Source
r/synology•
killchain

Active Backup for Business - Backing up hidden partitions

Hey there.

I've been using ABB for some time now; I've set it to back up my Windows 10 system partition once a week and to keep the last four copies of it. I've been generally very happy with it in terms of how transparent everything is once it's set up and how fast it is. So far so good.

(Haven't had the need to restore from it yet, but I feel that if that happens, it will be just as straightforward as it is for the backup itself).

Unrelated, but it made me realise what's happening - I recently added a new SSD and cloned over my old system partition to it - I used CloneZilla and I initially only cloned C:\, then, when it didn't boot, I realised I had to copy the hidden partitions from the old SSD too - and this made me notice that ABB only backs up C:\ too.

So in the possible event of the whole SSD going toast, I assume I'll have to first somehow recreate the two Recovery partitions and the EFI one and only then proceed to restore C:\ from my NAS.

I'm wondering the following - is there a way to make ABB also include the two Recovery Partitions and the EFI System Partition?

The settings only allow me to select a partition which has a drive letter - these hidden partitions don't have letters and thus can't be selected.

Here's my current partition layout. The old SSD was identical sans Partition 6.

 Partition ###  Type              Size     Offset
  -------------  ----------------  -------  -------
  Partition 1    Recovery           450 MB  1024 KB
  Partition 2    System              99 MB   451 MB
  Partition 3    Reserved            16 MB   550 MB
  Partition 4    Primary            250 GB   566 MB
  Partition 5    Recovery          2048 MB   250 GB
  Partition 6    Primary            678 GB   252 GB

Partition 4 is C:\ and Partition 6 is D:\ (but I don't care about backing up D:\ at this point).

A bare-metal backup is something I haven't tried, but it's:

  1. Either out of the question since I don't want to backup all the other partitions - I back up selected things manually from them
  2. or has to be set to only back up C:\ and the hidden partitions without the rest of the stuff, which I'm not sure is possible.

Any help is appreciated. Thanks in advance.

Posted Aug 3, 2020, 2:17 PM UTC · edited

23
PaleMongo•

AFAIK, your only option is "bare metal"... Even with that, there is no clarity around whether the "hidden" partitions are covered... though you would hope so given the "bare metal" wording (but with Synology, anything is possible).

Instead. install Macrium Reflect Free on your PC. It permits you to backup the hidden partitions along with "C:\". Then output that image to store on your NAS.

2
killchainOP•

Thanks for the suggestion.

I tried running a bare metal task and it immediately started backing up my largest partition, which is a no go (again, I back up selected things from that one manually).

I've seen there's plenty of other software that does this. I'd prefer to stay 1) with the on-brand solution and 2) free of charge if possible (there are free solutions, but things like incremental backup are usually on the paid tier). Maybe I'll try something different, and I hope that DSM 7 (fingers crossed to see it released this year) brings some new things to the backup facilities too.

By the way, I noticed something weird about the backups - once I swapped the SSD in my PC (the new one is 1 TB, the old one is 250 GB), the .img files started becoming the size of the whole drive - 900 something GB - despite still only backing up C:\ which is 250 GB, of which only roughly half are used) - and this is if I browse through File Station; if I open Storage Analyzer, things start making more sense - I only see the @ActiveBackup folder with seemingly correct size - ActiveBackupData (seen through File Station or if I mount the share locally) is missing there, which leads me into thinking that ActiveBackupData with every snapshot in it is somehow generated on the go, and that the de-duplication happens on the file system level (it's on a BTRFS volume). Are my assumptions correct?

Something else - I noticed that even if I do weekly backups, every time the transfer size is roughly equal to the used capacity of the partition I'm backing up; this is fine over my local network, but what happens if I want to set up a backup for a remote computer over the Internet? Is there a way to only transfer what's changed?

1
PaleMongo•

After a few months with ABB, I uninstalled it in favor of Macrium Reflect. FWIW, the free version does include differential images, and it can also backup files/folders in lieu of partitions.

Hopefully, there will be others to help you in your ABB quest. Perhaps this will be helpful (the author responds well to questions).

https://www.blackvoid.club/3-2-1-active-backup/

1