How do YOU test your system backups?

J

jcolby

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jun 7, 2004
Messages
187
I use WHS to backup all of my computers's system drives, but of course... I am chicken when it comes to actually trying a restore. I have my development laptop, two SQL Servers, my wife's laptop, my son's laptop, a HTPC media server, A WMC driving the TV, a game machine for the kids, and of course the WHS itself. Most of these machines are different. Two laptops are almost the same, other than that we are talking different motherboards, RAID controllers, hard drives etc.

For example, how do I know that a restore to my development laptop won't hose it? If it did, if anything went wrong and I lost the mcahine I would be in such a bad place. Same for my SQL Servers. Actually taking a working system and intentionally trying to restore the system drive seems to be a pretty big risk to me.

Having said all of that, I had an occasion to replace the laptop's drive with a larger drive, and the restore to the larger drive went without a hitch, but still...

Everyone who advises backups, advises testing the backups will restore. Easier said than done without some identical system (or at least system drive) to do the restore to.

How do YOU do this?
 
I personally use Acronis True Image when it comes to a snapshot image of my OS disks. This is more due to convenience as well as backing up data as I don't really have the time or the desire to do a manual reformat, go through the steps, install all the drives, reinstall everything, etc, etc. I have a reasonable confidence that my backup images are sound and will restore my computer to a prior state should anything catastrophic happen to my computers, like a disk failure.
 
While I haven't actually done this myself...I would get a spare drive and replace the boot drive on a computer with a blank drive. The same as if the drive had failed and been replaced. Then run the restore from WHS with the restore CD. If the restore doesn't work, just swap the original boot disk back in. Seems like a pretty simple test to me, I might try it myself just to see if it works.
 
My crucial data is photographs which are backed up on two local drives as well as remotely over the internet. My test is to load the backup set into Lightroom and do a catalog integrity test - I haven't had any problems yet (knock on wood) so I've gotten kind of lazy about checking them and have gotten to pretty much just going off the fact that one of the three backup sets should have a working copy. Not the best plan, but the two local ones are checked against the working set daily so I feel fairly confident that they are fine. I don't keep any bare metal restores (although it probably would be a good idea) so I don't know what to tell you about those.
 
I have two SQL Servers. The machines have different motherboards now, and different video cards, though both are ATI Radeon. The raid controllers are different, and both machines boot off of a volume on the raid. My laptop is a Dell m90, my wife's is the "consumer" version of the same machine, but a smaller disk drive. My son's laptop is my old EMachine m6805.

You get the picture. There is no "getting a drive the same size", particularly when it comes to the servers, since they boot off a volume on the raid system. The drive on my M90 started dying, giving me checkdisk errors. I actually managed to replace the system drive and use WHS to rebuild the disk, after which I did a windows repair to make sure that my system files weren't corrupted.

My point is that the "accepted wisdom" is to actually test your backups by doing a full restore. How else do you know that it weil work come crunch time?

I do not do that, but I sure do think about it. If the servers should die, and the restore fail, and the client call and ask for a job off of the server... I would be in a really bad spot. I do use Raid6 to hold the SQL Server OS and databases, and in 5 years I have never actually had a catastrophic (2 disk) failure, but how many times have you seen (in this forum) RAID IS NOT A BACKUP! That goes for the system as well as the data.

I have built all of my machines and I know it takes DAYS to get a system built from scratch. So, all of the "raid is not a backup" talk prompted me to ask how all of those making those statements handle actually testing their backups.
 
In reality you wont know until crunch time

Even If you were to test your backup image today.....sometime down the road it could become corrupt, or be on a sector that goes bad, etc. you get the idea

While Yes it would be ideal to be able to test your backups for integrity, it does not seem to me at least to be reasonable. What im saying is that your backup data is just as succeptable to damage as the originals are.
 
The only way to relatively safely test a restore is to do what Epimehtius suggested and restore to a spare hard drive.

While that may test the Process for the restore, the only way to be relatively sure your data is being safely copied is to use a backup program with a compare option. While this can take quite a while, if you do a full compare after the backup, you are in good shape. I do not have WHS, so I do not know how their backup works.

