Hi everyone We're wondering if it makes sense to do a weekly/daily incremental backup of the C:\ drive instead of a full system image everytime. The advantages are: * Backup is incremental, thus normally 100x faster than a full image backup * That would allow to do backups more often, additionally * Single file restores are possible when needed The disadvantages are: * You'd have to reinstall W7 to be able to play the backup back to the machine * Image restores are pretty fast, probably a backup restore of a whole drive isn't fast at all. (?) * Maybe Problems will occur, because Backup isn't built to backup C:\, but the user libraries? Is there anyone who has experience with using Backup to restore whole systems? What do you think will be problematic? What would you recommend? Regards, Dennis

Your back up & recovery choices are dependent on the needs of the business & what amount of lost revenue, productivity & downtime you can afford, so there really isn't a one size fits all model. By the sounds of your setup it seems like a basic backup & recovey process would be sensible, so provided you have enough disk space (SATA disk space is relatively cheap) to make image backups or whichever type meets your needs. If you're not really concerned about keeping the image environment settings, then you might want to skip using the system imaging. The advantages are: * Backup is incremental, thus normally 100x faster than a full image backup One negative would be that if/when you do restore, each incremental backup would have to be restored (not fast), AND you'd need the most recent Full Backup along ALL incremental backups since the last Full Backup. * That would allow to do backups more often, additionally * Single file restores are possible when needed If you're worried about Single File restores on Windows, you should just use the Volume Shadow Service (Shadow Copies) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadow_Copy The disadvantages are: * You'd have to reinstall W7 to be able to play the backup back to the machine True, but you'd need an OS of some sort to get to the restored data no matter how you back it up. * Image restores are pretty fast, probably a backup restore of a whole drive isn't fast at all. (?) * Maybe Problems will occur, because Backup isn't built to backup C:\, but the user libraries You can use the Backup service to perform (somewhat) granual backups of directories, C:\ included.

I do both I back up my work on a daily basis to an external medium and I image the HD weekly to a USB connected HD Using Acronis I can place the Image back on the HD within 20 minutes and single file restore is possible. W7 Backup does not back up the MBR..so reinstall of the OS is necessary. peter If you find a posting or message from me offensive,inappropriate or disruptive,please ignore it. If you dont know how to ignore a posting complain to me and I will be only too happy to demonstrate :-) "Supercomputing" wrote in message news:4995ef56-35b2-4d05-8e7b-af41a78c3cb6... Hi everyone We're wondering if it makes sense to do a weekly/daily incremental backup of the C:\ drive instead of a full system image everytime. The advantages are: * Backup is incremental, thus normally 100x faster than a full image backup * That would allow to do backups more often, additionally * Single file restores are possible when needed The disadvantages are: * You'd have to reinstall W7 to be able to play the backup back to the machine * Image restores are pretty fast, probably a backup restore of a whole drive isn't fast at all. (?) * Maybe Problems will occur, because Backup isn't built to backup C:\, but the user libraries? Is there anyone who has experience with using Backup to restore whole systems? What do you think will be problematic? What would you recommend? Regards, Dennis

On Wed, 4 Aug 2010 13:46:41 +0000, Supercomputing wrote: We're wondering if it makes sense to do a weekly/daily incremental backup of the C:\ drive instead of a full system image everytime. Your choice, but here are several points to consider: 1. Regarding daily backup (regardless of method): It takes time and effort to backup, but it also takes time and effort to recreate lost data. If you back up daily, you should never have to recreate more than one day's worth of last data. If weekly, there's potentially a lot more to recreate. You should assess how much pain and trouble you would have if you lost x days of data, and then choose a backup frequency that doesn't involve more pain and trouble than that you would have if you had to recreate what was lost. Some things (photographs, for instance) can never be recreated, and more frequent backup may be wanted for them. At one extreme is the professional user who would likely go out of business if his data was lost. He probably needs to back up at least daily. At the other extreme is the kid who doesn't use his computer except to play games. He probably needs no backup at all, since worst case he can easily reinstall his games. 2. Incremental backup may be faster than a full backup, but restoring from an incremental backup can take much longer than from a full backup, since it's a multi-step process. 3. If you have a problem with any of the incremental backups, you may be unable to properly restore. 4. A disadvantage to incremental backups that is almost never pointed out is that it doesn't keep track of file deletions. So restoring a series of incremental backups does not put you back in the same condition you would be in if you restored a full backup. You will have some files back you didn't want back. Is that a severe problem? Usually not, but it could occasionally be. Ken Blake

Our user libraries and our data is on a server which is backed up anyways. I forgot to point that out. We are using Windows 7 backup only so we can get a machine back to work as soon as possible in case of a crash. Our machines have a wide variety of configurations and installed software. Without an image or a backup, we would have to install and configure everything again after a crash, which easily takes half of or even a whole day. We now decided to use a monthly (combined with manual where needed) image backup for our workstations. Why? Well... 1st: Your answers made it clear that recovering incremental backups is not as fast as we need it. 2nd: It's possible that one incremental backup gets corrupted and everything fails. 3rd: Because we only safe the configuration and installed software of our computers, there isn't much change between one day and another. Setups may not even change within weeks, but within months. Thank you for your answers.