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Ch.1 – Architecture & Requirements |
Ch.9 – Volume recovery |
In this series we already talked about the architecture of the Veeam Endpoint Backup FREE solution and how you can get started with the solution. We explained the service running, the components that are needed and after installation how easy it is to get started with the default settings. As I said in that post for many end-users, the default options will be perfect, but for others they want to make changes to what they protect (scope), the target destination and the schedule. Target destination and Schedules are for the next post, and today we are going to concentrate ourselves at the different backup modes and how they work.
There are three backup modes you can choose from if you look in the wizard, but actually, when selecting the last option, there is a fourth possibility called Hybrid Backup.
Entire computer
Entire computer backup is exactly what it says. A backup of your entire computer, including hidden system and recovery partitions.
We recommend using this mode as it will allow you to do a full Bare Metal Recovery, volume level restore of your choice and file or folder level restores all from the single backup. Since we are using block-level incremental backups after the first, initial full backup, it is also very efficient.
Speaking of efficiency, this mode (and the volume level backup mode) also excludes certain files that are not necessary to be in the backup such as temporary files folder, Recycle Bin, Microsoft Windows pagefile, hibernate file and VSS snapshot files from the System Volume Information folder. This will make your total backup smaller.
Volume level backup
Volume level backup is the same as entire computer backup, but with the difference that you choose the specific volumes yourself. If you choose to protect your system volume (e.g.: C:\ or the volume on which Microsoft Windows is installed) then it will automatically include the hidden partitions also and the system state data backup. Of course, you can modify the list of the volumes to backup and exclude unwanted system volumes of your laptop or PC, but be advised that it may affect your further Bare Metal Recovery process and may prevent you from restoring or booting the operating system.
As with the entire computer backup mode, you still can perform Bare Metal Recovery and volume level recovery but only for the volume that was previously selected for backup File level recovery for this type of backup is also supported.
File level backup
You can also choose the file-level backup mode. In this mode Veeam Endpoint Backup FREE will capture only the selected folders from your laptop or PC. You can exclude explicit files and extensions (or even explicitly include them).
Of course, running this backup mode means Bare Metal Recovery or volume level recoveries are no longer supported.
As you can see, there are a few options for you. We will dive deeper into this screen when we talk about exclusions, but it’s important to understand that you can create a hybrid backup under the file level backup step. It means you can select a specific volume (for example OS volume) and then add additional folders with personal data from another volume.
Conclusion
There are different modes that you can select when configuring your laptop or PC backup depending on your needs. We always recommend choosing the entire computer backup mode as it will give you the most restore options. But if you only want to protect certain volumes or maybe only specific user data we have you covered also.
For more information, watch the video.
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