Advice Backup Strategy?

[1Wolf]

I'm in the process of building a new system that will have the OS/Programs on a 512 GB SSD and a 2 or 3 TB spindle drive for storage.

I was wondering if I could get some advice on what software to purchase for a good backup strategy?

I'm not very familiar with SSD's (This will be my first one) so its throwing me a bit of a curveball. On my current system (Windows Vista x64 & spindle drives only) I've had great luck with Acronis True Image Home.

Every few months I'd build a new image of each partition with Acronis, and then do an incremental image once a week. I'd store those images both on an internal HDD, as well as 2 external HDD's. One of the 2 external's I'd store offsite.

This has saved my bacon on more than one occassion and Acronis has worked easy and awesome for me in restoring an image. When my OS/Programs HDD croaked, I just bought a new one...stuck my images on the drive...and it was like nothing ever happened. Simple and painless. Acronis has been great to pull over individual files from the image as well on the occassions I needed to get something back I deleted.

I'm not sure what to do about my new SSD though. Do you guys still use imaging software? If so, can you save an SSD image to a spindle HD...then if you need to...restore an image from a spindle drive back to an SSD? Or is the image somehow 'not right' once you copy an SSD image to a spindle drive?

If imaging is still the way to go...what software do you guys prefer?

Any help or advice on strategies, software, do's and don'ts would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

 

[apnar]

Just think of the SSD as any other hard disk. If you're happy with what you are using and you know it well stick with it.

 

[Silenus]

I'm in the process of building a new system that will have the OS/Programs on a 512 GB SSD and a 2 or 3 TB spindle drive for storage.

I was wondering if I could get some advice on what software to purchase for a good backup strategy?

I'm not very familiar with SSD's (This will be my first one) so its throwing me a bit of a curveball. On my current system (Windows Vista x64 & spindle drives only) I've had great luck with Acronis True Image Home.

Every few months I'd build a new image of each partition with Acronis, and then do an incremental image once a week. I'd store those images both on an internal HDD, as well as 2 external HDD's. One of the 2 external's I'd store offsite.

This has saved my bacon on more than one occassion and Acronis has worked easy and awesome for me in restoring an image. When my OS/Programs HDD croaked, I just bought a new one...stuck my images on the drive...and it was like nothing ever happened. Simple and painless. Acronis has been great to pull over individual files from the image as well on the occassions I needed to get something back I deleted.

I'm not sure what to do about my new SSD though. Do you guys still use imaging software? If so, can you save an SSD image to a spindle HD...then if you need to...restore an image from a spindle drive back to an SSD? Or is the image somehow 'not right' once you copy an SSD image to a spindle drive?

If imaging is still the way to go...what software do you guys prefer?

Any help or advice on strategies, software, do's and don'ts would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

Yes you can save an image of your SSD OS Drive and restore it just exactly like your used too. I use Acronis myself and just recently had occasion to to need a restore of my OS Drive (Crucial M4). Booted to secure zone, pick most recent backup from my 2TB data drive, restore...no problem. Was up and running in 15 minutes.

 

[steve3]

SSD is just like any other drive. You can create a image of it without a problem.

 

[x509]

SSD is just like any other drive. You can create a image of it without a problem.

And is Acronis SSD-aware, so it takes care of the 4K alignment issues?

 

[1Wolf]

Anyone know?

Silenus, what version of Acronis are you using? How do you like it? The one I have now is pretty old so I was thinking about picking up True Image Home 12...but it had some not-so-good user reviews and I'm not sure how much stock to put in them.

 

[apnar]

Few seconds of googling:

http://kb.acronis.com/content/2699

To quote:

The following Acronis products have full Solid State Drive (SSD) support:

Acronis Backup & Recovery 11
Acronis True Image Home 2011
Acronis True Image Home 2012
Acronis Disk Director 11 Home

All other Acronis products support Solid State Drives (SSD) with certain limitations:

You can perform all the same operations with SSDs as with regular hard disk drives;
There are no special partition alignment mechanisms required to keep the partitions offset which is optimal for SSD drives. In other words when you restore an image to an SSD drive, it will get the default 63 sectors offset instead of 64kb (or a multiple of 64kb) offset recommended for SSD drives even if this offset was in place when the image had been created. This may result in a drop of performance on certain models of SSD drives after the restore;
Support for SSD drives is also planned for the next version of the Acronis Backup & Recovery product line.

