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media@acronis.com Original article on Let's Talk Computers website
Why People DO NOT Regularly Backup Their Computer System How Backing Up with True Image Echo Workstation Takes Away All Excuses
Complete Transcript of Stephen Lawton — Acronis Interview on Let’s Talk Computers Host — Alan Ashendorf on Let's Talk Computers April 12, 2008 Alan: When you take a poll in a room full of people and you ask the question, "How many of you back up your computer systems on a regular basis," it is really amazing that after we have watched disaster after disaster — and knowing where computer systems can be totally lost and all of our precious memories and data can be lost forever — that the majority of people still do not back up their computer systems on a regular basis. And to discuss why this is, our guest today is Stephen Lawton, Senior Director of Strategic Marketing with Acronis. Welcome back to Let’s Talk Computers, Stephen. Stephen: It’s always a pleasure to be here with you. Thank you so much. Alan: Stephen, I know it’s not because people don’t recognize that they could lose all that precious information — that they could lose everything that they have been saving, (their pictures, their videos, everything). I know that it’s not that they’re lazy. Why are people still not making regular backups? Stephen: There are a couple of reasons why people don’t make regular backups. One reason is that a lot of users will look at the Windows application called System Restore and they think that this will restore their entire hard disk. It doesn’t. In fact, it only restores Microsoft Operating System files. Another reason is that — years ago, backing up was confusing, expensive, and complicated. That’s just not the case anymore. Alan: In the past the only way that you could know that you get an absolute good backup was to back up NOT in Windows, which means that you had to boot up, using a DOS boot disk and then run your backup. And of course, this means that while the backup is happening, you can’t use your computer system at all. You might as well go out to dinner or something! This is not the way we really want to make backups. We would like to be able to use our computer while we are backing up. Stephen: It’s gotten to the point, now where backup products, such as Acronis True Image will back up your system while it’s running. It does a live backup. You can be productive; you can continue to use your mail; you can continue to use your Microsoft Office applications, you databases – whatever you’re using and keep looking while the backup is in progress. It’s just that simple.
Alan: Stephen, with most backup programs, you have to have something called an "Open File Manager" that makes sure that you’re backing up the files that Windows has locked. How confident can we be that we have gotten every file backed up on our system, even though Windows has files locked? Stephen: To me that just makes no sense at all because the reason why you’re backing up is to make sure that you get everything on the machine. That’s the way we have engineered the Product from day one. You will be able to capture even the open files. And again, when you do the verification and you create the image, you’ll be able to determine that all of your open files will, indeed be imaged, along with everything else. When you restore that image, it will work exactly as you expect it to work.
Alan: Well, I still hear the excuse, "I got a disk that came with my computer and it’s supposed to help me recover anything that I lose." That’s not a recovery disk, is it? Stephen: No, what will happen is it will restore your machine back to the "factory pristine condition," with all of the original applications, all the original set-ups. The original configuration of your operating system will all come back. What doesn’t come back is all of your data, all of the applications that you purchased and put on your machine. If you’ve purchased music at iTunes you get a one download on it and that’s it. All of that would be gone. The disk that you get with your computer is only designed to restore your system back to the original factory specifications. Alan: Well, you mentioned just a minute ago that the Windows System Restore feature that is built into our operating system. Why can we not rely on this to restore our complete computer system and why, by using this, can it sometimes cause more problems than what it solves? Stephen: It’s really designed to bring your Windows applications back to working conditions. So, if you’ve got drivers that have disappeared from your machine and those drivers exist in the Windows Operating System, those drivers would be restored, for example. But, it won’t do anything for you if you have gone and purchased a sound card, for example that has its own drivers; and those drivers are not supported within Windows. Those drivers will be gone. Alan: Well, it’s actually even worse than that. Let’s say that your system crashes and you have a System Restore Point, say of about 2 weeks back – and you’ve installed software since then. Not only are you not going to get your third-party software that you did have running; you may very well, get old copies of dlls before Microsoft did any kind of updates. Stephen: Well, you will lose essentially; all of your Windows updates since that last system restore point. You could potentially put your machine at great risk. System Restore is not the first line of defense that you should use if your system fails. System Restore is only designed to get your machine back up and bootable from a Windows Operating System’s standpoint, but it won’t do anything for you if you update or if you have applications. If you have a network configuration, for example, if you have a home network or if you’re using your machine in a business environment, none of that will be recovered. The only way to recover everything on your machine back to a "known, good working condition," is to have an image of your machine, (essentially a "snap-shot" of that hard disk) every one and zero on that hard disk – that you can restore if your machine has a problem. Alan: Stephen, to make sure that we can get all of our data back anytime that our system crashes, how often should we back up our complete computer system? Stephen: Well that really is dependent upon how often you use the machine; how often you add new data or applications. For example, I have a machine that I use every day for work; I’m constantly changing files. Every night I have it set to automatically do an incremental backup of all the changes that I have made that day. I run that every night on that machine. But, I have machines at home that will only be used on occasion, primarily doing some work with audio and video files. I back up that machine, maybe once a week. It really depends on how much you change your data files and your applications. Alan: Talking about an "incremental backup," what exactly do you mean by "incremental"? Stephen: Well, there are three kinds of backups. You can create a full backup of your hard disk. That means capturing every one and zero on that hard disk. If you restore that full backup, you will get everything that’s on the hard disk. Now, let’s say that you have a full backup; I do those every Sunday, for example, every Sunday night. But then each day I’ll create what’s called, "an incremental backup." Those are just the changes that have been made since the last either the full backup for Mondays or each day from the last incremental backup.
