[SOLVED] Backup Confusion

[box o rocks]

I'm backing up data daily from a network hard drive to another attached storage medium. I'm confused as to what backup method to use. My choices are:
Normal Backup
Overwrite backup (Complete/Differential)
Overwrite backup (Append Backup)
Overwrite backup (Differential Backup)

Does a normal backup overwrite the previous backup, or does it just keep growing (doubling) in size?
I want the backup to take up the least amount of disk space as possible, yet always be the latest copy of the folders it is backing up. I'm not concerned about the length of time it takes, as this will be done over night.

 

[Alabalcho]

While most of the terminology in backup applications is "standard", "Append Backup" is a strange animal for me.

Which strategy you'll go with depends on how often you'll need to do "restore". Least amount of space would be needed by full backups, overwriting previous ones (leaving you with no backup in between).

 

[USAFRet]

What tool are you using to create these backups?
"Append" is unknown to me.

 

[jsmithepa]

All good questions, but am afraid whatever Apps ur using for this has to explain to you the details, every vendor seem to use a slightly different terminology. The other way to this is, do a dry run, test it with a small drive/partition and find out by result what exactly each does.

In general, you should decide:

How many generations/versions of data u want to keep? One or zero means you only care about your newest, but what happens if you have the unfortunate luck of contracting a ransomware and it scrambles your latest copy, and your backup App is not smart enough to notice this, runs its usual backup procedure that night and BAM, now you have no good backup. This really depends how often your data changes, and your tolerance for loosing say 3? days of work.

Do u have a need to restore often? Like clients asking for old information. The more pieces your backup contains, one large full backup then add1, add2, add3 etc, the longer the retrieval process takes. Some backup/restore Apps take forever to retrieve, "I want data from Jan/1/2009 to Jan/31/2009." Knowing this may prompts you to make a full backup more often and less "pieces."

This is time for me to pontificate, again, how powerful IMAGE BACKUP is. IMAGE BACKUP, in my world is a different animal than DATA BACKUP. IMAGE BACKUP in this context is an exact snapshot of Windows in time, and saved in one gigantic file (at least my fav Macrium Reflex does). IB works best when you have OS+Apps ONLY on C: place your data in some other drive. Anytime you feel weird, slow down, bit by malware, forget about spending time/days running a virus clean, just restore your last known-to-be-good image and BAM! u will be back in business in as little as 30 minutes depending on the speed of your backup medium. IB backup should be performed manually, typically before a large Windows update, or installing an unknown App ur not sure off to keep.

In order to reduce backup storage space, your App should offer you COMPRESSION. U say you don't care about backup time, but compression will add some restore time. So if u don't expect to restore often, use highest compression offered. If you have special backups for media files only, mpg, jpg etc those are already compressed so don't bother with those.

 

[USAFRet]

I also use Macrium exclusively.
A combination of Full, Incremental, or Differential. Depending on which drive and what I expect of it.

Full is just that. A Full Image of the entire drive.
Incremental is all the changes since the last Full or Incremental
Differential is all the changes since the last Full.

Individual Incremental images are smaller and create faster. But you need the most recent Full, and all of the intervening Incremental images.
A differential, you only need the desired Differential, and its previous Full Image.

For my main system, I keep 14 days. Deleting the eldest as time passes.
Each physical drive gets its own Image, in its own folder on the NAS box.

Keeping these multiples allows me to reconstiute any individual drive (or the whole system), from any day in the last two weeks.
MAcrium also has a nice feature of mounting an Image as a drive letter. With this, you can retrieve an individual file, from whichever backup you desire.
You need the copy of your resume from 'last Tuesday"? No problem.

Spacewise?
The drives in question are: 500GB, 250GB, 250GB, 1TB. Approx 2TB.
14 days of Images for the 4 relevant drives in my system consumes ~2.2TB. Obviously, the drives are not full. The current backup imaging tools only take into account the actual used space.

Whatever tool or procedure you use, testing is an absolute must. You need to know how to recover, before crunchtime.
Recently, I had to recover from a completely dead drive. 1TB SanDisk SSD. Just died. 605GB data on it.

Click click, select the most recent Incremental (that morning at 4AM)...all 605G data recovered, exactly as it was at 4AM. Took approx 2 hours, reading from the NAS box across the LAN.

What is your backup situation at home? What is your backup situation at home? And if you don't do that, why not? Every single day, I read multiple threads here of "How do I get my stuff back?" or "That drive had 5 years of photos of my kids!!" Be it a dead drive, dropped phone, virus, accidental deletion, formatting the wrong... forums.tomshardware.com

 

[box o rocks]

Sorry to get back to this so late...
Anyway, I am using the built-in firmware of an older Buffalo Linkstation. The drop-down help menu is practically useless. Example

And yet when I am in the options menu for a backup, this is all I'm actually offered. A "normal" backup and four overwrite backups, two of which appear to be identical. ??

 

[USAFRet]

Sorry to get back to this so late...
Anyway, I am using the built-in firmware of an older Buffalo Linkstation. The drop-down help menu is practically useless. Example

And yet when I am in the options menu for a backup, this is all I'm actually offered. A "normal" backup and four overwrite backups, two of which appear to be identical. ??

Ditch that included software, and use something that actually works.

 

[box o rocks]

But it's backing itself up to an attached USB device. 2 actually. What kind of software would handle that?

 

[Alabalcho]

You should have started with that fact - that you're talking about the backup application of your NAS. What does the user manual say about these functions? Obviously, the menu functions perform (slightly) different tasks, but unless you experiment with all of them, you won't know what they mean.

I'd say, that Buffalo user form is better place for that particular question. This forum does not have Buffalo-specific area, but I've got a lot of help there with my NAS.

 

[USAFRet]

But it's backing itself up to an attached USB device. 2 actually. What kind of software would handle that?

Macrium Reflect

My linked thread above goes into much detail on this.

 

[box o rocks]

Ditch that included software, and use something that actually works.

Ditch that included software, and use something that actually works.

I would have to leave my PC on 24/7 for Macrium Reflect to work, wouldn't I? I want the backup to take place over night.

 

[USAFRet]

I would have to leave my PC on 24/7 for Macrium Reflect to work, wouldn't I? I want the backup to take place over night.

Macrium can cause the PC to turn OFF when it is finished with the nightly whatever.

In the Advanced Options for a particular Schedule: