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I'm relatively new to working with Server 2008 and need to know a little more about the behaviour of the built-in Windows Server Backup.

I'm running a small stand-alone server which is mostly just a host for some CAD licensing software and file server. There is no virtualisation etc.

I don't currently have a regular scheduled backup within the built-in backup system, as I've been using iDrive to take automatic off-site backups of all of our important data, but recently one of the 2 mirrored RAID drives in our server has failed and I need to replace it. I'm going to take this opportunity to replace both existing drives with larger capacity ones as it's something I needed to do anyway.

I've run a single, full volume backup to a USB drive (in order to keep downtime to a minimum) using "Backup Once" however I don't think I had the "Faster Backup Performance" option checked, and the backup didn't get finished in time - I only have one opportunity each week during normal working hours when I can turn the server off, and the backup didn't finish in time for me to do this last week, so I now need to do another backup to make sure it's current, accounting for the previous week's work.

What I need to know is:

  • If I run a new backup, with the "Faster backup performance" option checked, will it pick up the last backup I performed and do an incremental backup.
  • If no to the above, if I run a new backup with "Faster backup performance" checked, will the NEXT backup after that work as an incremental backup.
  • OR to get the incremental backup to work do I need to have a scheduled backup set up?
  • After all of this, is there anything special/different I need to do in order to restore an incremental backup onto a new drive vs. working with a "Normal" backup?

My overall plan is to run a backup to the USB drive, restore this backup to one of the new internal drives, get the server up and running with the new drive, then mirror this existing drive in RAID. Also if it makes a difference, the drive has 2 volumes on it.

Also if there is generally anything I'm doing wrong or haven't considered then tips are welcome! I'm wondering if there's anything special I need to do to make the new drive bootable for example. If there is an easier way to clone the drive without third party software (other than iDrive) then I'd love to know.

WhatEvil
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1 Answers1

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In waiting for an answer I tried some things out and have answered a couple of aspects of my question above. I thought I'd add them in here to help others:

After running a first backup using "Backup Once", with the "Faster backup performance" option unchecked, if you then check the "Faster backup performance" option and run another backup, it will do a FULL backup, not just an incremental one. On the NEXT backup after that, with "Faster backup performance" checked again then it only does a small incremental backup.

It's worth noting that I chose the same backup location, and exact same volumes to backup in all 3 of my attempts, but this should be fairly obvious.

It seems you do not need to have a scheduled backup set up for the incremental backup to work and it functions fine using "Backup Once".

WhatEvil
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