Questions about PowerArchiver Backup…

[Dangermouse]

Hello.

I am attempting to evaluate whether or not PowerArchiver Backup would suit my backup needs, and I require some assistance. I have the following questions:

1. Does an incremental backup back up in whole the files that have changed, or only the changed data in those files? In other words, if I make a 1 KB change to a 1 GB file, will the incremental backup be small or large?
2. How does the incremental backup handle deleted files? I understand that PowerArchiver uses the archive flag of files to determine whether or not to back them up, but how does PowerArchiver know whether a file has been deleted and how does it store this information in the backup file?
3. If for example I do a full backup and then four incremental backups, how many backup files will I end up with? One? Five?
4. How do I go about restoring from the backup? Does PowerArchiver provide any special functionality for this, or do I need to manually extract the initial full backup and then each incremental backup after that?

I would appreciate it if someone could take the time to answer these. Thanks.

[Mili]

Hi Dangermouse, welcome to the forum!

Would like to ask a preliminary question, how would you like your incremental backups to appear?
All backup in one archive or each incremental backup to be in it’s separate archive with a timestamp that you can manually set?

Thanks!

[Dangermouse]

I don’t mind whether they appear to be stored in separate archives or in a single archive, as long as the incremental backups are linked to the full backup and the restore process is easy.

[spwolf]

PowerArchiver compresses full changed files, into separate archive.

Benefits of that is that it is more usable for DVD backup, and that losing one of the incremental backups will not destroy your complete backup.

What you are talking about is how online backups work, is that they change only parts of data from changed files (depending on type of file, it could be more or less). Which is good, if your data storage is 100% reliable.

We are actually planning to do such utility in the future, but it is completely different concept and it will be different utility (free “upgrade” for Toolbox users only).

We have all the backup differential code done with our own engine, and we are actually more efficient than all these online backups when it comes to how much data is stored after change (up to 30%), but we are waiting to finish up our new format in order to do that as that will compress pdf’s, office files and jpegs much more efficiently.

http://ideas.powerarchiver.com/

But again, it is very different concept and more suited to online backups where you can be 100% sure that you will not lose original backup and any of the version files.

If you are burning to DVD, I am not sure which concept would i recommend right now.

[Dangermouse]

Thank you both for replies.

@spwolf:

What you are talking about is how online backups work, is that they change only parts of data from changed files (depending on type of file, it could be more or less). Which is good, if your data storage is 100% reliable.

We are actually planning to do such utility in the future, but it is completely different concept and it will be different utility (free “upgrade” for Toolbox users only).

I would definitely be interested in seeing such a feature.

@spwolf:

If you are burning to DVD, I am not sure which concept would i recommend right now.

I am currently backing up to an external hard drive.

I think I’ve had most of my questions answered now, but the following two still remain:

1. How does the incremental backup handle deleted files? Does PowerArchiver store information about which files have been deleted in the incremental backup?
2. How do I go about restoring from the backup? Does PowerArchiver provide any special functionality for this, or do I need to manually extract the initial full backup and then each incremental backup after that?

[spwolf]

it doesnt handle any of that, they are just archives, just created based on your settings, which are extensive.

Extraction shouldnt be that complicated, for minimum fuss, you can just select all of them and sort by date and extract (and overwrite older ones).

Out Backup is basically most advanced way that exists to create ordinary archives.