The other thing you must do for really thorough backup protection is to have AT LEAST 2 copies of the backup information, and rotate them when you do the backups. That way, if you discover your original information has errors right in the middle of your current backup, which you just overwrote a good copy of the data finding this out, you still have another good copy of your data.

If you are using WHS to do your backups, and have WHS protecting the data on 2 drives, you are in good shape. The only way to be in better shape is to get an external drive, and copy your backup directory there after a good backup to the server. That way, if your backup malfs in the middle of backing up to the server, then your still have a relatively recent copy of the data on the external drive.

A good backup plan is not cheap or easy, but well worth the time and money. Just think what it would take you to recreate the data you are backing up.

I personally do not back up my OS drives. Any important data gets copied to my NAS box, which then gets copied to external drives. If an OS drive takes a dump, I simply reinstall Windows and my programs, and all the data is right there on the NAS.

Don
 
i have tested my HTPC by intalling on old drive and restoring it to working shape and then reinstall old drive.

so to test, just spend $50 and buy a new (or sued from the forum) drive that is larger than the OS drive your are restoring.... then test the OS restore...


as for a large RAID6 restore, ummmm browse the backup and see if you can extract some random files.....

you dont need to necessarily restore the DATA back with the WHS restore client, just the OS and programs...

so to test data backups just open the backup on the WHS and extract a couple files
 
DonDon said:
If you are using WHS to do your backups, and have WHS protecting the data on 2 drives, you are in good shape. The only way to be in better shape is to get an external drive, and copy your backup directory there after a good backup to the server. That way, if your backup malfs in the middle of backing up to the server, then your still have a relatively recent copy of the data on the external drive.
Click to expand...
WHS does not duplicate your backups.
If you want a second copy of your backups on a WHS there is an addin called WHS BDBB (Backup Database Backup)
I dont use it so I cannot comment on it.
DonDon said:
A good backup plan is not cheap or easy, but well worth the time and money. Just think what it would take you to recreate the data you are backing up.
Click to expand...
It would be a PITA, backups are worth every penny
 
nitrobass24 said:
It would be a PITA, backups are worth every penny once you lost your data
Click to expand...

FTFY. That is the issue with people and backup's these days.

---------------------------------

Jcolby,

BTW, I posted on a restore from a WHS backup to a new and different size drive (a quick search for restore in the title will find it)...works great. We have a saying in aerospace, "protections that are not tested don't exist."
 
DonDon said:
If you are using WHS to do your backups, and have WHS protecting the data on 2 drives, you are in good shape. The only way to be in better shape is to get an external drive, and copy your backup directory there after a good backup to the server. That way, if your backup malfs in the middle of backing up to the server, then your still have a relatively recent copy of the data on the external drive.
Click to expand...
nitrobass24 said:
WHS does not duplicate your backups.
If you want a second copy of your backups on a WHS there is an addin called WHS BDBB (Backup Database Backup)
I dont use it so I cannot comment on it.

It would be a PITA, backups are worth every penny
Click to expand...

Something I came across for those interested in duplicating backups on a WHS

*Use this at your own risk, not supported by microsoft*

Gain access to to your Windows Home Server either through a Remote Desk Top connection, the Advanced Administrative Console add-in or monitor and keyboard if you have one attached. If you loaded Advanced Admin Console, on the far right side of the toolbar is a down arrow. Click that and a menu should appear. Select Registry Editor. If you are using a Remote Desktop Connection or direct access, click the start button, select RUN and then type "regedit".
Navigate to:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows Home Server\Storage Manager\Folders\00008086-058d-4c89-ab57-a7f909a47ab4\Attributes
In Regedit highlight Attributes and select EDIT/NEW/DWORD VALUE from the menu and add a new DWORD named Reliable with a value of 1.
Click to expand...
 
My backup method is about to under go a trial by fire. The OS drive in my HTPC is causing some issues so I'm switching to a different drive. I'll be testing the recovery feature of WHS as soon as my disk finishes buring. I'll probably wait until tomorrow since it's getting late, though.
 
You can just copy all the files from that iso to a flash drive and boot from it.
Thats what I typically do.

