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Comments on Veeam's free endpoint backup (desktop to NAS)

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stevech

Part of the Furniture
I'm a long time user of Acronis True Image for doing clones and drive imaging of desktop/laptops - on several computers I use for professional and personal purposes. From one year to the next, Acronis True Image GUI gets better and worse. I use the 2014 version as the 2015 version seemed to have a better UI but no new features. I know it well enough to setup a simple backup task and do clones but it does take an hour or so at first use.
I do trust it as it has saved me several times. I generally don't want to use freeware for the crucial need for reliable backups. But Veeam's free (teaser) end point backup might be an indicator of the goodness of their paid-for software from a substantial company rather than a cottage industry source.

I tried Veeam's free endpoint backup. I did not like it and here's why:
Backup time scheduling is very limited. That's OK, I usually manually initiate a full drive image/clone manually. I use Centered Systems' SecondCopy for work in process backups hourly.

Speed of Veeam is similar to Acronis, but Acronis has the option to not compress or encrypt which speeds up things quite a bit. Resultant file size was smaller with Veeam - suggesting it uses compression. Veeam says they do de-duplication during backup - I prefer to not do so as it adds a bit of risk to recovery.

I did not find a drive CLONE capability - I use that to give me instant recovery from an unfixable virus, malware, hosed up file system, etc. Clone has saved my butt several times; I just boot the clone drive (an older hard disk), clone it back to the honked up drive to restore. Boot the restored drive. Load the files that changed since the last clone from my NAS - where SecondCopy put them.

I didn't see in Veeam a "mount" a backup as a drive - very quick way to pull a few files out of the backup. It did have a menu choice for restore individual files - but it was awkward vs. just mounting (read only) the whole backup as a drive letter as in Acronis.

But hey, it's free.

I found no way to CANCEL / stop an in-process backup. I wanted to do this since Veeam did my C: drive then it moved on to the H: drive which I didn't ask for. These are two separate drives, not partitions on one drive.

Veeam's backup, like others, can be scheduled to wakeup a sleeping PC and do the backup in the wee hours. I don't want that, but some do. Also, my NAS sleeps in the wee hours too.

Warning: I did only the backup with Veeam. I didn't do the all-important restore - to prove it works. One can restore to a different disk or different PC, as does Acronis.

Veeam calls their drive / volume images "restore point" files - this is confusing since Windows uses the term restore points for something else.

So Veeam can be free and decent. I think their marketing web sites and videos are slick but the free backup is too spartan. But it's free. It's a teaser for using their "cloud" enterprise backup services, similar to Amazon Web Services.

I prefer to wait for the Acronis True Image sale prices (e.g., $30) for new and $20 upgrade licenses, usually on Newegg.com. I keep looking for something better than Acronis that's not from the cottage industry and not from China (as EaseUS is - I tried that scary product).

For controlled-access "cloud" file archiving sharing (not backup), I use ADrive now. Previously used OpenDrive, having tried all the others. Backups to the "cloud" are impractically slow unless you pay to have a first-load via mailed hard drive. I don't put any financial/personal info in the "cloud".
 
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