Backup Scheduling

DoreenC · ‎12-01-2011

Hi all,

New member here. I recently had to recover my machine from a rootkit infection. Tough going...and in recovering I wished that I had done a better job of backing up my computer regularly. I'm running XP Home edition with Ghost 14. I've read the backup schedule article which cleared up quite a few points but I want to make sure I really understand it so I can do a much better job of scheduling my backups.

I understand how to define a back up job (set to run monthly) with incremental backups scheduled every week as discussed in the article.

So, to double check, at the end of the month I would have ONE recovery point (set) that would include 4-5 backups (depending on the number of weeks in the month), right?

If I set the number of recovery points to save for this backup job to 6, would I have 6 months of backups on my machine?

If I had to RESTORE a backup, would I have to pick the base backup to restore first? And then each incremental backup? Or.....? How would I restore the most current month's backup job?

I know it's probably a simplistic question but I'd appreciate it if someone could explain this to me.

Thanks so much for the help....and any backup advice you can give me. :)

Doreen

DaveH · ‎01-06-2010

DoreenC wrote:

So, to double check, at the end of the month I would have ONE recovery point (set) that would include 4-5 backups (depending on the number of weeks in the month), right?
Correct

If I set the number of recovery points to save for this backup job to 6, would I have 6 months of backups on my machine?
Also correct, a backup job consists of the base image plus all the incrementals

If I had to RESTORE a backup, would I have to pick the base backup to restore first? And then each incremental backup? Or.....? How would I restore the most current month's backup job?
No, you only need to pick the one image or incremental you want to restore to, Ghost does the rest for you and puts together all the necessary pieces.
For instance if you pick month one, week two, Ghost restores the system to that point in time. If you pick month one, week three, it gets restored to the third week instead of the second.
Normally you choose the last incremental file to restore the system to a state as recent as possible unless you need to go back farther in time to correct the problem your having.

I know it's probably a simplistic question but I'd appreciate it if someone could explain this to me.
Thanks so much for the help....and any backup advice you can give me. :)
Doreen

Dave

redk9258 · ‎02-22-2010

I would go with daily incrementals. They are small and run very quickly.

DaveH · ‎01-06-2010

What do you consider small Red?

My daily incrementals are always over 400MB. Most of that, maybe 250 MB or so are the NAV virus definitions that supposedly don't get restored.

The rest of the stuff is the mail folders, my accounting data files and registry stuff I was expecting.

Dave

redk9258 · ‎02-22-2010

Well, I guess it depends on how much your drive changes. My C: partition averaged 524MB over the last 8 incrementals. The sizes varied between 215MB to over 1.09GB. The base .v2i file is 32.5GB . It really depends on how much you use your PC. I have been doing a lot on here lately.

Sometimes my D: partition (42.5 GB base .v2i) has incrementals of 512KB to over 100MB. Again it depends on how many changes.

I think if I waited a week to do an incremental, it would be the size of all 5 days combined. Don't you?

DaveH · ‎01-06-2010

I don't think it would be cumulative like that. At least not for me.

All my virus definitions files get backup up every day so it would basically be the same size if it was scheduled once a week.

Same as the registry hives, mail folders, and other stuff, they never get 7 times the original size in one week they just slighlty change so the whole thing needs to be backed up every day.

Brian_K · ‎04-19-2009

redk9258 wrote:
It really depends on how much you use your PC.

A bit off topic. My daughter doesn't install apps. She just uses the internet, chat, email, photos and video. Her antivirus app is not installed in the C: drive so the daily definition updates go elsewhere and her email store and data are not in the C: drive. Her imaging app creates differential images (not incremental) of the C: drive. After a month her differential image size is around 50 MB. That's all. So not many sectors have changed since the 5 GB base backup one month previously.

redk9258 · ‎02-22-2010

I wish Ghost could do differential backups too. Especially when doing Cold Backups.

dickevans · ‎04-08-2008

redk9258 wrote:
I wish Ghost could do differential backups too. Especially when doing Cold Backups.

Red,

Sounds like a really good suggestion for the team working on the next version

I'll vote for it.

Dick
Win7x64 SP1 current NIS V20

DaveH · ‎01-06-2010

I wish Ghost could do sector based incrementals OR differentials.

It backs up the whole file, even if it's only slightly changed.

With the Norton Online Backup program it only backs up the part that has actually changed. I saw a Symantec employee explaining if you had a multi-GB .pst file it doesn't need to upload the entire file each time, it only uploads the actual part of the file that changed.

Dave