Veritas™ System Recovery 21 User's Guide

Schedule backups at a time when you know your computer is on.

Your computer must be turned on and Windows must be running at the time a backup occurs. If not, any scheduled backups are skipped until the computer is turned on again. You then are prompted to run the missed backup.

Use a secondary hard disk as your backup destination.

You should store recovery points on a hard disk other than your primary hard disk (C). It helps ensure that you can recover your system in the event that your primary hard disk fails.

See Setting up default general backup options.

Consider using external drives as your backup destination.

Using an external drive makes your backup data more portable. Should you need to remove your critical data from a particular location, you can quickly grab an external drive on your way out the door.

See How Offsite Copy works.

Give unique names to your external drives to help you easily identify them.

You can assign a unique name to each external drive. A unique name helps you to keep a track of where your backup data is stored for each computer you back up. It is more useful in situations when the drive letters change each time you unplug and plug an external drive into your computer. A unique name ensures that you always know which drive is used when you are running Veritas System Recovery.

Using a unique name does not change the volume label of a drive. A unique name helps you to identify the drive when you use Veritas System Recovery.

Once a unique name is assigned, it stays with the drive. If you plug the drive into a second computer running another copy of Veritas System Recovery, the unique name appears.

Use Offsite Copy

Use Offsite Copy to copy your latest recovery points to either a portable storage device or a remote server. By copying recovery points to a portable hard disk, you can then take a copy of your data with you when you leave the office.

See How Offsite Copy works.

Run backups frequently on a regular basis.

When you define your backups, schedule them to run frequently so that you have recovery points that span at least the last two months.

See Editing a backup schedule.

See Defining a drive-based backup.

Keep personal data on a separate drive than the drive on which Windows and your software programs are installed.

You should keep your operating system and software programs separate from your own data. It speeds the creation of recovery points and reduces the amount of information that needs to be restored. For example, use the C drive to run Windows and to install and run software programs. Use the D drive to create, edit, and store personal files and folders.

For other drive management solutions, go to the Veritas website at the following URL: https://www.veritas.com/

Verify the recovery point after you create it to ensure that it is stable.

While defining a backup, select the option to verify that the recovery point is stable and can be used to recover lost data.

Delete the corrupt images.

When the backup destination is a network location, all backup images in the destination folder are appended with a .tmp extension during the backup. If the backup is successful, the images are automatically renamed with .v2i (base) and .iv2i (incremental) extensions. If a network connection to the destination fails, the backup is unsuccessful. The corrupt images with the .tmp extension are retained. These files are not tracked by Veritas System Recovery 21 and can be deleted safely.