 

[1Wolf]

Thanks apnar.

My question comes about, not from lazyness or a desire not to google, but rather a lack of understanding about SSD's in general. I'm new to the world of SSD's...still reading (Thanks to some excellent links that some folks here have offered to me) and learning.

Unfortunately, while the passage you quoted might make perfect sense to you, I don't quite understand. Do you think that is trying to say that as long as I purchase a NEW version of Acronis True Image 2012 that it will handle my SSD just fine, and should I need to restore, it will handle my SSD without any performance penalty....

However...they are saying that OLD versions of Acronis will still work with my SSD, but using them for a restore may result in a drop in performance.

Does my interpretation sound correct to you?

The last line in your quote confuses me.

"Support for SSD drives is also planned for the next version of the Acronis Backup & Recovery product line."

Does this mean that the current versions don't support SSD's 100% but that future, unreleased versions of Acronis will?

I'm concerned about the "Drop in Performance" they refer to. If I'm going to lose performance by performing a restore, then I should probably look into another product.

 

[grambo]

Thanks apnar.

My question comes about, not from lazyness or a desire not to google, but rather a lack of understanding about SSD's in general. I'm new to the world of SSD's...still reading (Thanks to some excellent links that some folks here have offered to me) and learning.

Unfortunately, while the passage you quoted might make perfect sense to you, I don't quite understand. Do you think that is trying to say that as long as I purchase a NEW version of Acronis True Image 2012 that it will handle my SSD just fine, and should I need to restore, it will handle my SSD without any performance penalty....

However...they are saying that OLD versions of Acronis will still work with my SSD, but using them for a restore may result in a drop in performance.

Does my interpretation sound correct to you?

The last line in your quote confuses me.



Does this mean that the current versions don't support SSD's 100% but that future, unreleased versions of Acronis will?

I'm concerned about the "Drop in Performance" they refer to. If I'm going to lose performance by performing a restore, then I should probably look into another product.

If you have an older version of True Image (not 2011/2012) and you use it to create/restore a image of an OS partition to your SSD, you will have incorrect sector alignment causing significant performance degradation.

You can actually fix the sector alignment using a Linux LiveCD with GParted (or another tool) after restoring the image, but it takes a bit of time. I would just buy a new version of True Image personally.

 

[1Wolf]

Thanks grambo.

Do you happen to have any opinions about True Image 2012? Good or bad?

 

[MontyAC]

You can try out the freeware version of Macrium Reflect. It supports SSD alignment on restores.

 

[JJ Johnson]

Two questions about True Image, for those who've used it...

1. Can it restore files or folders from an image, or can it only do full image restores?

2. Can it be used to migrate a boot drive from one SSD to another (say larger) SSD?

 

[Silenus]

Two questions about True Image, for those who've used it...

1. Can it restore files or folders from an image, or can it only do full image restores?

2. Can it be used to migrate a boot drive from one SSD to another (say larger) SSD?

1) Yes
2) Yes

 

[grambo]

Thanks grambo.

Do you happen to have any opinions about True Image 2012? Good or bad?

Haven't tried it, I just have the free version (via Seagate Disc Wizard) which I use for creating back up images of my system drive. The only time I've had to restore, I had to manually fix alignment, but it wasn't much work.

 

[bAMtan2]

Thanks grambo.

Do you happen to have any opinions about True Image 2012? Good or bad?

acronis and I think paragon are so sketchy you might as well find something free instead. if you want to pay money, there is macrium reflect, storagecraft shadowprotect, and terabyte unlimited image for windows. macrium reflect is probably the most user friendly of those

 

[JJ Johnson]

"Sketchy"??? Please elaborate.

 

[bAMtan2]

Their performance is more variable...

Acronis and paragon release cheaper new products every year to make more money, while the alternatives I listed seem to maintain products for longer

The products I listed are more likely to be used by serious businesses.