backup help

[UrbanFreestyle]

Hi crew. this has been a nightmare so far.

So to put it simply I have my PC, it uses an m.2 for the OS and 2x 3TB drives - One for photos and the other for Data (software etc)

I have a NAS which i will be using for my backups.

 

I would like to backup my Photo and Data drives.

I'm thinking i will do Full backup every month.

Would incrimental or differential work better?

 

Brain is fried.

[Slayerking92]

Use Veeam for windows.  Its free, does snapshot based backups, will only backup the changes between full backups.

 

https://www.veeam.com/windows-endpoint-server-backup-free.html

 

[dalekphalm]

6 minutes ago, UrbanFreestyle said:

Hi crew. this has been a nightmare so far.

So to put it simply I have my PC, it uses an m.2 for the OS and 2x 3TB drives - One for photos and the other for Data (software etc)

I have a NAS which i will be using for my backups.

 

I would like to backup my Photo and Data drives.

I'm thinking i will do Full backup every month.

Would incrimental or differential work better?

 

Brain is fried.

Incremental and Differential work very similarly - the main difference between the two is that Incremental backups keep track of changes between the last "full" backup.

Example:
Full backup on Monday

Incremental all week

Incremental will only backup the changes between Monday and Tuesday, Tuesday and Wednesday, Wednesday and Thursday, etc.

Incremental backups only backup changes since the last backup - whether that was full or incremental.

 

Example 2:

Full backup on Monday

Differential all week

Differential will backup the changes between Monday and Tuesday, Monday and Wednesday, Monday and Thursday, etc.

Differential backups only backup changes since the last full backup, and ignore any changes from previous differential backups.

 

Basically Incremental backups are more efficient, and have essentially replaced Differential as the norm.

https://www.acronis.com/en-us/articles/incremental-differential-backups/

 

In terms of software, there are tons of options:

UrBackup

Veeam

Windows built-in backup

Acronis

etc

[UrbanFreestyle]

The software i am using is Novabackup from Buffalo.

Basically all i want is a copy of my HDD, and if my hdd craps itself (again) i can restore from the NAS. I'm not really after version control etc. Just basically a clone of my current HDD.

[dalekphalm]

5 minutes ago, UrbanFreestyle said:

The software i am using is Novabackup from Buffalo.

Basically all i want is a copy of my HDD, and if my hdd craps itself (again) i can restore from the NAS. I'm not really after version control etc. Just basically a clone of my current HDD.

Does Novabackup do image based backups? (Usually "snapshots") - I assume so.

 

Anyway, you'll want to do a full backup at whatever frequency you care (Monthly or weekly, whatever).

 

However, you might as well do Incremental backups daily in the period in between full backups - that is, unless your backup NAS is extremely low on storage.

 

Note: Just to clarify, Incremental and Differential backups are not full backups. Which is perhaps why there's confusion in the responses.

 

Full backups are just full backups. That means every time a full backup is run, the entire drive, and every single file (whether changed or unchanged) is backed up again. Incremental/Differential backups happen in between full backups (if you want them to, anyway).

 

You can just do Full Backups and nothing else if you want. But I personally suggest doing daily Incrementals as well.

[UrbanFreestyle]

Space isnt too much of an issue, Current data is about 1.3tb on PC, NAS has 4x 2tb drives in raid 5.

My PC is turned on and used (with changes) maybe once a week ish.

So perhaps monthly full backups with weekly incrementals?

[dalekphalm]

12 minutes ago, UrbanFreestyle said:

Space isnt too much of an issue, Current data is about 1.3tb on PC, NAS has 4x 2tb drives in raid 5.

My PC is turned on and used (with changes) maybe once a week ish.

So perhaps monthly full backups with weekly incrementals?

That would work too. Though to be frank, if there are very little changes (once per week, for example), then having Incremental run every day is even better, since if there's nothing that has changed, it'll just skip today's backup.

 

If the changes are as infrequent as you suggest, there's really no downside to setting up daily incrementals.

 

But as always, you should do what you think is best.

[UrbanFreestyle]

I guess the only query would be that i presume i would need the PC on every day for it to run and skip the backup?

[dalekphalm]

2 minutes ago, UrbanFreestyle said:

I guess the only query would be that i presume i would need the PC on every day for it to run and skip the backup?

Well typically the backup software will either check in and run a backup, or just skip it if another backup is due shortly, if it misses a scheduled one.

 

But if the PC itself is turned off most of the week? Sure, you can do incrementals once per week. My apologies, I missed that piece of information earlier.

[UrbanFreestyle]

nah the PC is only really on when i need it so that is about 2 hrs (or less) about once a week or so.

[dalekphalm]

5 minutes ago, UrbanFreestyle said:

nah the PC is only really on when i need it so that is about 2 hrs (or less) about once a week or so.

Okay, in that case, having a weekly incremental should be fine. You should check what options the software has - you might be able to configure it to automatically shut down the PC after a backup completes. That way you can just leave it running after you use it, let it backup, and then let it shut off by itself.