I'm new to this board. I'm running Ghost 15 on Windows 7 Pro. I have two identical internal 250gb Seagate Drives. The first drive is partitioned in two, with the 50gb C partition used for the operating system and the 200gb D partition for data. The second drive is used for backups only.
Initially I used the default settings in Ghost to image the C drive and do file and folder backups in daily increments. But when I tested the recovery process the C drive backup was fine but I got lost trying to recover all the files and folders. Then I read Allen M's excellent tutorial advising against file and folder backups. So I set Ghost up to do images of both partitions. But Ghost will only let me do an incremental image of one partition. So I have to do a complete image of the data partition, which takes ages and uses lots of space, even with High compression.
My question is this. Should I lose the advantages of partitioning and make the first disk one large partition C and the second disk one large partition D? Or can you kind people suggest an alternative?
I have successfully made a full backup of my drives, using Norton Ghost 15.
I now wish to add to the backup, on a regular basis, all additional/changed files/data since the last backup.
I believe that the term for this is 'incremental', but I do not know the procedure for adding only the files/data which have changed since the last backup.
I have read the Help section, but this topic does not seem to be covered.
Welcome Tony,
You created a backup set to make the initial, full, backups. If you set a schedule for each of those sets Ghost will review what was backed up, what has changed and make the incremental backups. The keys are the same set and the scheduled date. It can be done manually but I'm too /busy/forgetful to keep track of it so I use a schedule and let the program and the computer keep track of it all.
It sounds like you did a one time backup (Independent recovery Point). I do not believe you can start an Incremental Recovery Point that is based on that backup. You will need to start a new backup and when going through the wizard, you should get to a screen that gives a choice of either Independent Recovery Point or Recovery Point Set. You want Recovery Point Set. Note that Ghost will only allow one backup job per partition. If you already have one defined, you need to delete it. You should not have to delete the backup though (.v2i file).
Thanks to those who gave advice I can now carry out incremental backups.
Why is it not called 'update'? Everybody understands what that means.
I have another question. what exactly is a 'recovery point'?
Thanks again
Hi,
An incremental backup is a copy of the changes since the last full or incremental backup. It isn't an update in that it does not change any of the previously backed up information.
A recovery point is a place that you can return to if something 'bad' happens. Your system was fully operational at that point and during the clean up from whatever happened you should be able to return to that point and have your fully operational system to work with again.
Definitions are not from any document so there may be some differences with published data.
My question is this. Should I lose the advantages of partitioning and make the first disk one large partition C and the second disk one large partition D?
Vaughan,
Keep your current partitions. I suggest you only image the OS partition. Use data backup software for the Data partition. You should be able to backup changes in your 200 GB Data partition in a few minutes. Have a folder on your second HD called Data_Backup (or similar) and everything in the Data partition is backed up to this folder. I use Second Copy 8 but there are lots of alternatives.
I think of you nuke the backup jobs and start fresh, you will then have the option of incrementals on your D partition. I used Ghost 15 like this for a couple of years on Windows 7 64-bit Pro.
It was nice to have the main HDD partitioned this way when I ended up changing the OS to an SSD. I used Ghost 15 to recover the C Drive image to the blank SSD and the D Drive image to the original HDD, I wiped the drive first and then used the whole thing as my D Drive.
Like Allen and most other Ghost fanatics here, I despise F & F Backup. It is much faster and easier to retrieve Files and Folders from an image file (full or incremental) than F & F Backup.
Thanks for your input. As I understand it I would lose the ability to incrementally backup the C drive, but that is not very important anyway as it is the data on D which is more likely to change. And I can just do an occasional one time backup of the C drive.
I followed your advice and set up Ghost to run incremental backups of both partitions. But after 5 days my destination drive is full. The C drive backups look OK, but the original D drive backup is 98.1 gb, the second one 61gb and the third one 52gb. I don't get it.
It's a file and folder backup tool only, so don't waste your time trying to backup your entire C drive because it can't restore the operating system or programs.
Although the subsequent backups only backup the files that have changed, they are not "incrementals" because they are not a separate backup with the original full backup being retained. The subsequent backups replace the changed files so you do not retain the previous versions, technically it's a single version "mirror" backup.