Active Backup Recovery media - USB vs ISO?

[NAS Newbie]

From previous discussions, I have cleaned up my NAS volumes and now have all of my shared folders and archive folders located on Volume 2, while I have all my backups pointed to Volume 1. I have Active Backup set to do a bare metal backup of my PC to a folder in Volume 1. After the first backup was run, I went digging through the data using the portal, and it appears that this will allow me to restore versioned copies of individual files or folders, but does not allow for a full-system restore. From what I understand, I have to set the software to create recovery media if I want to be able to restore the entire PC.

What does this recovery media do exactly? I'm guessing that if for whatever reason my PC got wiped, I'd have to get windows running again, install the active backup client, and then use the recovery media to reload all of my backed up settings? Does the recovery media somehow tell the active backup client to look at my NAS for all the backed up files and so that is why the media will be less than 1Gb if installed on a usb stick?

Finally, what is the difference between the USB media and the ISO media? I'm not sure what the DSM help means by ISO media.

 

[WST16]

Finally, what is the difference between the USB media and the ISO media? I'm not sure what the DSM help means by ISO media.

ISO media are files suited for CD or DVD to the best of my knowledge.
So you can use the CD/DVD for recovery.

Sorry, I don’t know anything about active backup.

 

[Rusty]

What does this recovery media do exactly? I'm guessing that if for whatever reason my PC got wiped, I'd have to get windows running again, install the active backup client, and then use the recovery media to reload all of my backed up settings?

Correct. Have a look here.

Navigate Desktop | DSM - Synology Knowledge Center

Synology Knowledge Center offers comprehensive support, providing answers to frequently asked questions, troubleshooting steps, software tutorials, and all the technical documentation you may need.

www.synology.com

But all in all yes, its to make a usb and/or ISO file to boot when your PC is dead in water. You can use ISO file to make your PC boot from a PXE (network) environment as well if that's your preferred choice. (off topic - I have a PXE tutorial for Syno saved will upload it in the Resource section at one point).

After your machine boots, you can use the UI to navigate via the network to your NAS (Active backup server side) and connect to it in order to restore what you need.

 

[Imcon]

Another example how we use Actibe Backup bare metal recovery: when installing a new PC into our company (the same HW configuration) we simply restore to the new PC all the system and applications which we backed up many moths ago (from the first PC where we installed all applications andsettings manually). It save us hours of installing a deplying all the settings, software, network etc...
We just change names, we set new user and of course we need to set the new user accounts. But it saves a lot of time.

 

[Imcon]

And the question USB vs DVD/CD: USB is much faster. I can recommend it.

 

[Champnet]

It’s what we used to call a stand-alone backup. Meaning the operating system on your device was not used. A separate OS, which was a bare bones system, was loaded from tape disk etc enabling the backed up image to restore cleanly.

 

[BiggPerci]

Hi, I have been playing around with ABB for a few weeks now, largely to create a single deployable image that is hardware agnostic (uninstalled SATA controllers and network drivers before backing up to NAS), to get the 30 odd PC's running Windows 7 at work up to Windows 10. It turned out to be two images, one for UEFI one for BIOS. I first set up the recovery media as USB stick, which is no good for BIOS. So I created an ISO file, but don't use DVD at all anymore.

Solution: Create ISO recovery media. Use rufus to create recovery USB from ISO file, but after choosing ISO file, make sure to set GPT for UEFI installs and MBR for BIOS installs. I have deployed to 5 or 6 computers so far, 2 AMD UEFI, 2 Intel UEFI and either 1 or 2 Intel BIOS and it has been flawless. Couldn't be more pleased