I have also created a restore partition on my HTPC's, because I like to have a clean install. After a while things just get funky...roomates going to weird websites, etc.
All I had to do was create a 2gb NTFS partition and extract all the files from the restore .iso and add an entry to the bootloader.

I have done multiple restores from my WHS and its pretty straight forward.
One complaint I have is that you cannot move to a smaller partition/drive/volume even if the one you had before was mostly free space.

So say you have a 1tb drive single partition and only 100gb of data. You cant make a 250gb partition and a 750gb partition and restore to either one of those.
 
nitrobass24 said:
Duplicates your backups
Click to expand...

Googling that registry key brought me to this thread:

http://forum.wegotserved.co.uk/lofiversion/index.php/t1177.html

Thanks nitrobass.

I think I will do this. IMHO backups are the poor stepchild of WHS. Back when I frequented the WHS forums, I asked about the issues with losing the backups with the slightest problem and the response was:

"well, if you lose the backups, you still have the original to make a new backup with".

If that isn't just freaking ignorant I don't know what is. From what I can tell the attitude hasn't changed.

WHS backup is an awesome piece of work, except for the fact that they just don't seem to care if they get lost somehow. As anyone who has ever had to use backups knows, discovering that your backups are trashed when you need your backup is a heart-stopping experience.

Duplicating the backups will be a good first step. Actually backing them up to an nearline location will be the next step.
 
jcolby said:
Googling that registry key brought me to this thread:

http://forum.wegotserved.co.uk/lofiversion/index.php/t1177.html

Thanks nitrobass.

I think I will do this. IMHO backups are the poor stepchild of WHS. Back when I frequented the WHS forums, I asked about the issues with losing the backups with the slightest problem and the response was:

"well, if you lose the backups, you still have the original to make a new backup with".

If that isn't just freaking ignorant I don't know what is. From what I can tell the attitude hasn't changed.

WHS backup is an awesome piece of work, except for the fact that they just don't seem to care if they get lost somehow. As anyone who has ever had to use backups knows, discovering that your backups are trashed when you need your backup is a heart-stopping experience.

Duplicating the backups will be a good first step. Actually backing them up to an nearline location will be the next step.
Click to expand...

WHS already supports this via a backup drive. I know you are a very smart guy, but your ignorance of WHS features is really starting to piss me off.

Read this and then tell me how this is not as good as any other offsite method? This is EXACTLY what I do. I have a external HDD in a USB enclosure that is my "backup backup" drive.

You can also backup and restore and the entire home computer backup database.
Click to expand...
 
DonDon said:
A good backup plan is not cheap or easy, but well worth the time and money. Just think what it would take you to recreate the data you are backing up.

I personally do not back up my OS drives. Any important data gets copied to my NAS
box, which then gets copied to external drives. If an OS drive takes a dump, I simply
reinstall Windows and my programs, and all the data is right there on the NAS.
Click to expand...

I don't back up my OS or system state either. I just backup raw data. Save games, profiles, documents, and that's about it. Music and videos are simply spread across multiple computers and they are not really backed up as they aren't that important to me. I think of backing up data in two ways. What I must safe gaurd and what I'd like to safe gaurd. The data I *must* safe guard I safe guard in ways probably considered somewhat excessive to some. The rest of the data I half ass it like most of you guys in that I depend on RAID arrays and multiple machines to take care of things for me. This is actually a bad idea but since I don't care about that data I'm good with it.

A good backup plan for the home user need not be all that expensive. In fact many will think I went over board with my solution but in the grand scheme of things it really isn't that expensive. I've got some important personal data most of which is relatively small. I have a few pieces of software that I bought eletronically that I also backup along with their serial numbers in text files. Everything that is truly important to me fits on a DVD. (Including my CoD4 profile) which I have made two copies of and update periodically. I then put one of the DVD's into my 600lbs. which I got for storing weapons. This is a fire rated safe which is in turn bolted to the concrete slab the house is built on. I also store a copy of the data off site with a friend of mine which he keeps in a safe as well. The data is also replicated across multiple computers. All except my girlfriend's desktop and laptop because I'm not going to store data on a computer where I am not the sole indivdual that has access to it.

