Active backup Real experience

[jeyare]

Tested in real conditions during migration of last home device from W8.1 to W10, when the upgrade process was frozen for 55 minutes.

Prerequisites - USB stick +1GB capacity
• Required local system volume storage capacity for temporary files: 2.5 GB
• Supported recovery model: UEFI 64-bit

1. you need download: Synology Active Backup for Business Recovery Media Creator
btw, here is a guide from Syno KB

2. Media Creator will check an availability of Windows ADK Installation in your PC. When it is needed, it will help you to download it.
It is necessary for Windows Preinstallation Environment.

3. From this point it is really easy way back to your machine from selected backup stage (up to your backup plan).
boot from the USB stick
type your NAS IP address, usr/psw + 2FA
select the proper backup and take break (up to your NAS/LAN/PC performance conditions). For me few minutes.
Done, tested. Great. Ready for a disaster.

 

[Rusty]

Same experience from my end.

3-2-1 > Active Backup

active backup pxe boot bare metal restore nas synology

www.blackvoid.club

 

[CheapDad]

Jeyare, I’m ready to transition from using Macrium to back up household computers to a shared folder to using Active Backup for Business. I checked mydoodads but they don’t appear to have a walkthrough for ABB. Do you know where one is?

 

[jeyare]

In this forum - link
or
In official Syno KB
or
thousands in YT

It’s really easy, just to be sure:
Bare metal backup is backup of entire disk, include all mounted disk (external connected into your machine during backup process, LUNs,...). Include all partitions exist in your disks (Win revovery,...)
System only - is OS partition (volume)

 

[Rusty]

Do you know where one is?

Also if you can use this article.

3-2-1 > Active Backup

active backup pxe boot bare metal restore nas synology

www.blackvoid.club

 

[CheapDad]

In this forum - link
or
In official Syno KB
or
thousands in YT

It’s really easy, just to be sure:
Bare metal backup is backup of entire disk, include all mounted disk (external connected into your machine during backup process, LUNs,...). Include all partitions exist in your disks (Win revovery,...)
System only - is OS partition (volume)

Thank you Jeyare. Under my prior backup methology, I backed up the full pc hard drive once per month and then did an incremental backup once a week. That doesn't seem possible in Active Backup. Is that correct?

 

[Gerard]

Jeyare, I’m ready to transition from using Macrium to back up household computers to a shared folder to using Active Backup for Business. I checked mydoodads but they don’t appear to have a walkthrough for ABB. Do you know where one is?

do you guys like active backup over macrium? I’ve tested macrium, and the nice thing about it was the bare metal restores to different/dissimilar hardware. The idea is if a computer goes down and I can’t find that exact make model, will active backup be able to restore on a different computer?

 

[Rusty]

Thank you Jeyare. Under my prior backup methology, I backed up the full pc hard drive once per month and then did an incremental backup once a week. That doesn't seem possible in Active Backup. Is that correct?

It is possible. Full backup will allow you an incremental backup as well. You just need to select the scenario at the beginning that fits your needs.

 

[Rusty]

do you guys like active backup over macrium? I’ve tested macrium, and the nice thing about it was the bare metal restores to different/dissimilar hardware. The idea is if a computer goes down and I can’t find that exact make model, will active backup be able to restore on a different computer?

Yes it will. You will just need an Active Backup restore usb or pxe boot and target your backup on your nas. Just like any other 3rd part full bare metal backup software.

Have a read here a bit if you want a more graphical presentation of various scenarios:

3-2-1 > Active Backup

active backup pxe boot bare metal restore nas synology

www.blackvoid.club

 

[jeyare]

yes, yes ... as @Rusty wrote
But I found yesterday some bottleneck on ABB, I will prepare thread about it

 

[Telos]

I tried ABB over the past few days... Slow as molasses. I accepted this for the initial backup, but for daily updates it was taking hours in comparison to Macrium Reflect's minutes.

I finally uninstalled. Maybe this would be acceptable on a hyper-gigabyte network with a half-dozen PCs to take advantage of deduplication, but no way on my network.

 

[Rusty]

I tried ABB over the past few days... Slow as molasses. I accepted this for the initial backup, but for daily updates it was taking hours in comparison to Macrium Reflect's minutes.

I finally uninstalled. Maybe this would be acceptable on a hyper-gigabyte network with a half-dozen PCs to take advantage of deduplication, but no way on my network.

Full backup (initial) for a 35GB machine took less then 5min to complete for me (local backup). Same for restore. Not sure what’s slow about that.

 

[Telos]

Full backup (initial) for a 35GB machine took less then 5min to complete for me (local backup).

