Vista Backup

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Kremlar

Golden Member
Oct 10, 1999
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What is up with Vista's integrated backup? Am I missing something or doe it not allow you to choose exactly what files & folders you want backed up?
 
Jaxidian

Jaxidian

Platinum Member
Oct 22, 2001
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From what I understand, Vista's backup system is similar to Norton's Ghost or VMWare's Converter software - it essentially makes a copy of your entire machine that you can easily restore on another drive or even run as a seperate virtual machine. Never actually done it though.
 
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Smilin

Diamond Member
Mar 4, 2002
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There are two backup types. One is the "image" type. This is used to take a full shot of your system. The file it writes to is a standard .VHD file used by virtual pc or virtual server. This backup is used to get your system back after a total failure.

The second type is more of a traditional full+incremental. It does continuous incrementals to a folder structure on a secondary (or network) disk. The backup files are actually standard .zip files although it would be tough to pick through all of them by hand.


I'm a big NTBackup fan so I was pretty put-off by the new Vista backup. Having given it a try I'm now a fan. It's pretty simple and seems to do a great job. The logging sucks though.

 
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SimMike2

Platinum Member
Aug 15, 2000
2,577
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I just used Vista Business full computer backup. It let me just choose to backup my main Vista partition, and not the other five partititons. In fact, the default is with your main OS boot partition being the only drive checked. My main drive has 30GB. The backup files were just under 20GB. So it does compression. What shocked me was how fast it made the backup to a secondary drive in my my computer. It took only like ten minutes at most, and I never had to exit Windows.

I am curious if this is reliable at Ghost 2003 image files, which were 100% perfect.

As a warning, I tried running Ghost 2003 from within Vista, trying to make an image file. It hung on boot. When I tried to bypass Ghost and return to Windows, it hung about ten times. I thought I somehow fried my Vista install! Finally, it got to the standard Vista boot menu and all was well.

If I want to use Ghost, I will boot to a CD disk I have setup and use it that way.
 
N

nippyjun

Diamond Member
Oct 10, 1999
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Originally posted by: Smilin
There are two backup types. One is the "image" type. This is used to take a full shot of your system. The file it writes to is a standard .VHD file used by virtual pc or virtual server. This backup is used to get your system back after a total failure.

The second type is more of a traditional full+incremental. It does continuous incrementals to a folder structure on a secondary (or network) disk. The backup files are actually standard .zip files although it would be tough to pick through all of them by hand.
Click to expand...

Can you choose the second type (.zip) with vista backukp?

 
Jaxidian

Jaxidian

Platinum Member
Oct 22, 2001
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Originally posted by: SimMike2
I just used Vista Business full computer backup. It let me just choose to backup my main Vista partition, and not the other five partititons. In fact, the default is with your main OS boot partition being the only drive checked. My main drive has 30GB. The backup files were just under 20GB. So it does compression. What shocked me was how fast it made the backup to a secondary drive in my my computer. It took only like ten minutes at most, and I never had to exit Windows.

I am curious if this is reliable at Ghost 2003 image files, which were 100% perfect.

As a warning, I tried running Ghost 2003 from within Vista, trying to make an image file. It hung on boot. When I tried to bypass Ghost and return to Windows, it hung about ten times. I thought I somehow fried my Vista install! Finally, it got to the standard Vista boot menu and all was well.

If I want to use Ghost, I will boot to a CD disk I have setup and use it that way.
Click to expand...

If I were you, I'd be sure to make sure whatever version of Ghost you're using supports Vista. Vista uses a completely different boot partition (or something like that) than what WinXP uses and I'm sure Ghost needs to know about this to truly properly work right with Vista. Sounds like you might have been lucky that it fixed itself.

-Jax
 
L

loup garou

Lifer
Feb 17, 2000
35,132
1
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Originally posted by: Smilin
There are two backup types. One is the "image" type. This is used to take a full shot of your system. The file it writes to is a standard .VHD file used by virtual pc or virtual server. This backup is used to get your system back after a total failure.
Click to expand...

