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#11
Hi there
My problem with some of these "newer" versions is that will they still be able to restore old (and I mean quite old) backups / archives.
I have some "archived" files - note archive is different from daily backup since you save it and generally don't need it again until possibly YEARS later !!.
To get round a possible problem I've also saved a copy of the OS that I ran the archive on - so in the worst case I can restore the old OS and then restore the archive.
I have heard of some versions of these backup programs failing to recover old backups so when upgrading TAKE NOTE.
While I think Macrium Free is a great product and have used it a lot I'm coming more and more round to just running something like Rsync in Linux which once you get to know it is a great tool, won't go out of date, can run scheduled easily (crontab) and even has a GUI (Grsync) so a bootable live Linux distro can restore data for you even on a "Bare metal recovery".
Don't get me wrong - ANY tool that makes taking backups easier should be applauded -- I sometimes think though software developers often go a bit "feature-itus" or "bloatware crazy" - and all the extra stuff isn't useful to most people and really often isn't worth the extra payment.
Just look at adobe reader or Nero as prime examples for "Bloatware Kings" -- who bothers with adobe reader these days - edge will handle PDF's and if you do download adobe reader it will try and install toolbar and chrome and rabbit on about cloud stuff etc --avoid !!!!.
I'm dreading the day when Macrium or others will add some type of cruddy A/V software into their program to check backups for viruses etc on backup -- apart from the possibilities of introducing errors this type of stuff would be horrendous -- might intuitively seem a good idea but since none of this stuff is ever 100% effective and a load show "False positives" it would be more trouble than its worth !!!.
Anyway apart from the one use where I take a system image with Macrium I do all my DATA backups with Rsync or Grsync these days and won't have the issue any more of "version out of date" or "backup can't be recovered".
Grsync has a slew of decent options for data backup including compression, don't copy if newer version on target (optional) etc etc.
Just takes a bit of learning but it's brilliant. Try on a Linux VM for practice.
Cheers
jimbo
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