Backup Software

[watercooled]

Right, since everyone backs up now (right? ), what have you all used and what do you think i.e. pros/cons? I'll start things off with a few I've used recently:

Cobian backup:
I've been using this for some time to back up to a NAS and it's been pretty solid, but the need to create >500MB shadow copy snaphots for every individual task is less than ideal when using an SSD. You can run it with that feature disabled but then it won't even attempt to back up open/locked files.

It's very customisable and has plenty of features but I feel some of them could be better documented. Also the encryption feature is nice and supports asymmetric encryption but it's not terribly fast and the implementation is an unknown so I wouldn't rely on it for anything very private.

Overall it deserves a lot of praise and I'd recommend it, but I'm looking for something else to avoid having to use VSS for locked files.

Spideroak
I've not been using this for very long but it looks like a great solution for smaller amounts of data. They use a zero-knowledge encryption method, i.e. client-side encryption so they never have access to unencrypted data, unlike others like Dropbox who have been quite misleading about their policy and royally fouled up when they let people sign in as anyone and access their files. The software also handles locked files much better than using VSS IMO.

However, there's no simple way of purging older copies of files which may or may not be a problem, but if you have some fairly large, frequently-changing files, they will eat through your storage pretty rapidly. One way of avoiding this is to set the backup schedule to daily instead of automatic, but there's no option for anything less than daily e.g. hourly. The software also seems a bit clunky and has crashed on me a few times when I've been a bit heavy-handed with it.

I do rate it highly though, it's just a pity you can't use the software to do backups to LAN.

Windows Backup
Well I've not had much experience at all but unless you buy one of the overpriced versions of Windows, you can only use it to backup to local disks which makes it near useless, for me anyway.

[watercooled]

I was hoping this would end up a reference thread for people comparing software, I could add a list of recommended software, for instance.

You don't have to write an in-depth review or anything (although it's definitely welcome), just what you've been using, if you'd recommend it, and anything which could be improved.

[badass]

I've used the Win7 Pro/Enterprise backup tool for backing up to network and it's pretty good.
I'd say if you've shelled out the extra for Pro/Ultimate, it's not worth bothering with extra backup software.
The management of the backups is adequate for most and the ability to back up to network is a definite plus.
I have successfully performed a restore from a network location by booting from the Windows 7 DVD, providing server and share name, credentials and which backup to restore from.
The only thing to remember is that for it to be simple, Windows 7 must have drivers for your Network Card on the DVD.

[shaithis]

You can also have NIC drivers on a USB stick and add the drivers before doing the restore.

I haven't tried it (and doubt it works) but can you trick Windows backup by mapping a drive to your NAS and backing up to that instead of a UNC name?

[watercooled]

No I think Windows goes to some length to detect network drives, I have my shares mapped as drives and Windows Backup won't play ball. Even so it's still not perfect if you have an SSD system drive IMO, 500MB shadow copy snapshots (that's on a fresh install) or larger for every backup isn't ideal. I know it's a pretty robust way of copying locked files but SpiderOak manages fine without it.

[Pancake]

I have Acronis Backup and Restore, i use it to backup my server every tuesday.

I have set it so when the 1TB mirror gets full it will start to overwrite the older ones

[badass]

You can also have NIC drivers on a USB stick and add the drivers before doing the restore.

I haven't tried it (and doubt it works) but can you trick Windows backup by mapping a drive to your NAS and backing up to that instead of a UNC name?

IIRC I tried the drive mapping technique unsuccessfully but don't quote me on that

In terms of NIC drivers you have to hit shift-F10 and then type dvrload <name of .inf file> and then another command that's really long to restart the networking. If you have the driver handy on the USB stick and the commands written somewhere, pretty easy but not as good as being able to use a GUI to select the drivers for most home users IMHO.
I did think about mapping an iSCSI drive to windows and that almost certainly will trick it, however you will not have access to the iSCSI drive when you need to restore it, making it pointless.
You really need external storage (e.g. USB/Firewire/eSATA) for the backup program with Windows 7 Home to be useful. If you do have that and access to another machine, you could use synctoy to sync the files on the backup drive to a network location so at least if your machine goes pop and the NAS doesn't, you have a restore path.

[badass]

No I think Windows goes to some length to detect network drives, I have my shares mapped as drives and Windows Backup won't play ball. Even so it's still not perfect if you have an SSD system drive IMO, 500MB shadow copy snapshots (that's on a fresh install) or larger for every backup isn't ideal. I know it's a pretty robust way of copying locked files but SpiderOak manages fine without it.

I set my restore checkpoints to only take up a percentage on my disk. After the first shadow copy, they can be only a few MB. The backup that takes up the space is the system image. That gets replaced every now and again but I don;t know how windows decides it's out of date.

[watercooled]

When the Cobian VSS requester starts it, it creates a new shadow copy then deletes it after each task, if there are two backup tasks it will create one for each rather than using the same and deleting it after the final task. I have system restore completely disabled so VSS is on manual start so that might be why, but I suspect Cobian would request the full snapshot anyway.

I still use Cobian for the majority of files but I now use SpiderOak in addition to backup some application data folders, for instance.

I quite like differential mode which some programs lack in favour of only full and incremental - I find differential is the best compromise between storage needed and restore simplicity with ~weekly full backups. It's not ideal for everything though, which is partly why I have multiple backup tasks.

[peterb]

I use rdump for my linux server.

[blueball]

I have a cardboard box under my desk. I throw my old disks in that!

[vinnyT]

I use acronis trueimage 11 to make a disk image of my c:\ once a week, and use synctoy for syncing my data files with a couple of external drives twice a week.

[cookie365]

Superflexible is really good as a copying-files kind of backup

[petrefax]

I have Acronis Backup and Restore, i use it to backup my server every tuesday.

I have set it so when the 1TB mirror gets full it will start to overwrite the older ones

i also have acronis backing up my server, used it at work for backing up telephony servers & its never let me down, plus not having to learn anything about how it operates cos i've already used it extensively was a bonus

[edgars70]

I use Paragon, which is free. It can backup to network drives. You can set up rules which specify the type of files you wish to back up.

I've even used it to restore from a backup and it works well.

[Sputnik]

I use Acronis true Image, I first got to use it when I couldn't find any other software that would back up and restore a raid array. TI did it first time with no problems at all and I like the easy to use interface. I recently upgraded to the latest version and found it difficult to get used to the new GUI at first.