That way I can go back to any particular day of the week and say, "I want to restore my machine to this day." Let’s say I find that I’ve got a virus on Thursday during the week. I can restore back to Wednesday’s incremental image. There’s one other kind of backup, it’s called, "differential." A differential backup will back up everything since the last full backup. You might ask yourself, "Gee, this is kind of confusing, why do I need so many different kinds of backups?" The reason for that is each time you do an incremental backup, you have to have your full backup and each incremental backup together in a single folder if you are going to do a restore. If you have a differential backup, that will basically take all of those incrementals and put them into one package and then you will have your full backup and then all the changes made, whenever you make that differential. You will have fewer files to manage a little bit faster; it’s a little bit smaller of a file to manage, because you don’t have all of the incrementals. But, then you don’t have the granularity of going back to a specific day. It’s either the full backup or when you took the differential. Alan: Well, I guess one of the reasons why we have three different ways of backing up is that we have so many files on our system that we really don’t need to back up. We have sub-directories like Windows Temporary Internet Files or our Temp Folders or we have what Windows calls our "Pre-fetch," Files that we really don’t need to back up, because could destroy the whole directory and Windows would put it back, again. Each time we have to back up something that we don’t really need it just takes up more disk space and more time to back up.
But, your True Image Echo Workstation now allows us to decide what we want to back up and what we don’t want to back up; thereby saving us both time and disk space. Stephen: That’s right. You can control the Software when you’re creating a backup to exclude certain files or folders. For example, you could exclude all the files that have a .tmp extension. Those are temporary files. Windows creates them by the dozens. There’s no reason to keep them. So, you could simply exclude those and when you create your backup, any .tmp files would be passed over. You can also select certain folders to bypass. So, when you come to a folder that’s got data that you really don’t care about, you can simply bypass it. Alan: Now, we can bypass things like these Windows SWAP file. I see no reason to back up a Windows SWAP file in order to Windows to have to make it again.
Stephen: And Windows SWAP files can be quite large. I know some people that have multiple hard disks in their machines and what they actually do is that they put the SWAP files on an entirely separate hard disk. First, it makes it a little bit faster when they are running their computer, because all the swapping is going on with an entirely separate hard disk, not the one where they keep their data in their applications.
And number two, when it comes to backing up they can simply ignore that disk. That second reason, now is really no longer an issue, because you can actually tell the Software to simply, forget the SWAP file. Alan: Stephen, with all the powerful features that have been added to the True Image Echo Workstation, what are we looking at as far as the price? Stephen: The price of True Image Echo Workstation has been consistent now, for several years. The base price for the Product, which includes the Management Console and the ability to image across networks, across domains, is just $79.99. The Add-on for the Universal Restore is an additional $29.99.
Alan: If somebody would like to find more information about the Acronis True Image Echo Workstation and of course, all the other Backup Software that you have on your Website, where would they go? Stephen: You can visit us at http://www.acronis.com. Alan: Stephen, we have run out of time and we will have to continue this conversation on why it’s so easy to back up with True Image Echo Workstation, next time. Stephen: Thanks so much for having me on the show. It’s always a pleasure to be here with you.
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