Are you checking your backup tonight?

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As Alex pointed out …. today is World Backup day. Just a reminder, issues like ransomware can be thwarted by having a backup. Specifically, somethin
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Susan Bradley Patch Lady

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Alex5723

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Mac : SuperDuper v3.7.5

“The wildly acclaimed program that makes recovery painless on your Mac computer, because it makes creating a fully bootable backup painless.”

$27.95

..SuperDuper v3.7.5 is here, and it includes full Big Sur, Monterey, and Ventura support!

SuperDuper is the wildly acclaimed program that makes recovery painless, because it makes creating a fully bootable backup painless. Its incredibly clear, friendly interface is understandable, easy to use, and SuperDuper’s built-in scheduler makes it trivial to back up automatically. It’s the perfect complement to Time Machine, allowing you to store a bootable backup alongside your Time Machine volume—and it runs beautifully on your Mac!

Version 3.7.5 supports bootable backups for Big Sur, Monterey, and Ventura, is Apple silicon native, lets you ignore “missing drive” errors during scheduled copies, and also improves Smart Wake, which ensures your backups happen whether your Mac is awake or asleep…and won’t turn on your screen if your Mac is already awake.

This new version also improves Smart Delete, an awesome new capability that minimizes the possibility of disk full errors while maintaining safety with no speed penalty, native Notification Center support, a Finder extension to quickly run copies, and other improvements. SuperDuper can even create and copy from snapshots, which means with an APFS backup drive, you can restore today’s Smart Update, yesterday’s, etc!..

https://www.shirt-pocket.com/blog

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Susan Bradley wrote:

Just a reminder, issues like ransomware can be thwarted by having a backup. Specifically, something that the bad guys can’t touch. So rotate out those hard drives. Have a cloud backup with versioning that is protected from access. Make sure you are protected.

Any Issue (hardware, software, malware, ransomware …) can be thwarted by having multiple recent backups stored offline.  Task Scheduler is your friend (one must give Task Scheduler a hand in swapping out HDD’s and offline storage).  Saturday night before retiring, I disconnect the Ethernet cable from my modem to my router and go offline.  Every Sunday morning beginning at 2:00 AM, Task Scheduler begins an Image for Windows drive image sequence that results in six images.

At 4:00 AM Task Scheduler runs the first of two Robocopy scripts that copy those drive images to my NAS.  With my first cup of coffee, I plug a HDD into the drive dock on top of my NAS to which I copy those images using drag & drop.  When the first is finished, I swap it out for a second HDD and repeat, then remove the second HDD.  Then I reconnect the Ethernet cable between my router and my modem, and I’m back online.  Both HDD’s are stored offline.  Each contains two months worth of weekly drive images.

In addition, during the day Task Scheduler runs three Robocopy scripts to copy two folders and a partition from my desktop to my NAS.  Multiple times a day a number of folders are copied to OneDrive.  Periodically I create full drive images of every drive (three M.2 NVMe SSD’s and three SATA SSD’s) for storage offline.

Using this combination of drive image, file redundancy and offline storage, I can recover.  From anything.  I tout Hardened Windows, however, that term does not imply Hardened PC.  Drives fail, motherboards reveal cold solder joints, PSU shorts fry components, etc.  My methods, if followed correctly, ensure that regardless of the possible detrimental condition of the PC, both the OS and data remain accessible and can quickly, easily be transferred to new hardware without loss.

Always create a fresh drive image before making system changes/Windows updates; you may need to start over!

We were all once "Average Users". We all have our own reasons for doing the things that we do to our systems, we don't need anyone's approval, and we don't all have to do the same things.

Computer Specs

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wavy, oldfry

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I like to use the built-in functions of Windows rather than some third party software (free or not) to perform both types of backups (data & image). With Task Scheduler this entire process is set and rarely needs any attention at all. The only “maintenance” with this automatic backup Windows only setup is physically moving external drives for duplicate offsite backups and moving image files to save for long term use.

I’ve included my detailed instructions for setting up such a backup system in the attached PDF.

Use-Windows-for-Automatic-Backup-System

HTH, Dana:))

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I’m concerned that if I do backups too often, like once a week for instance, that I might be including the malware (if present) in my backups, which makes them useless. How often should I do a full boot drive image and not have to worry about them including any malware that might be hiding on the boot drive? Is once a month after update Tuesday sufficient?

 

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It doesn’t have anything to do with how frequently you backup. Any time you have malware on your computer, it will be included in an image backup.

To be sure your backups are clean, run your anti-malware application to remove the possibilities before you backup.

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PKCano wrote:

To be sure your backups are clean, run your anti-malware application to remove the possibilities before you backup.

Got that automatically covered as well.  Task Scheduler runs a Microsoft Defender full scan at 1:00 AM daily.  Malwarebytes uses its own scheduler to scan daily at 12:20 AM.

Always create a fresh drive image before making system changes/Windows updates; you may need to start over!

We were all once "Average Users". We all have our own reasons for doing the things that we do to our systems, we don't need anyone's approval, and we don't all have to do the same things.

Computer Specs

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I like to operate by the KISS principle (Keep It Simple, Stupid). So I manually backup my data and create drive images so I know exactly what has been done and when and that it was successful. Also I do not use any type of cloud storage as I don’t trust someone else’s computer. Instead I keep everything local and within my direct control via a NAS (Network Attached Storage) which has two drives that mirror data (RAID or redundant array of independent disks). So if one drive were to fail the data is still on the other drive. Also critical data is backed up to removable media and stored in a fire safe.