Now I am a backup administrator by trade (among other things) so I know that if you don't have offsite backups you are playing with fire. I've seen what happens to home users and to businesses that do not plan for disaster. I'm not saying you need to go all iron mountain but leaving some data with a friend of yours that you trust should be sufficient. If you don't want them to see it get a $30 tiny fire safe to throw it in and don't give them the keys. Total cost of my plan so far: About $1,000.00. (For the safe, delivery of the safe and bolting it to the floor as well as the firesafe for offsite storage.)

To those of you who depend on RAID as a backup solution or even storing your data on multiple computers. Your plan is flawed. Having "online" or "live" backups of your data is insane. While you've got redundancy in RAID or spreading the data to multiple machines this does nothing for you in the event you get a virus. Granted even if you run anti-virus there is still a chance of your data being destroyed by a worm or damaged beyond repair by a virus. It is possible for your machine or machines to become infected by new virii before your anti-virus software vendor has a chance to put out updates. Beyond that data corruption can and does occur with hard drives and RAID arrays periodically. There are any number of things that could cause this and chances are you won't know you've got corrupted data until it is too late. Then it is simple luck that will more or less decide if your valuable data is salvagable as a result of drive failures or corruption.

Also by storing data on DVD's I don't have to worry about magnetic fields disrupting my data or even a little bit of water damage. Something electronic as well as mechanical like a hard drive is less dependable. Even if the bottom of a DVD or CD gets scratched I can always resurface the disk. With a hard drive you might have to spend thousands to get your data recovered from a dead or dying disk and there is no guarantee you'll get all your data. So I wouldn't recommend external hard drives that you just use once in awhile and unplug. I'd put no faith in a mechanical device of that type for long term storage.

I don't have tons and tons of valuable data but what I do have is worth quite a bit as far as protecting it goes. To me at least. If you value your data you should think hard about what you are doing and if it is the right course of action or not.

Cliffs:
1.) You need to store your data offsite as well.
2.) Fire and or flood rated safes are good.
3.) Never depend on RAID or multiple systems for backup purposes.
4.) Online backups are a false sense of security.
5.) Consequences
6.) You are doing it wrong.

That about sums it up. If your data is valuable you need to think hard about how you are protecting it.
 
I am a developer. As such it takes me DAYS to set up my development machine. The OS (and all service packs), Office (and service packs), SQL Server (service packs), the .Net dev environment, encryption, zip, software firewall, anti-virus, VNC, UltraEdit, PDF Reader, VMWare, Firefox, Thunderbird. And that isn't even everything.

To NOT backup my boot drive is insanity. My time is money. Several days of not billing is a couple of thousand dollars lost income.

As for all of the actual backup advice, I concur. However... you do need to be knowledgeable about buying fire safes. What most people do not know is that fire safes guarantee that PAPERS will survive. IOW the internal temperature will not exceed the flash point of paper which is about 450 degrees F. If the safe's internal temperature gets to even 300 degrees F it will melt your plastic DVDs and damage hard drives.

For data backup you need to buy much more expensive fire safes rated for "data protection" which will guarantee internal temps below 200 degrees F.
 
jcolby said:
I am a developer. As such it takes me DAYS to set up my development machine. The OS (and all service packs), Office (and service packs), SQL Server (service packs), the .Net dev environment, encryption, zip, software firewall, anti-virus, VNC, UltraEdit, PDF Reader, VMWare, Firefox, Thunderbird. And that isn't even everything.

To NOT backup my boot drive is insanity. My time is money. Several days of not billing is a couple of thousand dollars lost income.

As for all of the actual backup advice, I concur. However... you do need to be knowledgeable about buying fire safes. What most people do not know is that fire safes guarantee that PAPERS will survive. IOW the internal temperature will not exceed the flash point of paper which is about 450 degrees F. If the safe's internal temperature gets to even 300 degrees F it will melt your plastic DVDs and damage hard drives.

For data backup you need to buy much more expensive fire safes rated for "data protection" which will guarantee internal temps below 200 degrees F.
Click to expand...

I agree on the fire safe comments. I didn't want to get into all of that either. Mine isn't a data protection safe. The safe's original goal was to store firearms which can take much more heat than paper can. Still I regard the option as better than leaving the disk on the counter. This is also why I store a copy at a friends house.

