Incremental Backups for Win7 x64 on 2x SSD RAID0

[magnosis]

I figured it was time to upgrade the firmware on my OCZ Vertex drives, and take full advantage of the TRIM functionality.

First thing to do is to backup my data - in this case, my OS partition.

I yet have to find out the best way to image this RAID0, OS partition.

Initial thoughts:
- I need to be able to restore the entire OS partition to a RAID-0 array.
- The backup target can be a spindle hdd, raid-0 of sorts, or a new SSD (the later would speed up the backup/restore process)
- Restoration must be possible on a same-size, or larger RAID-0 array
- Windows 7 backup doesn't support RAID0 too well
- Acronis might work; I'm not 100% sure it's SSD/RAID0 friendly either
- I never liked Norton products at all.

Preferred way of backing up:
1. Automated incremental backups running in the background.
2. Manual, incremental backup I can run weekly/monthly
3. Automated, full image backup running weekly/monthly
4. Manual, full image backup.

I don't like manual backups because I have a tendency to lazy off and forget to do them.
I don't like full backups because it's a lot of redundant writing to the target drive (especially for an OS partition where files don't change as frequently as a data partition)


I'd appreciate any advice (or pointers to other threads.. this must have been answered before, either I'm blind or suck at Google'ing this morning)

Thanks in advance.

[grinder]

I'll start with the ideal backup... you can twist it to suit your needs.

- backup to an external target: file share across the network, nas (external USB drive does not count).
- third party backup tools are superior in reporting the backup success/failure/history and backup media management (backup files/tapes/etc), aside from this built in windows backup works fine (and can be restored from a bare-metal state to a same-size or larger volume/array).
- daily incremental backups (windows backup does this by default)
- full weekly or monthly backups to fall back on in case the daily is corrupt/missed

[Paul_tech]

Try Handy Backup, it's reliable incremental backup software (compatible with Windows 7).
Hope it will work for you.

[ipaine]

I use Acronis and get good results. I have brought an image from HDD to SSD without any real issues and I do believe that you would be fine with raid as well.

So I guess Acronis would get my vote. As for how I have things I have each of my machines doing a weekly backup of basically the user folders (app data, documents, etc.) and then also have another backup of my main data on my server (where all pics and important docs, music, etc. is). It runs an incremental backup and will do 4 of them, but then on the 5th it will consolidate them all into one and then start over. So like data2.tib, data22.tib, data23.tib, data24.tib then the next one would be data3 and all the 2's would be gone. I also take each backup set and copy them off to an external drive about once a month as well.