backups and backup options

[Quackers101]

hmm, what is the best backup solution people here like?

Are any of the options from windows 10 any good, from an image of windows 10, cloud, full?

Are brands like for example samsungs and others, are they nice to deal with backup related stuff too?

What would be recommended for what, and if not doing any cloud stuff?

 

[Quackers101]

Also what people find easier to use?

[iceblade2097]

Acronis True Image is very user friendly.  It allows tons of options to customize your back up.  Though personally I am not a fan of their customer service.  They offer both a stand alone license which is good for that version or a subscription.  Be careful if you do the subscription and plan on renewing before your time is up as not all your time remaining may or may not roll over depending if you are renewing for the same level of subscription or not.

 

To use my case for example.  I had the Advanced subscription for 5 computers 1 year subscription with 500 GB of cloud storage over the holidays the Premium subscription for 5 computers, 1 year, 1 TB cloud storage  was discounted cheaper than what I had purchased the advanced for.  I had 7 months left on the advanced subscription.  I spoke to a rep who said all the time would roll over.

 

After purchase only 5 months of the 7 months remaining rolled over.  Spoke to a different rep who informed me they pro rate they plans if you are going up or down.  I was unable to find anywhere on their site that mentioned it was pro rated when switching plans.  You also aren't given the option to use up your first subscription then apply the new one.

 

Other than that the software is probably one of the more full featured you will find even offers ransom ware protection which they claim does not conflict your anti virus ransomware protection.  I have found their ransomware protection a bit over zealous at times if you go through your outlook messages too fast it sometimes flags it as a ransomware attempt from outlook just syncing to keep up.  Acronis offers one of the most full fledged FAQ and option descriptions I have seen.

 

 

As for the built in back up in Windows 10 it uses file history since windows 8.  I haven't personally used it but its pretty straight forward for backing up your files.  Its free and built in which are nice though I didn't see an options for the following, encryption, or compressing your back ups.  Also note you have to check your action center to see if an error occurred during the back up instead of a nice outlook email with a log. From what I can tell there is not a backup verification either.

 

 

As for alternatives to Acronis, Aomei and EASE US have gotten decent reviews and offer life time upgrades on a single license.  Though I had a hard time finding information on the those two companies.

 

 

 

 

[Quackers101]

Yeah, lucky that jayz posted a video on Aomei

it looked very nice, while still having a paid version.

 

Also thanks for a lot of info!

I was kinda worried the talk about the blank spaces on an HDD, forgot what that was called.

when full it might not look full in the system, but it's using all of the HDD and that it could be somewhat of an issue for copying? (Defragmentation?)

I just remember Norton having something that goes a bit around that.

 

Really didn't want to use cloud, even if it's dam convenient.

[iceblade2097]

3 hours ago, Quackers101 said:

Yeah, lucky that jayz posted a video on Aomei

it looked very nice, while still having a paid version.

 

Also thanks for a lot of info!

I was kinda worried the talk about the blank spaces on an HDD, forgot what that was called.

when full it might not look full in the system, but it's using all of the HDD and that it could be somewhat of an issue for copying? (Defragmentation?)

I just remember Norton having something that goes a bit around that.

 

Really didn't want to use cloud, even if it's dam convenient.

As far as I know the capacity should always show correctly as far as used space.  If it is not you might want to do a full wipe of the drive and a fresh install.  Doing a full format on hard drives (not ssds) will mark where bad sectors are and tell the OS to not write to them.  There have been cases on memory cards and SSDs where they are knock offs and someone has rewritten the micro controller to show more space than it really has.  As a rule of thumb I wouldn't recommend filling a hard drive/ssd/sshd more than 80% capacity.  As you can experience some performance hits and Windows acting funny.  This can happen when you if you put you computer into sleep mode it dumps everything you have in ram to the storage or if you system runs out of ram and uses your storage to help the ram.

 

Triva for you, it was common on older games Windows 95, 98ect to see in the install screen to allow extra space for the games Swap file.  Which is the extra data it would need on the storage at times but not all the time.  I sort of miss those installers where it would say "your system is correctly configured to play wave files."

 

See this LTT video for more info on knock off memory controlers on SSD/memory cards:

 

 

[JarredTX]

I have a Drobo 5N with 4x4TB drives in it for about 11TB worth of volume and I use Acronis to backup my computer.  But I rarely save anything to my computer anymore so it's sorta a waste.  Everything else just gets saved to the Drobo and it has redundant backup via RAID built in.  Worst case is there's a fire and I lose everything, but I'm not super worried about that.  If you were too worried about the backups being destroyed, then definitely get a cloud backup solution too.

[Quackers101]

8 hours ago, iceblade2097 said:

As a rule of thumb I wouldn't recommend filling a hard drive/ssd/sshd more than 80% capacity.  As you can experience some performance hits and Windows acting funny.  This can happen when you if you put you computer into sleep mode it dumps everything you have in ram to the storage or if you system runs out of ram and uses your storage to help the ram.

 

Triva for you, it was common on older games Windows 95, 98ect to see in the install screen to allow extra space for the games Swap file.  Which is the extra data it would need on the storage at times but not all the time.  I sort of miss those installers where it would say "your system is correctly configured to play wave files."

If you assigned more of an empty space to not being used, and I guess with more quality ones you will have some buffer zones?
Like adding more through windows not to be used, is that fine?

 

there has been a lot of videos on fake storage, with websites like wish and their "tech products".

[iceblade2097]

10 hours ago, Quackers101 said:

If you assigned more of an empty space to not being used, and I guess with more quality ones you will have some buffer zones?
Like adding more through windows not to be used, is that fine?

 

there has been a lot of videos on fake storage, with websites like wish and their "tech products".

The easiest is to just install your drives like you normally would and partition it accordingly to your needs.  Every so often just take a glance at how much space you are using.  You can do this in Windows by right clicking on your Windows start button and clicking "disk management".  This will show all your drives and how much is used on each partition.

 

I wouldn't recommend forcing a buffer through some program if that is what your are trying to do.  Keeping a glance at disk management every so often will also give you an idea on how much your using on your back ups so you can plan accordingly.