I'm backing two machines... one with 600GB. The initial backup ran just under 3 hours. The next day back up was about 2 hours, with nearly no change in the file content. During this time, machine use was impacted (for example, stuttering YouTube streams).

I had similar results on a second machine. This machine was ethernet limited to 100Mbs and took 2-3 days to backup initially (140 GB). Macrium Reflect handles that in 4 hours.

With Macrium Reflect, a daily incremental might run 3 minutes. Apparently ABB doesn't index changes, but checks every file with each backup?

I thought I would see deduplication advantages, but those are too slight to impact the time to backup.

 

[jeyare]

@Telos, you need buy faster electrons
I can compare AB4B vs Acronis from speed point of view and difference there.
you need find a way how to dilute the molasses
PS: ofc Acronis is still my favorite in case of special services, but AB4B is really useful for calm sleeping

 

[Telos]

you need buy faster electrons

Aye, aye, Captain... While I'm observing about ABB... a few random perceptions...

• It's unclear whether ABB backs up the boot/efi/restore partitions under Windows, even in "bare metal"
• The ABB back up is not encrypted (there is no restore password).
• It's unclear whether a restore can be done without the NAS (from a USB drive holding the ABB back up, for example), meaning that an active network must be present.
• It appears that you cannot modify an existing job. If you do, the previous backup template must be retained, because when a template is deleted, the backups associated with that template auto-delete.
• ABB cannot restore to a new computer
• If your PC hard drive dies, ABB can restore to a new hard drive but will assume the new hard drive is the same size as the original. If you upgrade from a 250GB to a 1TB HDD the created partitions will be the same as the backed-up source, so one has to resize partitions separately after the backup completes.

Coming from Macrium Reflect, I don't see much advantage for a user with 1-3 PCs. If I had a few servers and VMs as well I might find it economical to use, though technically constrained. For Windows users I suggest Macrium Reflect or Veeam (Acronis is free for WD disk owners).

 

[jeyare]

so back from subjective point of view to reality:

1. Full Acronis True Image you can just buy - there isn't a free version, just 30day free trial period.

2. Yes there is (not just for WD) an OEM version of Acronis True Image, but this is limited single feature version and just for the single disk purchased as OEM. Same as your original Windows system backup. Nothing more for free. Even w/o booting media feature. Then you can’t compare AB4B free vs OEM Acronis free. Nothing is for free. I know Acronis very well more than 10y. Definitely forget for OEM Acronis - it’s just commercialized fairy tale.

3. I have now just single PC license of full version of Acronis, because it helps me when I need special operation for disks. It’s about 50Eur/year for Essential lic. or 100Eur/y for 5 computers. I paid this 5computers lic every year. No more from last year.

4. AB4B real experiences (tested, in usage almost 1y, you can find threads here):
- it’s clear backup of the boot/efi/restore partitions under Windows, even with bare metal backup = entire system's data = all partitions. Bare metal is bare metal, no doubt. Even you have choice, that you can select just system disk for the backup and it will take all mentioned partitions.

5. Yes no restore password there (AB4B). Transfer is encrypted (optional).

6. Restore from NAS only. OMG usage of backup to NAS is one of basic principles for people as we are! When you need backup your valuable data from PC to USB disk only, you can do it. But why do you have the NAS? It’s one of common standards used also in Acronis and I hope in Macrium also = a restore from network source. Different source you can create from NAS backup (diff HW!, diff location). You don’t need make additional performance impact to your desktop.

7. Creating of the task in AB4B takes 2 minutes. Preparation of the backup policy is important. When your flow is Preparation, then creation, you can’t lose important time. You can update your task as you wish. But you have to take into consideration, that snapshot driven technology is different from Hyperbackup.

8. You can use AB4B to restore to any new disk = also to new computer. Last time performed one month ago.

9. When new disk size is larger than backup size. It’s easy. When you finish the restore process you can change your partition in Windows (Disk management) up to your definition. Also tested many times. Ofc, this isn’t include in the restore process. For me it’s just one step in advance, after more important target = successful restore.

For me, there is just one and only issue with AB4B = disk bad blocks. This is a show stopper for backup of such disk. Also for original Windos OS backup tool. But I found a useful solution. Use Search in this forum (bad block NTFS).

Conclusion- Assumptions are the mother of all f**k ups

 

[Rusty]

Assumptions are the mother of all f**k ups

Segal - Under siege 2

 

[jeyare]

don't hesitate to ask about the AB4B features because this solution is really useful from single PC operation in your home or SMB. Tested, works.