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Windows Backup & Restore Strategy

NOTE: While the ideas presented here certainly apply more broadly to managing a network of Windows PCs, the context is focused on Beyond TV servers and clients.

I've worked with Windows machines for long enough to have learned a few things about managing them:

  • If you need Windows to be stable, don't tinker with it.
  • Once Windows gets hosed, there's only one totally effective fix.
  • If you rely on the built-in disaster recovery tools, sooner or later you'll be disappointed.
After setting up a BTV network that quickly became production-critical to my family, I began searching for a Windows backup package that would allow me to keep my BTV machines online and functioning with very little pain.

Since I already had Linux-based fileservers on my LAN, I wanted a backup-and-restore product that could take advantage of both the network and the Linux machines. My requirements list follows:
REQUIREMENTS
  • LAN support
  • Full partition backups
  • "Live backups", taken with Windows running (no downtime)
  • Bare-metal restore capability
  • NICE-TO-HAVE: Support for dual-boot configurations and/or Linux clients
I eventually discovered the Acronis True Image family of products, and settled on True Image Workstation v9.1.  I have since upgraded to True Image Home 11, which added the ability to exclude specific files from partition-level backups.  TIH 11 appears to have been replaced by "True Image Home 2009".

STRATEGY
Since TI allows you to take a full partition backup and store it on a network fileshare, I feel the optimal disk setup for a BTV server is as follows:

  • Small system drive for C:\WINDOWS
  • Additional high-capacity drives for VIDEO recordings
The key here is to have C:\WINDOWS on a separate physical disk than the VIDEO drives, preferably as small as you can get away with. As an example, my triple-ATSC-tuner BTV server has an 8GB system partition, which gets archived as a 1.6GB compressed image. Add the backups from my two HD Link machines and the footprint on the backup server grows to almost 5GB, which is peanuts on a 200GB backup server. If the OS and the VIDEO folders lived on the same disk, in order to run full partition backups, I'd be stuck backing up gigabytes of HD recordings along with the OS, which would take days to complete, would consume 100% of the space on my backup server, and probably disrupt any in-progress recordings.

This strategy applies to both BTV server and Link clients. Some folks might argue that the ability to restore Link machines isn't worth the troubleof setting them up, but in the end, it really boils down to what your time is worth. If an 'expert' can load XP, apply Updates, load graphics drivers, DirectX, dot.NET, BTV and the remote software in an hour, that's not bad. But if I can restore the latest partition backup in ~10 minutes, I ask: why not just make a backup? Life is TOO SHORT to manually reload Windows.
SETUP DETAILS

  1. Create a share/export on your fileserver specifically for Acronis archive files (*.tib).
  2. Create a 'backup' user on the fileserver, to enforce the ACL in the next step.
  3. Export the archive area so all LAN clients have read access, but only the 'backup' user has write access. (This helps prevent someone from accidentally deleting the archives.)
  4. Install the Acronis TI client on each client (a BTV server is considered a backup client in this context).
  5. Set two backup jobs on each TI client: both are full partition backups, verification enabled (validates backup archive after creation), run as the 'backup' user, written to the backup share.
  6. Schedule job A for the first Saturday of the month, and job B for the third (or a similar scheme).
  7. Use different filenames to avoid clobbering.
For machines with multiple disks, setup additional backup jobs for non-system (data, media) drives, if desired.

Give the backup archives meaningful names, like:

  • Laptop_XP_FULL_DriveC_Monthly_A
  • Kids_DualBoot_XP_Ubuntu_FULL_DriveC_Monthly_B
  • HTPC_XP_Movies_DriveD
  • HTPC_XP_Images_DriveE
Backups over a wireless LAN will certainly be slower, but should work fine.

Take a manual backup prior to any major upgrade to a client machine, for a quick roll-back option.
EXAMPLE SCENARIOS
  • Version Upgrade. A new version of BTV is released, and while you're excited about the new features, the current version has been running stable for months, and you'd like to ensure you can revert to the current version if the upgrade doesn't go smoothly. Here's how to do it:

    1. Find a quiet point in the recording schedule.
    2. Run a BTV backup from the "About" Option on the BTV systray icon.
    3. Shutdown BTV.
    4. Run a full partition backup of the system disk, including the verification pass.
    5. Apply the upgrade and test.

    You've got a verified system image and your current BTV configuration to fall back on.

  • System Disk Failure. Your system drive starts glitching, and drive utilities confirm your hunch that it has days or even hours to live. What's the least painful way of replacing it?

    1. Same as above: take advantage of the next available quiet point in the recording schedule.
    2. Run a BTV backup from the "About" Option on the BTV systray icon.
    3. Shutdown BTV.
    4. Run a full partition backup of the system disk, including the verification pass*.
    5. Replace the dying drive with a shiny new one with a good warranty. RMA the dying drive if possible.
    6. Perform a 'bare-metal' restore, usually from bootable CD, using the backup image created in step 4.

    *If the disk is not healthy enough to complete this step, you may need to rely on your most recent partition backup. I recommend running two per month, and writing to alernating archive filenames, to avoid being without an image if a freak power outage truncates your backup job.