Backup nag

[stevech]

Saturday AM: The Sage screen shows Window's blue-screen crash - some moronic error message from Mr. Gates' new-grads who never worked in the real world.

I ponder: I'm Glad I have Acronis do a C: image backup every day (incremental) and a full once a week. Videos on D and E aren't backed up. Someday, RAID5.

Reboot. Working OK. An hour later: PC freezes with display hung.
Reboot. same. repeat.
Remove PC to the laboratory (!)
Clean, check, reseat, replace power supply.
Runs OK. For a while. Freezes.
Reboot. Copy Sage folder to another PC's disk.

Do more fiddling trying to decide if it's the CPU, Mobo, RAM, cooling.
Better do another full backup of C:
95% done, then freeze.
Try again: 50% done, then freeze.

Hmm - now I've overwritten the last full backup. Stupid. I have only incrementals. Stupid. Don't have multi-week rolling backups. Acronis 8 isn't that smart - nor scripted by me to do so.

Reboot. It Won't. C: is dead. Doesn't spin-up. Put drive in freezer for a while (cold shock). Still won't spin-up on either of two PCs. Wack it. Now it sounds like a garbage disposal. A Head crash.

<expletive deleted> I have to spend hours building a new C: since I have no backup image. Stupid me.

At least I do have the full Sage folder backed up, w/database.

beware.

[stevech]

Backup Nag continued...

Replaced C: drive. Lots of hours to create Win XP with all patches.
Reloaded applications including Sage.
Retrieved my saved sage properties and wiz.bin.

Worked first try. Great!!

Now to create that full C: disk image that was lost and cost me all the time.

[gplasky]

Throw another small physical disk in there and store your images on that or your network media server if you have one. And Acronis 9 has some more helpful features too.

Gerry

[stevech]

Know anything about how to get Acronis TruImage to do rolling image backups? I setup version 8 to do a full backup each 7 days and an incremental the other 6. This works OK. But what I want is two such routines, so that if one fails, the other is still there. Other than scripting it myself (ugh, more code) I didn't see a way for version 8 to do it. Hmmm, maybe you can setup two 14 day schedules and somehow launch one a week after the other. Don't know.

I attempted to use the trial version of TruImage 9. It refused to run - said UNABLE TO REGISTER. Forums there suggest that this happens if you put the trial on a system that has a licensed earlier version. Or it may have been a firewall issue. I'm waiting on an answer.