Is this backup scheme possible?

[Andrew732]

I have several local Windows systems (XP and 7) that I would like to backup on a remote FreeNAS machine. However, standard tools like rsync are no good because I want the entire local disk image to be cloned such that the entire system could be restored if necessary. A proprietary program that in theory can do this does exist (Acronis True Image) although it is unclear whether it plays well with the FTP capabilities of FreeNAS. Does anyone know if that combination will work? Does anyone know of an open source alternative that can accomplish this? Thanks for any help.

 

[pirateghost]

Clonezilla

Sent from my Galaxy Nexus

 

[Andrew732]

Clonezilla

Sent from my Galaxy Nexus

Clonezilla would be great except that it can't backup Windows while Windows is running and it doesn't do incremental backups. That means whenever I want to backup the system, I would have to reboot, boot off the Clonezilla disk, backup the entire system, then reboot again. That's just not practical for daily or even weekly backups.

 

[pirateghost]

Clonezilla would be great except that it can't backup Windows while Windows is running and it doesn't do incremental backups. That means whenever I want to backup the system, I would have to reboot, boot off the Clonezilla disk, backup the entire system, then reboot again. That's just not practical for daily or even weekly backups.

I have not seen a full imaging system that allows you to snapshot a computer WHILE it is running...there are many backup tools that will backup practically everything while its running, but I have seen none that image the entire thing while it is running.

 

[Andrew732]

I have not seen a full imaging system that allows you to snapshot a computer WHILE it is running...there are many backup tools that will backup practically everything while its running, but I have seen none that image the entire thing while it is running.

Acronis True Image does the "hot transfer" thing, unlike Clonezilla. But yeah, I can't really tell from the documentation whether Acronis can make a complete disk image while the host system is running.

 

[gpsguy]

While it's neither free, nor have I tested it with FreeNAS, I have used Drive Snapshot.

It will allow one to take a snapshot, while Windows is running. I know it supports both full and differential backups. I haven't tested the FTP capability (yet). You can download a 30 day trial, if you want to test it out.

 

[Andrew732]

While it's neither free, nor have I tested it with FreeNAS, I have used Drive Snapshot.

It will allow one to take a snapshot, while Windows is running. I know it supports both full and differential backups. I haven't tested the FTP capability (yet). You can download a 30 day trial, if you want to test it out.

Interesting. I don't know how I missed that one in my google search. It looks very command line friendly, which is good.

 

[pirateghost]

Acronis True Image does the "hot transfer" thing, unlike Clonezilla. But yeah, I can't really tell from the documentation whether Acronis can make a complete disk image while the host system is running.

Unless Acronis has changed in the last 2 years, the only way to do it was to boot to a 'live cd' or use a network boot version. This is how it was when I used it. You could make live 'backups' but for complete system imaging, it was an offline solution, like most options are.

While it's neither free, nor have I tested it with FreeNAS, I have used Drive Snapshot.

It will allow one to take a snapshot, while Windows is running. I know it supports both full and differential backups. I haven't tested the FTP capability (yet). You can download a 30 day trial, if you want to test it out.

I will have to have a look at this. Thank you.

 

[titan_rw]

I've been using Acronis True Image for years. Since 2009 I think. I've never had a problem restoring a machine from a backup taken 'live'. That really isn't that hard really. I think it uses the built in volume shadow service in windows.

I have acronis setup to do incrementals daily at 2am, backing up to a cifs freenas share. It makes a new full backup every 7 days. And keeps 14 days worth of backups. So I get at most two full backups. But I still have 14 days worth of 'history'. And the 'older' full backup is there in case there's a problem making the 'new' full backup.

Doing a full restore is of course an offline process. I can simply PXE boot their restore environment, which is simply linux based, and access the backup files over cifs. However, any individual files / directories can be restored 'lilve' simply by browsing into the backup files and extracting them.

I agree, a backup that can only be created 'offline' is kind of useless.

 

[Andrew732]

I've been using Acronis True Image for years. Since 2009 I think. I've never had a problem restoring a machine from a backup taken 'live'. That really isn't that hard really. I think it uses the built in volume shadow service in windows.

I have acronis setup to do incrementals daily at 2am, backing up to a cifs freenas share. It makes a new full backup every 7 days. And keeps 14 days worth of backups. So I get at most two full backups. But I still have 14 days worth of 'history'. And the 'older' full backup is there in case there's a problem making the 'new' full backup.

Doing a full restore is of course an offline process. I can simply PXE boot their restore environment, which is simply linux based, and access the backup files over cifs. However, any individual files / directories can be restored 'lilve' simply by browsing into the backup files and extracting them.

I agree, a backup that can only be created 'offline' is kind of useless.

Great, thanks very much titan_rw. This is exactly what I was wondering. It sounds like Acronis backing up to FreeNAS can do everything that I'm hoping for, especially if it can restore to a different machine (other than the one that was used to create the backup originally). That way you would be completely protected against data/hard drive failure as well as any other kinds of hardware failures that could occur, at least in principle. Their site claims that is possible, but I'm wondering how well it works in practice. Do you have any experience with that?

 

[titan_rw]

With True Image 2013, dissimilar hardware restore was only possible with the "plus pack", which was an extra charge over and above the main program. They've changed the way the software is marketed in 2014. Instead of a plus pack, there's now two different versions. I'm not sure if you need the more expensive version for that.

While I do own 2013 with the plus pack, I've never used the dissimilar hardware restore. Typically, if I had to restore to completely different hardware, I'd simply install a fresh copy of windows onto the new hardware, and use the acronis backup for selective data recovery.

And to keep this post somewhat FreeNAS related, it's so much better is this regard. Write new usb flash drive, bootup on new hardware, restore config, done.