what it says it will do when it says. Based on reading the manual, the features are all there (other than the ability to schedule the backup to run prior to computer shutdown, which would be my preferred method). The retention policy implementation is what seems to be causing issues for ATI but if you say ShadowProtect has no such issues, that is great news.
I look forward to trialing it, I may not wait for my ATI trial to expire.
Thanks again,
Bill

 

We're pretty happy with the reliability of the scheduled ShadowProtect backup jobs. We use ShadowProtect scheduled backup jobs to backup *all* of our in-house production servers. Using our own software is the best way to make sure that it's solid. It's also likely comforting to our users to know that we trust our own critical data (email servers, database servers, source code repository servers, etc) with ShadowProtect.

The only time you could end up with a problem with the retention policy is if you have an existing backup job, making backups, and simultaneously create a manual ("Backup Now") backup job, and have the manual backup job make backups of the same volume being backed up by the scheduled backup job, and you use the default name pattern for the manual backup job. So, for instance, if the scheduled backup job has made five base images, and its retention policy is to only keep the last three bases and their incrementals, then before you create the manual backup you'd have these files:

C_VOL_b003.spf
C_VOL_b004.spf
C_VOL_b005.spf

Bases 1 and 2 would have been automatically deleted for you based on your specified retention policy.

If you then create a manual backup job for C: and use the default patter, C_VOL, for the target filename, it would use the first unused name, in which case it would make a file named C_VOL_B001.spf. This file might then be deleted by the retention policy of the scheduled job. So if you do this, you need to make sure that you give it some filename pattern different than "C_VOL".

 

As far as flexibility goes, ShadowProtect has two primary schedule flavors. One (the "weekly" schedule) that enables you to take very frequent backups (multiple backups per day) and one (the "monthly") that's geared towards less frequent (daily) backups. Weekly schedules take only a few base/full images each week. Monthly schedules take only a few base/full images each month. See the attached images for an idea as to how you can specify schedules with these two (Weekly and Monthly) backup schedule types. Also attached is the retention policy. It's fairly simple, so easy to understand.

 

Hi, can anybody tell me if SP has these features like ATI.

1- Direct image writing to DVDs to make a bootable recovery DVD
2- One click restore

Thanks