Q: I work in a service lab at a university. I want a way to automatically back up data we collect off of our instruments to a server. All instruments of Windows XP Pro, so I could use the built-in backup utility. Ive been told that it is not the most reliable but, wondering if there is a better way to do it and was looking for suggestions.
Best Answer: download a program called ccleaner, it will clean your harddrive and your registry safely, and is free, works fast and does a good job
Re:It's Acronis own Snapshot technology as I know. But I can't say this technology is the shortcoming of True Image. Quite the contrary, imagine your comp is working 24/7 and you want to schedule your backup process in order the backup could perform automatically without your presence. If the program has to stop every time when any other application works, and ask you about its behavior, the word 'automatic' simply becomes unmeaning! Besides, according to my experience of several years, TI works well without any headache for me:)
Re:Is that done by Acronis or is that the windows shadow copy feature? Personally I would not trust anything with deep hooks into the OS from a third party vendor.
Re:My biggest fear would be that some how it could screw up the data and I would lose it not only on th back up but from the original folder as well.
It's is impossible: backup archives can't be writen over the original file because it simply has the other, TI own extention .tib . Besides, you may use incremental or differential backup option that is you will have not the uniq backup archive but will be able to keep several archives on your comp: the backup that was created a week ago, two weeks ago etc to prevent erasing of important data.
The other problem could be that sometimes the instruments are running 24/7 and what would happen if the data was being backed up at the same time a file was being written to the folder?
Acronis uses a special snapshot technology that allows to prevent files corrupting when applications that are being backed up continue to work. It works the following way:
Once Acronis True Image initializes the backup process of a volume (which logically corresponds to a single partition, if there are no Dynamic Disks), Acronis Snapshot Manager flushes the file system mounted to that volume temporarily freezing all the operations on the system volume. Immediately thereafter, the Snapshot Manager driver creates a point-in-time view of the system volume and a bitmap describing the used sectors on this volume. Once the bitmap is created, the filter driver unfreezes the I/O operations on the system volume. It generally takes only several seconds to create a point-in-time view of the volume. After that, the operating system continues working as the imaging process is under way.
Acronis True Image reads the sectors on the system volume according to the created bitmap. Once a sector is read, the appropriate bit in the bitmap is reset. In its turn, the Acronis driver continues working to hold the point-in-time view of the system volume. Whenever the driver sees a writing operation directed at the system volume, it checks whether these sectors are already backed-up, if they are not, the driver saves the data to the sectors that will be overwritten to a special buffer created by the software, then it allows the sectors to be overwritten. Acronis True Image backs up the sectors from the special buffer, so that all the sectors of the point-in-time view of the system volume will be backed up intact. Meanwhile, the operating system continues working and the user will not notice anything unusual in the operating system functionality.
Re:Thanks for the ideas. I'll check both out. I don't mind spening a little bit of money. The main thing is that it works well and will not cause any problems. My biggest fear would be that some how it could screw up the data and I would lose it not only on th back up but from the original folder as well. I'm guessing the chances of this happening are slim to none.
The other problem could be that sometimes the instruments are running 24/7 and what would happen if the data was being backed up at the same time a file was being written to the folder? I'll check out both programs and might be able to answer my own question. Thanks
Re:when I had a windows box, I would use syncback. Straight copies, no problems with needing software to retrieve my backups later. The only thing it lacks is to work at the block level … but.. well.. that may be excessive for your needs (not sure if the paid version lets you).
But Acronis is a nice piece of software if you need all of it's tools as well (it's "workstation/server" model is insanely expensive though)
Re:Well, there is a large amount of third-party backup utilities. Personally I prefer Acronis True Image (http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/products/trueimage/) that is on of the most famous, user-friendly and reliable among this kind of software. It contains much wider set of features compared to Windows backup utility. TI allows users to implement incremental and differential backup, image files and folders as well as create bootable backup archives of system partitions or the whole drives, save these archives on the other computer in the local network or write or right to CD or DVD; restore the OS to a new hardware. It isn?t free but you may try free trial version.
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