Forum Discussion

jtburnett's avatar
jtburnett
Level 4
12 years ago

'Best Practice' Question

I have 3 drives (C:\, D:\, K:\) backing up to a 2 TB External drive J:\ My backup definition is: incrementally with a new monthly base. This results in a restore point consisting of 750GB for the 3 drives combined. As I understand things, with a 2TB drive, you're limited to 1 recovery set; right? (I can't choose 2 sets to be saved because that would require enough space to hold: 750GB X 750GB + the newly completed 750GB one- right?). So, now the question becomes: is 1 set, verified, good enough; or should I acquire a 4TB drive that will hold 3 recovery point sets? I realize that this is kind of a rhetorical question, but thoughts? Thank you
Backing Up
Backup and Recovery
Best Practice
Configuring
SSR 2013
System Recovery
Windows 7
  • criley's avatar
    criley
    12 years ago

    I don't anticipate needing backups of more than a month, but is by selecting  'verify recovery points' alone, definately a, cast in stone good backup, or would it be better to have at least 2 SETS to increase your chances of at least having 1 good set?

    In my opinion, it's good practice to have at least 2 backup sets AND also do periodic restores as a way of validating the images are good.

    Using verify is a good way to ensure your backups are valid but there's nothing as good as actually performing test restores every now and then.

  • DStain's avatar
    DStain
    Level 5
    12 years ago

    Depending on the amount of data (including O/S and Apps) on the source drives when incremental backups are ran SSR will first create a base backup the size of which depends on how much is on the drives and will compress the data. Thereafter incrementals will kick in and backup any changes made resulting in a vastly reduced file size.

    So to answer your question it all depends on what is stored on the drives that will determine what size backup drive you need.

    For example Drive C: contains O/S and apps, Drive D: contains Video and Drive K: music.

    the only changes there will be video and music so the incrementals will only be small.

     

    Deric

     

     

  • jtburnett's avatar
    jtburnett
    Level 4
    12 years ago

    I don't understand. What is a recovery point set then? What does it consist of?

  • Markus_Koestler's avatar
    Markus_Koestler
    Moderator
    12 years ago

    A recovery point set consists of all full backups and the related incremental backups for all drives being part of that recovery point set.

  • jtburnett's avatar
    jtburnett
    Level 4
    12 years ago

    Ah! Then 2 or 3 SETS at 750 GIGABYTES each won't fit onto a 2TB drive- only 1, my math say's. :)  Unless of course you could extract them somehow, and over-dry them in the dryer to shrink they're size. (limiting only 2 SETS to be saved, would be 750GB + 750GB + the newly created sucessful recovery point that has to be created before it deletes the oldest set) = 2.125 TERABYTES

    So, back to the original question: is 1 set, verified, good enough; or should I acquire a 4TB drive that will hold 2-3 recovery point sets? 

    I don't anticipate needing backups of more than a month, but is by selecting  'verify recovery points' alone, definately a, cast in stone good backup, or would it be better to have at least 2 SETS to increase your chances of at least having 1 good set?

    Thank you again

  • DStain's avatar
    DStain
    Level 5
    12 years ago

    Just as a matter of interest, 750 gig is a lot of data, are you sure that is the size of the backups.

    To try this out I would run 3 seperate backups of C,D and K into 3 seperate folders on the external drive and use "One Time Backup" to do it.

    A "OTB" is a simple, easy setup manual backup and can be used to fall back on as a full system backup.

    When completed hover the mouse over the folders to find out what size the backup is, if you fancy doing that let us know the outcome.

     

    Deric

  • jtburnett's avatar
    jtburnett
    Level 4
    12 years ago

    Yes I'm sure..

    C:\ is: 183GB (O.S. and 'mainstream legitimate' programs; that change in small incrementals)

    D:\ is: 476 GB (all Poser items; that change in small incrementals) 

    K:\ is 134GB (misc files; vids, music, pics, etc.; that change in small incrementals)

     

  • DStain's avatar
    DStain
    Level 5
    12 years ago

    So is that the compressed total data? in that case a far bigger destination drive will be required.

    I just backup my multi boot machine with 6 O/Ss total data = 95.7 gig and when backed up using standard compression it reduces to 48.8 gig. That is compressed by 49%

     

    Deric

  • criley's avatar
    criley
    Moderator
    12 years ago

    I don't anticipate needing backups of more than a month, but is by selecting  'verify recovery points' alone, definately a, cast in stone good backup, or would it be better to have at least 2 SETS to increase your chances of at least having 1 good set?

    In my opinion, it's good practice to have at least 2 backup sets AND also do periodic restores as a way of validating the images are good.

    Using verify is a good way to ensure your backups are valid but there's nothing as good as actually performing test restores every now and then.

  • criley's avatar
    criley
    Moderator
    12 years ago

    To add to my earlier response...

    In order to do periodic restore tests, you can just double click on the appropriate recovery point file which will open into the recovery point browser. From here you can restore selected files/folders.

    Alternatively you can right-click and choose to mount as a temporary volume. From here you can just copy files/folders as a way of restoring.

    Hope that helps.