As for backing up the OS and your system state, programs etc, I'd agree with you. I can get up and running with what I need to get working again (both jobs) in just a few hours. As much as I change everything hardware wise on my system I avoid making too many ghost images because they go out of date so quickly. Again for you I understand what you'd have to go through to make everything work again. So for you it is a must while for most home users, backing up the OS and system state aren't essential.
 
Dan,

While I agree "for most home user's it is not essential", IMHO it all boils down how dead simple it is, at least using WHS. Man I can't even tell you how easy it is and given that, why not?

If you have a WHS server, getting the system disk of every computer in the house backing up to the WHS rig is just a matter of checking a box.

Now before you go off on the "that is not a real backup", I understand that in the event of a fire a WHS backup does not help, however if you look at the statistics I would bet that fewer than .01% of all restores are triggered by a house fire. Most people just have their disk die!

So for very valuable data, business data, tax records, family photo albums, yea, do the offsite on a hard disk thing. But for the general "protect all my systems from a system disk failure", a WHS system disk backup is just the ticket. Backup is easy, restoring is easy.

For the off-site I had someone suggest just use an encrypted drive that you store out in your RV, or even in your car or a storage shed away from the house. The objective is to place it anywhere that won't burn if the house burns, and having it close makes it much more likely to happen on a regular basis.
 
We have a backup plan. We do incremental backups each day and do full backups each month. We have 3 copies of each backup.

We have never lost any data. But...

A couple months ago my wife was making some changes to PDF files. Recently while looking at the files she changed she noticed many pages had vanished - blank pages of 0x0 dimension were there. It appears the PDF software had an error in it.

While we could recover the older data and recreate the new data, recovering is much easier.
 
GeorgeHR said:
snip... While we could recover the older data and recreate the new data, recovering is much easier.
Click to expand...

And THAT is why the WHS dev team's "backing up the backups isn't necessary" is so incredibly STUPID.

The vast majority of people have never had a house fire. A large percentage of people have had a disk die, and even more have had corrupted documents etc.
 
Well I didnt mean to start a fire.....haha no but seriously yea for the ultimate security for *important* stuff you need a plan like DanD has stated. For me my *important* stuff is financial data mostly and some old family pics. So I burned them to Blu-Ray and put it my safety deposit box at the bank. I also have it all duplicated on my WS, and my WHS..so 4 places in all. And I feel confident that unless we have a nuclear holocaust it will be fine.

I personally backup my OS/boot partitions as well. Setting everything up how I want is a real PITA. I do development stuff myself..mostly for fun, but its a bitch to get it the way I want. So whenever I change OS, mobo, new machine or change something major I do two things. Create a slipstreamed dvd. install it and setup everything to my liking. Create a backup. So if things are to go awry I can throw in my USB restore stick and be back on track from either where i was the day before the crash, or I can revert back to a clean slate. That has saved me so many hours of frustration its worth every penny IMO.
 
I do not believe a backup solution/methodology/process is valid until you have proved that you can actually restore.

I've been in software development for almost 20 years with many many companies. Most of that time I have been in some kind of leadership role and have always wanted to make sure all the source code was being backed up. Everywhere I have been, the "network folks" were responsible for configuring backups for the fileservers. They always claimed "yes, your source code is being backed up, yes, we can rebuild the build machine(s) if there is a drive failure".

Yet, everytime there has been a failure where the restore process had not been tested or actually used before the failure, they were NOT able to recover in anything close to a timely manner - usually took a week or more. The last time was about six months ago when the hard drive went bellyup on the build machine. We didn't loose the source code, but it took an obscene amount of time to get the build machine back to a working state because the so-called "ghost image" would not work when restored.

Everyplace I have been where the restore process had been tested, when a failure happened, we recovered with minimal loss of time and minimal loss of impact to the current project schedule.

So... if you are backing up but have not used or tested the restore feature, then you do NOT have a reliable backup solution.

If you are ghosting a boot drive and have not actually restored the ghost to prove the restore image will work, then you do NOT have a reliable backup solution.
 
One of the problems that I run into is that backing up lots of data takes a loooooooong time! My client's SQL Server data, all by itself, is almost a tb. Even backing that up to a USB hard disk takes about a day. I finally bought a ESATA external enclosure, but even that take many hours.