Part of the process to keep it simple is also always highly minimizing the amount of data used/needed in order to keep the overall size small and easy to backup (ex. 500 MB or less). So no data hording allowed. I also only keep two drive images as I’ve found little use or need to restore from anything older.

Originally I setup reminders in Thunderbird to keep myself on schedule. But I rarely use them anymore as I often remember before a reminder triggers. I like the whole setup and operating this way as it has helped keep my mind/brain active which I’ve found more and more useful as I get older. Use it or lose it as the saying goes. 😀

Linux Mint 21.1 LTS (Cinnamon). Windows 8.1 Pro virtual machine (with Classic/Open Shell) via VirtualBox.

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Is it OK to use File History for backup in Windows 11?

Mark

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File history is not a backup solution. A backup solution is generally in 2 parts.
1. Full image backup so you can rebuild after catastrophic failure – hard disk, theft etc.
2. Data backup. This is a copy of the files you created recently (your data). This should be done at least weekly – I do it daily.

I recommend using a 3rd party backup utility to do this as they are inexpensive – often free – and have more features than Windows backup.
See this thread for tested software.

cheers, Paul

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@Paul T

OK, thanks.

The reason I asked was that I have a book on Windows 11 and File History was the only backup method offered.  I have Macrium for Windows 8.1, so I will use that.

Mark

 

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It’s Microsoft’s recommended, but I don’t recommend it. I still recommend either Windows 7 style or a third party backup software.

Susan Bradley Patch Lady

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Susan Bradley wrote:

I still recommend either Windows 7 style or a third party backup software.

I have never used Windows 7 backup, since I don’t have Windows 7.

I either didn’t do backups, or only recently with Macrium or other backup software.  Apparently one can do Windows 7 backups with Windows 11.  But I shall continue using Macrium Reflect.  I shall have to upgrade my version.  Or I could use Rescuezilla, but it is not as sophisticated as Macrium.

Mark

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Windows 10 or 11 still both offer what they call the “windows 7 style of backup”

https://www.ubackup.com/windows-11/windows-11-backup-and-restore.html#:~:text=In%20Windows%2011%2C%20you%20can,and%20Restore%20(Windows%207).

Susan Bradley Patch Lady

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Mark

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Macrium is a powerful program, but it is for hard-core computer people.  It is not for ordinary users, who may not understand things such as partitions, and other jargon.

The free version is going away.  The support people for the paid version are helpful, but Macrium wastes a great deal of time helping people get around Macrium’s quirks.

Even things such as “My computer died, how do I download another version for my new computer, and how do I transfer files from the old computer to the new computer, if I have a backup of the old computer,” are not answered in advance, and are not easy to find.

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I had a bad experience with being unable to restore using a Macrium Reflects backup.  I had already successfully restored a computer with a Macrium Reflect backup, so I felt confident.

Unfortunately, a computer went crazy and needed its backup to be restored.  I used that backup, but it would not restore.  When I had made the backup, Macrium told me the backup was successful and gave me no error messages.

For users of Macrium Reflect, is there any easy way to check the validity of a backup prior to really needing it?

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You can validate the backup immediately after making it or before restoring it. See the settings at the bottom left “Advanced Options” (wrench)  in the backup definitions.

You can’t restore from within a working copy of Windows. You have to boot from the Rescue USB and restore from backup image on the backup drive/media.

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You can’t restore from within a working copy of Windows. You have to boot from the Rescue USB and restore from backup image on the backup drive/media.

Will have to somewhat disagree a bit with that. While that is certainly preferred, I have restored both Macrium and Acronis images from within Windows when working remotely.  I said a prayer, crossed all my fingers and toes, and drank a big gulp of beer before proceeding, so maybe that helped 🙂

Never Say Never

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wavy

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Although this is an advertisement for a paid tool (O&O Backup), it’s a really good description of common problems with backups, and concrete suggestions of how to build an effective backup plan:  https://blog.oo-software.com/en/tips-tricks-data-backups-what-to-look-out-for-and-how-to-create-a-plan .

Highlights of problems (I’ll leave explanations and suggestions to the content in the link):

• No backup plan
• Inconsistent backups
• Not testing backups
• Storing backups in the same location as original data
• Using outdated backup technology
• Failure to encrypt backups
• Over-reliance on cloud backups

From my own observations, an effective backup plan does not rely on a single tool, methodology or media.  There are reasons for all, and they don’t always overlap. There is a variety of recovery scenarios, as well

There is a time and place for online backups, but those aren’t always usable, especially if you’re trying to rebuild a machine and don’t have Internet connectivity. Synchronization may not always be effective, depending on how you handle deletions and overwrites.  A modern backup tool should allow for specifying an “as of” time, where you can make recoveries based on a specific time stamp — you don’t always want the most recent backups.  With recovery scenarios, it’s one thing to do a recovery of a full system image (including boot capacity),  a volume, or small quantity of files and folders from an accidental overwrite or deletion.  Not all tools that support images may be able to support recovery of individual folders or files.

Testing is essential — if you haven’t proven that you can recover your backups, you don’t have backups.  And it’s not just the question of reliability of your hardware and/or media, it’s also in knowing the methodology of recovering data, including what data you’re recovering (if less than everything).

 

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