Best practice to backup DAW?

I've been using the free Clonezilla since last year. It's quite fast, and I was doing a full backup before installing a major software into my new DAW last year. It works best to have a separate HDD for backup.

But there is a bit of learning curve to do (it's menu driven, perhaps at some point you need to enter option number). The iso image burns into a bootable CD. I've got acquaintance with Linux before.. so I'm ok with this.

I use Acronis True Image 2012.

I have a clean Windows 7 install image and another with Sonar X2 included.

I also take weekly backups of my whole system and data - data daily if I'm working on something really important. All kept on an external drive.

Clonezilla restores just fine. Tested it few times.

FreeFlyBertl


Acronis is being bashed badly on amazon for their newer versions, supposedly the product got quite buggy in recent version ...?

Is there anyone out there who can confirm a successful restore of an entire DAW using Acronis or alternatives?

I've restored a system from Acronis although not in the last few months. I've also cloned hard drives with it etc. and restored the odd on or two files from an image, I've done that recently.

I've seen some poor reviews for it but it has never failed me. Let's face it, you can find users moaning about anything, anywhere. I tend not to take any notice and find out for myself, but FWIW my experience with Acronis has always been good.

I use Norton Ghost but that's probably getting a little old hat nowadays, plus Norton hasn't released any updates for ages. Still it works. Windows backup might be good enough nowadays.... no idea haven't used it for ages.

I just built a DAW a couple weeks ago. The SSD came with Norton's Ghost so I'm using that and an external HD for backups. I did the first backup after updating Win 7 and all the drivers for the base system and another one after installing the SW I use most often - Sonar X2, Omnisphere, VG-99/GR 55 drivers, etc. I still have some SW to load - drivers for older equipment like an Aaki Z8 that will probably require XP mode and I'll do another backup after all that is loaded.

Seems like all backup software gets bashed in user reviews. I installed Acronis 2013 recently and so far so good. I've restored a deleted file successfully with it. In the past I've used the free version of Macrium Reflect to restore a drive image to a new hard disk.

There are several strategy for backup: 1) physical disk copy ( Clonezilla or other Linux solutions) Pro.: does not depend on what is copied, so complete independence from the OS(es) on the disk (no OS compatibilities issues by definition). Also it does not depend from the backup software at all (can be restored using any Linux, probably in 30 years as well ;), restoring particular files requires Linux skills Cons.: the backup size is ALWAYS the size of the disk (so, it is slow and takes a lot of space), requires reboot for backup (can not be used from Windows). 2) disk/partition copy with unused blocks suppression (all mentioned programs) Pro.: in case of Clonezella, does not depend on particular Windows version (while see cons), the backup size is equal to the used part of the disk Cons.: depends on the file system, so there can be some Windows dependent issues (while sine Win Vista time I have not seen any), depending on software, it can be impossible to restore separate files, quite slow operation. 3) file system incremental backup (Acronis, Ghost) Pro.: writes all changed in separate files, so is normally fast, separate files can be restored Cons.: Windows version dependent, each software does that very proprietary way, if some backup in a chain is broken the restore can be problematic (for that, the software makes periodic complete backup) 4) file based backup (mentioned Windows 8 way, some other can do that as well) Pro.: only required file are saved, so only small backup space is required, any version of any file can be restored Cons.: it is impossible to restore complete working system, very OS specific When I want to be sure "I have it", I use (1) For situation when I am ready to loose one day of changes (at home) I use either (2) or (3) For "production" environment I use (3) + all files on RAID 1/5 (well... really I use RAID10 on 20 disks, but that is not for music ;)

Oh yes, I also copy my Projects drive onto another external just using normal Windows Copy & Paste.

These are rotated on a schedule but I have another called "Archived" which never gets deleted.
This contains all my stuff from Sonar 6, 8 & 8.5

Seems to me after reading all this that upgrading to Windows 8 is a good way to get half decent backup software (bundled), although I haven't used it yet (see prev link I posted).

I think I'm right in saying that Win 7 also has a backup/restore feature included.

It does, but AFAICT the problem with OS based backups is what happens when you can't get the system to boot? With Acronis (and I guess others) there is at least the ability to boot from a CD and run diagnostic tools and restore from there.

I don't use the Windows backup though so that scenario may well be covered.

> I think I'm right in saying that Win 7 also has a backup/restore feature included.


Did you read my first post #10 :). Yes Windows backup has been around for a long time.
However it seems Windows 8 backup software is far superior than previous attempts , see post #11 for a link describing what this does. Microsoft is finally catching up.

Now I mostly use the win 7 imager for the OS disks. And create the repair disk for restoring.

The trick is to rename the image folder so it does not get written over next time.

The w 7 imager always wants to include the OS disk, so, when imaging non-OS disks I use macrium.

I also use the basic Sync Toy to copy new audio files to external disks. And the non-cw samples folders, and vst folder.

I create a new image for each of the OS disks in the music comp, after installing any major drivers, and OS updates. Only takes about 30 minutes per disk with verification.

Acronis True Image