I have my system disks on the 7 computers (not counting WHS itself) in my home / home office backing up to WHS, and the total backup space (JUST for the system disks) is 103 gigabytes. Again, you don't back that up in a few minutes.

Now imagine actually testing all of these backups!

These large systems are a PITA to back up!
 
jcolby said:
And THAT is why the WHS dev team's "backing up the backups isn't necessary" is so incredibly STUPID.
Click to expand...

Did you not read what I wrote. With the powerpack they PROVIDED that feature. You can "backup" your backups. Ignoring facts does not make them not exist. *sigh*.

1. Plug in external USB drive
2. Select drive as a backup drive
3. Select backups and what you want to backup
4. Rotate drives as often as desired
5. Profit...

*sigh*.
 
Trepidation, get a grip.

No I MISSED the one line reply, so shoot me. As for my "ignorance of WHS", you should I suppose understand that I am a consultant, a one man show. I do not "go into work and do one thing all day long".

I have to know SQL Server, .net development, Microsoft Access (those are my DEV tools). I have to know how to remote into my clients, negotiate Hamachi, VPN, remote desktop. I have to understand FTPing data up to client systems which includes researching and installing FTP clients as well as understanding and setting up data encryption. Oh, and let's not forget VMWare and virtual machines for test scenarios.

I build my own systems so I have to buy system parts and install all of the various pieces and parts, install Server 2003 (and SQL Server), install XP, Vista, WMC (for my own entertainment) and My Movies.

Oh, and Firefox, Thunderbird, Skype, WinRAR...

Etc. Ad nasium.

The point of this is not that "I am a smart guy" but rather that I am an overloaded guy. So if I am not intimately familiar with WHS, well... it is probably somewhere around 1/2 of one percent of what I have to know to make a living. I am NOT intimately familiar with all the stuff that WHS can do, I just use it. It is one of about ONE HUNDRED tools that I have to deal with EVERY DAY.

So lighten up for crying out loud.

And thanks for pointing me (with ever so much civility) to how to do this. Your sharing your knowledge (and your civility) truly are appreciated.

BTW FWIW, I just this morning visited a site to install a backup database backup utility (WHS BDBB) where the author claimed that WHS backup backups were promised but NOT included in PP1.
 
jcolby said:
Dan,

While I agree "for most home user's it is not essential", IMHO it all boils down how dead simple it is, at least using WHS. Man I can't even tell you how easy it is and given that, why not?

If you have a WHS server, getting the system disk of every computer in the house backing up to the WHS rig is just a matter of checking a box.

Now before you go off on the "that is not a real backup", I understand that in the event of a fire a WHS backup does not help, however if you look at the statistics I would bet that fewer than .01% of all restores are triggered by a house fire. Most people just have their disk die!

So for very valuable data, business data, tax records, family photo albums, yea, do the offsite on a hard disk thing. But for the general "protect all my systems from a system disk failure", a WHS system disk backup is just the ticket. Backup is easy, restoring is easy.

For the off-site I had someone suggest just use an encrypted drive that you store out in your RV, or even in your car or a storage shed away from the house. The objective is to place it anywhere that won't burn if the house burns, and having it close makes it much more likely to happen on a regular basis.
Click to expand...

Did I say this wasn't a real backup? Not really. It is a disk to disk backup which is fine but it doesn't cover certain scenarios. At the end of the day how seriously or how far you take your backups is up to you. How valuable is your data to you? I'd backup using Windows Home Server if I had one. I have the hardware but I don't currently use that software. I've had so much work to do (from both jobs) that I haven't had time to do jack squat with my home network and systems.
 
ROTFL, I hear you.

I have spent the last two weeks scrambling to get orders out for one specific client. Now that is done I have some time to do stuff for my self / business.
 
jcolby said:
ROTFL, I hear you.

I have spent the last two weeks scrambling to get orders out for one specific client. Now that is done I have some time to do stuff for my self / business.
Click to expand...

There is no end in sight for the madness I'm going through work wise. I'm pushing 70 hours a week in my day job alone. Sometimes more.
 
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