To Back-up image file or mirror

almok · Fri Jan 25, 2008 5:19 am

We are using Microsoft's Data Protection Manager to write back-ups to our NAS. I have created a 256GB image that I will write back-ups to. Is it possible to back-up this image file to tape or another disk, or rather is it common practice or efficient to back-up these large image files? Would the mirroring feature be a better way to go?

Thanks,
Alex

Fri Jan 25, 2008 7:40 am

Mirror in your case is complete waste of space (unless you really needs ZERO downtime). So any incremental backup application will work just fine

almok wrote:We are using Microsoft's Data Protection Manager to write back-ups to our NAS. I have created a 256GB image that I will write back-ups to. Is it possible to back-up this image file to tape or another disk, or rather is it common practice or efficient to back-up these large image files? Would the mirroring feature be a better way to go?

Thanks,
Alex

almok · Fri Jan 25, 2008 3:02 pm

Thanks. So are we saying that the whole image file gets backed up as one file or the contents of the image file? Also, I assume the image file needs to be formatted as NTFS when it is set-up initially?

Fri Jan 25, 2008 8:58 pm

If you need to create IMG file backup any modern backup application will create whole image backup first and every upcoming backup will store only the changed regions.

almok wrote:Thanks. So are we saying that the whole image file gets backed up as one file or the contents of the image file? Also, I assume the image file needs to be formatted as NTFS when it is set-up initially?

almok · Fri Jan 25, 2008 9:12 pm

Does the image file need to be formated as NTFS to be able to write to it by the thrid party backup software? It seems as if it does not.

Fri Jan 25, 2008 9:15 pm

It can be of any FS.

almok wrote:Does the image file need to be formated as NTFS to be able to write to it by the thrid party backup software? It seems as if it does not.