Backup software.

[ukracer]

I am aware there is a myriad of backup software around but (and I understand you get what you payfor) (sometimes) a lot of it seems to have moved to pay per year and even then its not cheap. I am guessing not much Open Source backup software exists? I have found the sponsored Easeus and Macrium reflect .

I even have a 2019 version of True Image (which seems to only image the computer its installed on.) BUT I would like to use the same software to backup ISO files of several Desktops and Laptops to a NAS and a Server.

I have seen stuff like Veam and other programs the pros use but sadly the price puts it out of reach especially as I need a garage roof re felted before Xmas that will do the job?

Anyone have any suggestions that will do the job?

 

[skotl]

Do you have any kind of subscription with Microsoft OneDrive or Google Drive? If you're already paying they can offer pretty price-effective backup options.

 

[Kayos]

So I don't use a paid for package

Because I work across various machines everything is done on OneDrive, but as we know the cloud is just someone else's computer

This is both live synced and incrementally backed up to 2 different raid arrays on my server, the former is a current version and the latter is incase of corruption

All business critical info is further backed up on a different cloud, a Nas in a different location and physical media

It mostly happens automatically with Linux tools, the business critical stuff is updated manually and I run a nightly checksum on it, but that happens automatically. Old versions of business critical data is kept on the server/one drive and being honest it's over kill for me, but over kill is my second favourite kind of kill and my corporate job taught me you can never be too careful

 

[Pilgrim22]

Ive used Terabyte Drive Image for years now, never let me down. from complete system images to individual files / folders, you can schedule it to run automaticaly to your NAS etc.
There is a 30 day trail available and a bundle offer of $60 and the bundle give you tons of other tools.

Bundle Info

The BootIt Collection and the Drive Image Backup and Restore Suite bundle saves you money and ensures that you have the best set of tools available.

www.terabyteunlimited.com

 

[TryingToWeld]

Free and bombproof, but not the easiest to use: https://clonezilla.org/

 

[Robotstar5]

So I don't use a paid for package

Because I work across various machines everything is done on OneDrive, but as we know the cloud is just someone else's computer

This is both live synced and incrementally backed up to 2 different raid arrays on my server, the former is a current version and the latter is incase of corruption

All business critical info is further backed up on a different cloud, a Nas in a different location and physical media

It mostly happens automatically with Linux tools, the business critical stuff is updated manually and I run a nightly checksum on it, but that happens automatically. Old versions of business critical data is kept on the server/one drive and being honest it's over kill for me, but over kill is my second favourite kind of kill and my corporate job taught me you can never be too careful

I wonder if JLR had been as fastidious as you whether they would have been hit so hard recently?.
I remember Rover at Longbridge would do a data dump at 3am every morning to a secure server in Birmingham, that was in the 80's.

 

[Craig-SM]

I’d recommend cloud storage too as easily synced over your various devices. I don’t use One Drive but Dropbox instead as it was the market leader well before One Drive arrived. One of the great features is version history just in case you cockup and don’t realise until later, you can just look at previous versions and restore the correct one.

 

[daleyd]

Do you want software to take an image of the pc that you can restore if it fails, or are you talking about backing up your data? They are 2 related, but different things in my experience.

 

[skotl]

I’d recommend cloud storage too as easily synced over your various devices. I don’t use One Drive but Dropbox instead as it was the market leader well before One Drive arrived. One of the great features is version history just in case you cockup and don’t realise until later, you can just look at previous versions and restore the correct one.

Agree. It’s so simple nowadays and I have no issue with it being in the cloud. Quite the opposite, in fact, as it’s a headache removed.


Wife’s pc (work and fun) toasted its SSD a couple of months back - new drive, reinstall of windows and resync with onedrive and she was up and running again in less than an hour.

 

[BrokenBiker]

I just use drop box now, couple of free accounts across a few emails addresses has covered everything I've needed

 

[gaz1]

I am aware there is a myriad of backup software around but (and I understand you get what you payfor) (sometimes) a lot of it seems to have moved to pay per year and even then its not cheap. I am guessing not much Open Source backup software exists? I have found the sponsored Easeus and Macrium reflect .

I even have a 2019 version of True Image (which seems to only image the computer its installed on.) BUT I would like to use the same software to backup ISO files of several Desktops and Laptops to a NAS and a Server.

I have seen stuff like Veam and other programs the pros use but sadly the price puts it out of reach especially as I need a garage roof re felted before Xmas that will do the job?

Anyone have any suggestions that will do the job?

if your meaning an image of the pc when everything is installed onto the pc, done of each pc all stored onto one hard drive then acornis can do it

remember i have 6 pcs so have to create an image after there all are installed first, any updates to them wont be included so be warned

i found numbering them with a notebook attachement and some writing advised what they was

 

[ukracer]

Do you have any kind of subscription with Microsoft OneDrive or Google Drive? If you're already paying they can offer pretty price-effective backup options.

I think I do...Will check.

 

[ukracer]

So I don't use a paid for package

Because I work across various machines everything is done on OneDrive, but as we know the cloud is just someone else's computer

This is both live synced and incrementally backed up to 2 different raid arrays on my server, the former is a current version and the latter is incase of corruption

All business critical info is further backed up on a different cloud, a Nas in a different location and physical media

It mostly happens automatically with Linux tools, the business critical stuff is updated manually and I run a nightly checksum on it, but that happens automatically. Old versions of business critical data is kept on the server/one drive and being honest it's over kill for me, but over kill is my second favourite kind of kill and my corporate job taught me you can never be too careful

I am intrigued now. If everything is done on one drive I have three examples to know how it's done.

