Windows 7's backup system, backward??

[Celtic_Tiger]

Good morrow all

I am running windows 7 ultimate 64bit and I have performed a full backup of my external 1 TB media drive onto another external 1TB drive and this took a considerable amount of time as it is around 600 GB of data after the 2nd attempt the OS completed the backup(some reason it rebooted near the completion of the 1st backup) now I have a full backup on the backup drive and I wish to perform an incremental backup but I can't find a way of doing this! The only option presented seems to be another full backup!!

Tying up my pc for another full day is unacceptable and I don't have the space to fit another full backup. I dare say manually copying over the folders is actually much quicker and then there is no restore nonsense to go through and at least then I'm sure that the data has copied successfully also despite using a backup program none of the files seem to be compressed so whats the point? Is there any way to point win 7 to the full backup and then command it to perform and incremental top up??? I have only discovered others frustration online on the same issue and have not encountered a solution.
Thanks Celtic

 

[carnageX]

If you're not worried about backing up the whole OS, and would rather just back up documents/etc... SyncToy is great for this (and free from Microsoft). I set up all of our computers at work to back up over the network with it (only needed to install on one computer [the machine wit the backup drive installed in it]), and it backs up every computer's documents (if they've been changed) nightly.

Download details: SyncToy 2.1

And here's a good article on how to get started with it:
PC ****: How to Use Microsoft SyncToy to backup your data

I can give more tips on how to use it if you want, if you're interested (i.e. doing only specific subfolders, creating a backup schedule in Task Manager, etc).

 

[Celtic_Tiger]

Thanks for the info mate. I take it then that 7's backup does not support incremental backup's. This is quite shocking for 2010 so I would then have to back up the near identical 600 GB over the last backup every week if I were to choose 7's backup system... wow.
Ill give synctoy a try and perhaps get back to you


had a look and installed synctoy

Question. Should i manually copy over all my data files and then run synctoy to keep the 2 drives files up to date or does sychtoy perform the backup/copy for me and then afterward keep the 2 drives synced. I have 1 networked drive that I save all my data to and i wish to basically mirror that to an external usb hard drive.

Thanks

 

[KSoD]

Why is it shocking that Win7 doesnt have support for incremental backups? So shocking indeed that neither OS X nor Linux have support for it either. All of them require some sort of 3rd party tool to do it. At least Microsoft offers a free tool in order to do it.

 

[yzmxer608]

It doesn't?

To help maximize your disk space, Windows Backup backs up all selected folders the first time it's run and then it only backs up files that are new or have been modified since the last backup was made. Periodically, Windows creates a new, full backup.

Backup User and System Files - Windows 7 Forums

Or are we talking about two different things?

 

[KSoD]

Technically no. That will only happen if you choose to let Windows make the backups on a set schedule. If you want to make a backup at a time of your choice, it will not be incremental but a full backup.

Meaning that you will have to let the system go without saving if you make a change today and the backup isnt set to run till Saturday. It doesnt make an incremental backup every time a change is made, but on a set schedule. Just like running Virus Scans.

So yes it can be used as an incremental if you dont mind it only doing backups once a week. But some want it done whenever a change is made. That is beyond the scope of the Windows Backup. It is far to simplistic.

 

[Celtic_Tiger]

mak213
I find it shocking because 7 ultimate or 7 business edition should in my opinion have a decent backup option as backing up files is a funamental and critical issue and i feel this should be reflected in a business OS.

The problem i suspect is that I dont leave my PC's on 24/7 so there is a good chance that at some stage the PC that performed the backup will not be on at the scheduled time meaning if you miss one scheduled backup any time after your full backup 7 seems to forget the full backup even existed and you have no means of pointing it to the original backup file, its lets start agin from the beginning, i find this well... retarded.

Basically i want to mirror my networked media drive to a usb external drive. Traditionally you cant use removable / networked drives as part of a dynamic raid setup eg. raid 1(mirroring) its not possible last i heard to make a removable drive a dyanamic disk.

7 does howver have the option to make an image of your system for a bare metal restore which is great as I do not want to repatch and reinstall my apps. andf settings for the the os.

im giving sycntoy a try today.

 

[KSoD]

Win7 Ultimate is not made for businesses. There is no such thing as Win7 Business. There is Win7 Professional which is geared toward businesses. But that is not the point.

So i dont understand as not any software made out there can do what you want it to do. If your PC isnt on, then how is the software to know if a incremental backup was done? It cant. It isnt possible for the software to know this kind of thing. Of course it will then do a full backup. Even software like Acronis would do this. So it isnt just a flaw in Windows, it is a flaw in what your expectations are.

I already stated above about the flaws of the so called incremental backups of the Windows Backup. Which is why tools such as SyncToy are created, so you can force incremental backups at times you choose or when changes are made. So that when you are using the PC, the backups are done. You cant expect a scheduled incremental backup to be done when the system is off and you cant expect teh scheduler to know that the system was off and only perform an incremental backup when you turn it on again. That is beyond the scope of any program out there on the internet right now. Sorry but that isnt a flaw in the programs.

 

[Celtic_Tiger]

mk213
I wanted to make a full backup of my files and expected the full backup to be made. After this a time of my choosing I wanted to run the backup program and point it to the full backup file and have it know what files that have changed since this backup then only back up the changes since the full backup file I have pointed it to.

I expected the backup program to compare the files and folders where it has the date and time recorded from the full backup and presumably a date and time logged of any subsequent backup's and there type etc. and have it know this by examining the archive bits and whether they are on are off to determine this.

e.g. folder 1 is backed up to external storage and archive bits set accordingly then system powered off, tomorrow I power on system/workstation and make changes to folder1, I then run the backup program and point it to the backup file where I was hoping the backup program would compare folder1 on the external hdd backup file to the modified folder1 on my system recognise the changes and backup only those changes.

At least that's what I was expecting. I did not want to leave my systems on 24/7 to accommodate the backup program.

 

[carnageX]

SyncToy does all that for you. It checks the date modified, and you can pick whether it overwrites or not. You don't need to manually copy the data over either; you can just set it up to backup what you want, and then run it manually, or do what I did at work, and just use Task Scheduler to setup a time for it to run each specific job, and it'll copy everything over as needed.