What do you think of this backup strategy?

I am evaluating TI as the basis for a backup system for some of my home office computer clients. For these clients I need a solid, reliable system that requires no user intervention. As easy as TI is to use, it is too much for them to tweak even occasionally, they are too busy doing other things, and, to be blunt, they just don't "get"computers and will screw up even the simplest instructions. So I have to be able to set up a completely automated system for them that is foolproof and that they can forget about until disaster strikes - then they can call me to perform all the necessary incantations.

One complication is that these clients run their businesses on laptops schlepped daily from location to location - wifi cafes, airports, conventions, etc. So I must base their backup system on an external USB 2.0 drive, and it must perform incremental daily backups.

I was thinking about setting up TI to create a full drive image on the first of every month, and incrementals daily thereafter. But my testing showed TI just writes over any previous full backup when a new one is performed on schedule with the same name and to the same location. That means on the first of the month, the previous images are effectively lost! NOT ACCEPTABLE! (And I am a little surprised and dismayed that TI has no facility to automatically manage this. As I have indicated above, these clients cannot be relied on to go in and change backup names themselves - or anything else.)

But I think I have a solution. My testing indicates it will work, but I would appreciate any comments. Anyone that has read this far will likely have an opinion! Suppose I divvy up that external USB hard drive into two partitions. The first is to receive disk images from the laptop as described above, except that the full monthly image would be made on the second day of the month. The second partition is there to image the first partition, which will automatically be scheduled once on the first day of the month! This way, just before the laptop images in the first partition are "zapped" by the monthly full image of the laptop drive, the entire set of the previous month's disk images will be backed up to the second partition.

Like I say, I tried it and even found I can recursively mount the images and retrieve files from the "imaged image". This seems like a clever solution to the problem - what do you all think?

 

I think TI fails your criteria. It doesn't verify the images automatically. They must be verified manually and if your clients can't do this then TI is unsuitable.

I know of a rival product that would satisfy all of your criteria.

 

Why dont you just make a windows scheduled batch file that copies the images in partition 1 to partition 2 on the first of every month. This is far easier than making an image of an image, and is far faster.