1st I need to remotely take an image of my Grandsons desktop drive. So if it goes belly or he deletes something he shouldn't I can reinstall it. Preferably remotely but 99% of the time it would not be hard to pop over with a usb flash drive.

2nd How would I back up.my one drive to a NAS I have set up at home for storing backups.

3rd I have a server that I want to use for initial installs ( with updates and software installs)

I want to do that for approx 6 Desktops and 4 laptops.

 

[ukracer]

Do you have any kind of subscription with Microsoft OneDrive or Google Drive? If you're already paying they can offer pretty price-effective backup options.

 

[Pigeon_Droppings2]

I use iDrive...I have it setup to backup a dedicated HDD including the directory structure so an individual file can be restored.

I've had to use it 2 or 3 times and it's worked very well. I believe iDrive is locally encrypted so only encrypted info is being backed up over the net.

Think I started out using a mirror cloud drive but it wasn't really ideal.

 

[Farside]

For the past several years I've been backing up system with AOMEI every quarter, since nothing much changes.
Also, for the same time I've been doing Free File Sync once a month for data files. FFS is free or there's a Donation Edition.
FFS is good, and the Donation Edition gives a few extra tweaks.
Both of them are load and trigger, and leave them to it.

 

[skotl]

I am intrigued now. If everything is done on one drive I have three examples to know how it's done.

1st I need to remotely take an image of my Grandsons desktop drive. So if it goes belly or he deletes something he shouldn't I can reinstall it. Preferably remotely but 99% of the time it would not be hard to pop over with a usb flash drive.

2nd How would I back up.my one drive to a NAS I have set up at home for storing backups.

3rd I have a server that I want to use for initial installs ( with updates and software installs)

I want to do that for approx 6 Desktops and 4 laptops.

OneDrive and Google Drive perform in a similar manner - both have a single folder on your desktop that they will sync to the cloud.
Within that folder you can have whatever you like (Word and Excel docs but also binary files like photos, videos and even drive images) as long as you still within the limits of the subscription, which looks like 2TB according to your image.

You can install and use OneDrive and Google Drive on as many computers as you like, and it will synchronise the folders in each. By default, "secondary" machines have a link to the cloud image and opening it will download it from the cloud. In practise this is utterly unnoticeable and might take a few seconds to open a larger file which isn't currently on that machine.

Neither app do "backups" in the traditional sense, as in you can't get an image of your computer and then restore from one of the tools - better to think of it as a "file sync to the cloud".

Finally, both operate versioning which is outside of your storage limits so, if you change a word doc for example then you can restore an earlier version of the file.
This extends to "soft deletes" where OneDrive maintains a copy of the file for 90 days. I'm not as familiar with Google Drive but I'd expect it to be similar.

---

An example of the "cloud image" in operation. These files are on my Windows machine, and in the cloud, and this Mac has links to them. Opening one of the links downloads the file.

You can see here, that "data.xlsx" is physically on this machine, and that the others will be downloaded on demand.

You can also see that the Santander file is shared with another person (my wife) on her own Office / OneDrive account.

 

[skotl]

BTW - that "soft delete" is one of the reasons why I no longer manage my own backups at home - a while ago I had an app that copied files from my main PC to a local storage and it wet the bed one day, and mirrored an older version of the files back to my PC, losing me months' of data.

Knowing that I can go find a deleted file or folder in onedrive and get it back easily has save my bacon a few times.

 

[ukracer]

OneDrive and Google Drive perform in a similar manner - both have a single folder on your desktop that they will sync to the cloud.
Within that folder you can have whatever you like (Word and Excel docs but also binary files like photos, videos and even drive images) as long as you still within the limits of the subscription, which looks like 2TB according to your image.

You can install and use OneDrive and Google Drive on as many computers as you like, and it will synchronise the folders in each. By default, "secondary" machines have a link to the cloud image and opening it will download it from the cloud. In practise this is utterly unnoticeable and might take a few seconds to open a larger file which isn't currently on that machine.

Neither app do "backups" in the traditional sense, as in you can't get an image of your computer and then restore from one of the tools - better to think of it as a "file sync to the cloud".

Finally, both operate versioning which is outside of your storage limits so, if you change a word doc for example then you can restore an earlier version of the file.
This extends to "soft deletes" where OneDrive maintains a copy of the file for 90 days. I'm not as familiar with Google Drive but I'd expect it to be similar.

---

An example of the "cloud image" in operation. These files are on my Windows machine, and in the cloud, and this Mac has links to them. Opening one of the links downloads the file.

View attachment 517558
You can see here, that "data.xlsx" is physically on this machine, and that the others will be downloaded on demand.

You can also see that the Santander file is shared with another person (my wife) on her own Office / OneDrive account.

This sounds similar to the way I work. I use Dropbox but it's not always certain if it's backing up.
But I do have a couple of laptops with small 500 gig drives that I set as cloud only as I store over a TB in Dropbox.

In addition I also save all the drives I have used when I have installed larger drives. 99% of what's on those drives I already have on the new drives in the windows system such as download folder, user desktop, pictures, documents etc.

My plan is to slowly prune those old drives (now folders on larger drive)
But preserving backups on a server ans/or NAS until I am sure I don't need them.

 

[ukracer]

Ive used Terabyte Drive Image for years now, never let me down. from complete system images to individual files / folders, you can schedule it to run automaticaly to your NAS etc.
There is a 30 day trail available and a bundle offer of $60 and the bundle give you tons of other tools.

Bundle Info

The BootIt Collection and the Drive Image Backup and Restore Suite bundle saves you money and ensures that you have the best set of tools available.

www.terabyteunlimited.com

Just purchased that as it seems to have 100% of what I need.
Only thing i don't like so far is you need to pay again for a new Major version. But at least if its crap it does not cost hundreds for lifetime updates.