Cool, I just mounted my Vista backup as a Virtual HD in a Virtual Server VM. :D
 
Jaxidian

Jaxidian

Platinum Member
Oct 22, 2001
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I'm curious for a what-if scenario for you guys. I'd like comments both on practical functionality as well as legality.

What if I had a machine with Vista Ultimate installed on it legally and then I back it up. Now what if I take that virtual pc backup and run it on that machine. Now what if I do that 5 times so I have 5 different virtual pcs all running at the same time on that machine. Sure there are performance issues but from it actually working, will that work? How legal is that?

Now what if I ran those virtual pcs on another machine. How legal is that?

The reason I ask is that I'm a developer and I'd like my development enviroments to be on virtual pc's for various reason. Also, I like to have every project I work on run in its own virtual pc so that way I don't have changes in one development environment corrupting another development environment. I mean, what if I need to have IE6 (ignore the fact that it's not available for Vista, perhaps consider this as some piece of software that you can't have 2 versions installed at the same time but let's call it IE to keep it simple) to test a web site that I develop for project A but I need IE7 to test a website for project B? I can't have both installed on the same instance of Windows so that means I can't develop these two projects on the same machine. But this allows me to do that.

So does this work and how legal is this?

Thanks in advance! :)
 
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bsobel

Moderator Emeritus<br>Elite Member
Dec 9, 2001
13,346
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Yes its legal, specifically for Vista Ultimate (or as I recall, specifically not for the low end home releases). I'd need to pull the license, but you can have as many images as you want and at least one (I think more) running concurrently under host machines license.

Bill
 
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loup garou

Lifer
Feb 17, 2000
35,132
1
81
Can you use the backups vhd as a primary drive for a vm and boot from it? I was under the impression they only worked as secondary drives...I tried to create a vm in VS2005R2 with it as the primary drive and the VM would start but couldn't boot from the primary drive.
 
S

Smilin

Diamond Member
Mar 4, 2002
7,357
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Originally posted by: loup garou
Can you use the backups vhd as a primary drive for a vm and boot from it? I was under the impression they only worked as secondary drives...I tried to create a vm in VS2005R2 with it as the primary drive and the VM would start but couldn't boot from the primary drive.
Click to expand...

You're basically performing a dissimilar hardware restore at this point. The virtual hardware is an intel BX chipset, s3 video card etc... perform a repair and you'll probably get it booting. You should have no problems mouting the .vhd as a second drive on an already setup VM if you need to extract data.


someone earlier mentioned the image not working on other drives. I hadn't really paid attention but I woudln't be surprised. The image portion is just used to get your system back up and running similar to ASR in XP/2003. You would want to use the regular data backup to cover the rest.

someone also mentioned ghost earlier. You would need a vista compatible version to take an image from within the OS. I've no idea if this product is available yet. However if you take an image from outside the OS (network boot disk, dos disk or something) you should have no problems at all. There has been no NTFS version change so anything that's worked from DOS since Win2k should be fine.
 
S

Smilin

Diamond Member
Mar 4, 2002
7,357
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Originally posted by: Jaxidian
I'm curious for a what-if scenario for you guys. I'd like comments both on practical functionality as well as legality.

What if I had a machine with Vista Ultimate installed on it legally and then I back it up. Now what if I take that virtual pc backup and run it on that machine. Now what if I do that 5 times so I have 5 different virtual pcs all running at the same time on that machine. Sure there are performance issues but from it actually working, will that work? How legal is that?

Now what if I ran those virtual pcs on another machine. How legal is that?

