The_Munchmaster Posted August 2, 2012 Report Share Posted August 2, 2012 To recap I did a backup of my laptop using the Microsoft Backup and Restore programme where the programme selects what is to be backed up. It took about 7 hours to complete (USB 2.0) and the used space on the external hard drive was shown as 238GB (not 280GB as previously mentioned). Both the time to backup and the size of the backup surprised me. My Libraries (Documents, Music, Pictures and Videos) has a total size of 93GB and I copied and pasted them to the external hard drive and it only took 2 hours. All very confusing! I tried to view what had been backed up on the external hard drive but couldn't however these are the folders that were created : WindowsImageBackup 144GB OMNDXBW7LT001 91GB The WindowsImageBackup folder, has a sub file omndxbw7lt001 and then another sub file Backup 2012-07-30 173712 which comprises 3 x VHD files and 11 tiny XML docs. The VHD files which obviously contain all the data, due to their size, cannot be opened by any of the programmes on my laptop and have file names like this 9d04b2bo-9155-11de-92e9-806e6f6e6963. When you double click on the OMNDXBW7LT001 folder, you get 3 options, Restore My Files From This Backup, Restore Files For All Users Of This Computer and Manage Space Used By This Backup. After all that I suppose what I am interested in knowing is why if my files are only 93GB why is the backup 238GB? Also should I bother with backup (particularly if it's going to take 7 hours!) and instead just copy my files to the external hard drive on a regular basis? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
khunsanuk Posted August 2, 2012 Report Share Posted August 2, 2012 Hi, If you just want to backup some files/folders on a regular basis, you might want to have a look at SyncToy. Been using it for a while already. Every day at 6pm it synchronizes the files on my PC with a backup HD. I use this to backup my work files, email, desktop, etc. On top of this I do a weekly Windows backup as well. Sanuk! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kamui Posted August 2, 2012 Report Share Posted August 2, 2012 Also should I bother with backup (particularly if it's going to take 7 hours!) and instead just copy my files to the external hard drive on a regular basis? If it's important files you should use a backup software with file versioning. With this the backup keeps older versions of changed files. Also good backup software is doing incremental backups. This will shorten all backups after the first Initial one. Anyway, important data should be backed up at least two different media, using different software/methods. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
radioman Posted August 2, 2012 Report Share Posted August 2, 2012 My guess is the stuff you are backing up, pictures videos documents etc, are not changing significantly over time other than perhaps you are adding to them. Only you know how important they are to you and what measures would seem appropriate for your own required level of security. A simple copy would allow you to use the files anywhere and move them easily from machine to machine whereas the true backup is looking more at re-creating what you have, not just the data but the look, feel, and organisation of your system. For that reason it is likely backing up more than just your data but has added a lot of semi fixed system specific information as well. As said, future backups, if arranged to be incremental will only change what is, er, changed so should be a lot quicker. But you still cannot really use it anywhere else. I guess it depends what you plan to do with the backup and how crucial the data is to your life. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
baa99 Posted August 2, 2012 Report Share Posted August 2, 2012 To recap I did a backup of my laptop using the Microsoft Backup and Restore programme where the programme selects what is to be backed up. It took about 7 hours to complete (USB 2.0) and the used space on the external hard drive was shown as 238GB (not 280GB as previously mentioned). Both the time to backup and the size of the backup surprised me. My Libraries (Documents, Music, Pictures and Videos) has a total size of 93GB and I copied and pasted them to the external hard drive and it only took 2 hours. All very confusing! I tried to view what had been backed up on the external hard drive but couldn't however these are the folders that were created : WindowsImageBackup 144GB OMNDXBW7LT001 91GB The WindowsImageBackup folder, has a sub file omndxbw7lt001 and then another sub file Backup 2012-07-30 173712 which comprises 3 x VHD files and 11 tiny XML docs. The VHD files which obviously contain all the data, due to their size, cannot be opened by any of the programmes on my laptop and have file names like this 9d04b2bo-9155-11de-92e9-806e6f6e6963. When you double click on the OMNDXBW7LT001 folder, you get 3 options, Restore My Files From This Backup, Restore Files For All Users Of This Computer and Manage Space Used By This Backup. After all that I suppose what I am interested in knowing is why if my files are only 93GB why is the backup 238GB? Also should I bother with backup (particularly if it's going to take 7 hours!) and instead just copy my files to the external hard drive on a regular basis? Backup Create a backup set. A backup set is an index of the files you plan to back up. The first time you run Backup, a Full System Backup Set is created. This set includes every file on your hard disk. So, the default for the Backup program is to backup EVERY file on the HD. Plus it has to create a database for where every file was located. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hamokhamok Posted August 9, 2012 Report Share Posted August 9, 2012 I use two different pieces of software to back up my files; Memeo and Novastor. Memeo I've had a lot of problems with. It doesn't like any more than 20 to 25 gb to backup so I had to separate files and form a number of backups. Its not as good as Novastor. With Novastor I can backup one or more folder/directories in a single backup. That backup is set to MIRROR whats on the PC. So if I add files then it just copies those over. If I delete files on the PC then Novastor will delete them from the backup already taken when I next do a backup. I find it very exact in what it does. Memeo on the other hand had to be watched. For example I've a very large amount of photos (about 6000) and Novastor deals with them perfectly. However with Memeo I had to divide those up into five separate backup plans and the mirror effect doesn't work for me. I've also many other files in different folder/directories and those too are backed up in the same way with Novastor. One advantage with Novastor you can go into the backed up folder/directory and look at the files in the normal way. They are not hidden. I also use Acronis True Image for a total back up of my PC. This is set to backup every two weeks. To end I also back up the same files on two separate stand alone hard drives. Basically Ive got at least three copies of my own files. I got caught once where I lost many many photos and had a terrible job in getting them back. When I got them back they had unique names - whereas I had them named with a meaningful description. To this day I still have those files not named correctly. Its better to have more of something like this than less. All these backups are done automatically. I've got the two hard drives connected by USB to the PC and they work away on their own. Windows seems to do its own thing too in respect of backing up stuff. Not sure what it backs up. If I needed to use it I'm not sure how to go about getting this back onto my PC. For peace of mind I let it do its thing. One of my standalone hard drives is 3Tb so plenty of room there. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Archived
This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.