backup to dvd rw

Discussion in 'Acronis True Image Product Line' started by scaa, Oct 7, 2008.

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  1. scaa

    scaa Registered Member

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    On my dell inspiron laptop 1525 with vista home premium , I have been unable to backup images to dvd. I either get a prompt saying the device is busy or a poor quality backup media. I am using moserbaer which are working perfectly ok in other systems.Even disabling antivirus/firewall is of no help.
    Kindly help
     
  2. DwnNdrty

    DwnNdrty Registered Member

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    What version and build of True Image?

    In any case, think twice before using dvds as the primary target for your backups. Unless the Image size is such that it requires 3 or less dvds, it is much better to use an external hard drive. Why? When you use dvds, the surprise comes if you ever have to restore from them - numerous disk swaps are required, you have to sit there feeding in the disks over and over and over. In addition it is much slower than if you were restoring from an external drive.
     
  3. shieber

    shieber Registered Member

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    You can get external usb drives pretty cheap right now. iomega is selling a 400GB one that fits in your pocket for $100. Other brands have good values too.
     
  4. oldaussiedog

    oldaussiedog Registered Member

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    DwnNdrty,
    Whilst I use external hard drives for primary image storage and agree that recovery from DVD's (even a single one) is slow, I am interested in the statement about numerous disk swaps being required with multiple DVD backups. I have seen this comment before but not any detailed explanation. I would have expected the last DVD to be loaded first, then each of the DVD's once for the prerecovery validation, then each of the DVD's again for the actual recovery. Is there something else that makes it necessary for there to be more swapping than this?
     
  5. seekforever

    seekforever Registered Member

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    I think the swapping issue stems from how files are scattered around the HD, at least scattered in how TI finds the sectors. It appears the archives are not written as file1, file2, file3, etc but rather as something more related to sectors and they don't necessarily correspond to file contents. This probably gets turned into a bigger issue on the restore because TI does not necessarily put sector ABCD back into location ABCD on the restore.

    Some, but not all, have reported less swapping with a recently defragged HD. It didn't eliminate the problam though.
     
  6. jonyjoe81

    jonyjoe81 Registered Member

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    for backup purposes you need to use write once blank dvd's. Rewritables are not reliable enough for backups. The only blank dvd's that are reliable for backups are sony's 16x+ and verbatims 16x+, those give you 90 percent quality everytime.

    I've never heard of the moserbaer brand, you can always do a disc quality test with nero on a dvd that you have burnt. You need at least 90 percent quality to rely on them. All problems people have backing to DVD's is due to low quality media. Some namebrand blank dvd's will give 35 percent quality or even 0 percent quality, it's something that you need to research so you don't use the wrong dvd's.

    this link tells more about blank dvd's.
    http://forums.afterdawn.com/forum_view.cfm/47
     
  7. shieber

    shieber Registered Member

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    seekforever has given as good an explanation as we've seen so far and consistent with what Acronis has posted, that files are spread across DVDs that contain the backup file so when you restore even a single file, it might require multiple disk disk swaps.

    You only have to attempt one restore with 3 or more disks to decide it ain't the way God intended, even Job would get impatient ;) As noted by others, if you copy all your opticla disk data to a hdisk before a restore, the machine will take care of the "swapping" between the several tib files. It's slow to copy the files from optical disk to a hdisk but it's faster than manually swapping opticla disks.
     
    Last edited: Oct 10, 2008
  8. riredale

    riredale Registered Member

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    I have never tried to burn to DVD-R, but instead backup to disk in DVD-sized chunks and then burn those chunks separately to DVD-R blanks using Nero for archiving. To restore I first read the DVD data into a hard drive, then restore normally from that. A bit more convoluted but I've never had any kind of failure. In any event I almost never do a restore from DVD media because nearly all of my backups and restores are from hard drives. The DVD media are just archive copies kept in a separate location for a genuine emergency.

    I use only Taiyo Yuden blanks, which deliver exceptional results. Over on the Vegas (video editing) board, it seems we've all tried everything at some point or another, and Taiyo Yuden is the gold standard. About $0.30 each in quantity from meritline.com or supermediastore.com.
     
  9. seekforever

    seekforever Registered Member

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    riredale, IMO you've got it right although I prefer +R over -R.
     
  10. shieber

    shieber Registered Member

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    But what's the standard for dual/double layer? TY doesn't make 'em, does it?

     
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