The reason I ask is that I'm a developer and I'd like my development enviroments to be on virtual pc's for various reason. Also, I like to have every project I work on run in its own virtual pc so that way I don't have changes in one development environment corrupting another development environment. I mean, what if I need to have IE6 (ignore the fact that it's not available for Vista, perhaps consider this as some piece of software that you can't have 2 versions installed at the same time but let's call it IE to keep it simple) to test a web site that I develop for project A but I need IE7 to test a website for project B? I can't have both installed on the same instance of Windows so that means I can't develop these two projects on the same machine. But this allows me to do that.

So does this work and how legal is this?

Thanks in advance! :)
Click to expand...

No idea on your first scenario. Sounds cool to me by I'm not the right person to ask.

You second scenario doesn't sound kosher. You're basically running Vista on two machines at that point. One happens to have a VM wrapper slipped in but they are still distict physical machines.


You sound like someone who would be an ideal candidate for MSDN. It basically lets you run as many instances of as many products as you want as long as they are just for you and you're not using them in production.
 
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Navid

Diamond Member
Jul 26, 2004
5,053
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I would like to only backup my irreplaceable data, like music, pictures I have taken only, Word documents I have created only, etc.
I don't want to backup the programs I have installed. I already have DVDs or CDs for each program I use and I can always install them again.

I have two 300GB hard drives.
I have my data and programs on the same partition on my main hard drive. I use the other one for my backups. The total used space on the partition, at times, reaches 150GB. That's mostly programs I have installed. Many are games.
But, the size of data I need to backup is hardly 3GB.

The way I understand the new Vista file backup is that it will backup the entire partition I select. It does not let me choose which folders to backup. But, that will be a waste of disk space since most of what I have on the partition are my programs. Now, they would take some space on my second hard drive as well (backup)! I don't want that.
Currently, the size of the used space on the partition is 10.6GB. The size of the Vista backup on my second hard drive is 7.18GB. That is a 70% compression and it is including the programs because my data is only 2GB right now.

I like it that Vista will run automatic backups. That is a plus for me.
I don't like it that it does not let me choose which folders to backup as opposed to the entire partition. That is a negative.

I did not have this problem with ntbackup (on XP) because I could select only the folder containing all my important data to be backed up.
That is why I am asking if there is a way to get ntbackup back.
If not, I have to partition my first drive and place my important data on a dedicated partition, separate from the programs, and only backup that partition.
 
bigi

bigi

Platinum Member
Aug 8, 2001
2,490
156
106
What shocked me was how fast it made the backup to a secondary drive in my my computer. It took only like ten minutes at most, and I never had to exit Windows.
Click to expand...

I found it pretty incredible as well. I just did my Vista 64-bit backup and it went super fast. Impressive.
 
bigi

bigi

Platinum Member
Aug 8, 2001
2,490
156
106
What shocked me was how fast it made the backup to a secondary drive in my my computer. It took only like ten minutes at most, and I never had to exit Windows.
Click to expand...

I found it pretty incredible as well. I just did my Vista 64-bit backup and it went super fast. Impressive.
 
N

Navid

Diamond Member
Jul 26, 2004
5,053
0
0
N

Navid

Diamond Member
Jul 26, 2004
5,053
0
0
The Vista backup does not even backup executables!
This is definitely not good enough for me.
 
S

Smilin

Diamond Member
Mar 4, 2002
7,357
0
0
Originally posted by: Navid
The Vista backup does not even backup executables!
This is definitely not good enough for me.
Click to expand...

Dude put down the crack pipe and step away.

:roll:
 
L

loup garou

Lifer
Feb 17, 2000
35,132
1
81
Originally posted by: Navid
I would like to only backup my irreplaceable data, like music, pictures I have taken only, Word documents I have created only, etc.
I don't want to backup the programs I have installed. I already have DVDs or CDs for each program I use and I can always install them again.
Click to expand...
I think you're confused. There are 2 types of Vista backup (in Business/Ultimate, in the Home line, there is only 1):
File Backup
Complete PC Backup

File backup will accomplish exactly what you want to do. Think of Complete PC as a built-in scheduable imaging program.
 
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