Anyone any experience with creating a ghost backup of SCADA?

[GeoffC]

Yes serial works fine in VMware
But I would just use a serial server and a VMware solution

 

[TheWaterboy]

ShadowProtect Desktop is $99, but what you're actually paying for is the license for the software that you install on the machine to schedule/automate, backup and restore.

Once you have purchased the license you have access through the website to download the ISO's for the StorageCraft Recovery Environment which you can burn to CD/USB and can be used to do backup and restore without installing anything on the machine.

I will give that a go, thanks.

 

[uptown47]

Thought I would post back with my experiences.

I bought the ShadowProtect software for $99 and it is diabolical AVOID!!!!

After fighting my way through a dazzling array of products on a website that was obviously designed by the same guy who did the Siemens site, I parted with my hard-earned. Got the software and then was told that it doesn't do what I wanted. Which was to back up a PC without installing the software on the actual computer.

I decided to just install it on a test machine to see if it would work but then found out that you can't do that either as the machine needs access to the net (which in the factory the PC doesn't have). Also, to activate a PC 'offline' you need to contact them and they basically send you a patch to install.

After spending a good half hour talking to various help desk people who didn't even know their own product range I decided not to trust the fate of our factory to these people.

I returned to this thread and found a recommendation for Paragon http://www.paragon-software.com/home/br-free/

It's free and it does everything I wanted very easily and quickly with a great 'wizard' to help things along.

Just in case anyone is in a similar situation as me and is curious, it took about 15 minutes to backup a PC with around 8Gb of data on it (but the SCADA still ran fine in the background whilst the backup took place).

Well done Paragon.

Shame on you ShadowProtect.

 

[The Plc Kid]

Uptown

Backups are easy but restores are where the money is. Not sure why you needed support to get your key. I have never used shadow protect support so I cant say how it is.

All you needed to do was download the ISO and burn it and boot your machine with it. No need to activate.

Paragon makes a good product but I have had restores to dissimilar hardware fail. You may want to try and restore to different hardware or at least a different model of hard drive before you put complete faith in that backup.

 

[uptown47]

Hi PLC Kid,

What exactly am I burning to disk? I have Desktop 5 and Recovery Environment.

I phoned support because I couldn't find a decent "How To" on their site. They reckoned that Desktop 5 was unable to do a backup without full installation. They said I needed an IT Support package (or something like that??)

Anyhoo, they couldn't even tell me how to use Desktop 5 or Recovery Environment and how to make a backup and restore with those 2 tools.

I couldn't install Desktop 5 because I couldn't activate it without going online, unless I got them to send me a 'patch'. I couldn't get a patch because I wanted to install on an offline test machine first to see if it would conflict with the SCADA package and also to get my head around how to work it. If I installed the patch on the test machine (the patch was machine specific) it would prevent me from using it on the 'actual' machine I wanted to backup....

Sheeeesh!!! The people I spoke to didn't fill me with confidence at all in the product(s). They didn't seem to know their own product portfolio at all.

All in all I thought it best to steer clear.

It seemed to me that maybe in a home environment perhaps it would be ok but in a production environment where I need it to work, first time, without hiccups it was far too big a risk.

Paragon was brilliant. Also free. A great product and I would highly recommend it.

 

[The Plc Kid]

Burn the recovery enviroment ISO to disk and boot the machine with it. It allows you to backup or restore.

Once you are done with the backup remove the CD and reboot your machine and you have a backup with no software installed.

Installing in windows and activating is only if you had the SCADA machine connected to a network for example and you wanted shadow protect to make a daily image to a network storage location for example.

In my IT services business we use it for customers that have 2-3 computers and a small server or NAS storage. This makes a daily image of their PC and if they lose are hard drive or worse their machine can be restored easily to the same hardware or new hardware.

For computers in the automation systems I use the recovery cd to make backups yearly or when we change something as we employ deep freeze on all our SCADA systems so nothing ever changes and operators can't tear them up.

 

[uptown47]

Thanks for the info Kid, much appreciated.

 

[harryting]

Bump, I know this is an older thread but the info is still relevant. I noticed Acronis moved to a subscription model and my response to that is <insert bad words here>

Any experience with Macrium? It's $99 per machine and have decent reviews. I do not trust Windows 10 native backup.

Another one that seems promising is AOEMI Backupper, they have a technican edition for $500 for unlimited PCs.

 

[parky]

I back up regularly with Macrium, but have only restored two PC's & they worked fine, so backup seems ok, & so far although limited restores these worked without a problem.

 

[cardosocea]

I use Veeam and am quite happy with it. Looking at their pricing calculator, the cost doesn't seem obscene for what it does.

 

[NetNathan]

Still select Acronis... even though they have gone to subscription model. There are some benefits to a subscription model...ie... always having the most current version and tech support is covered.

 

[harryting]

I don't mind subscription but in most HMI situation, the base OS and core software package are rarely updated until the next major version or OS update which is typically 5-7 time frame in today's world. I rather like the "technician" pricing because that's basically what we typically do and I go for that if Acronis offers one that's not a per machine price.

 

[alive15]

I would like to make a backup of the hard-drive on my laptop, so is there any free software that could back everything up to an external USB hard-drive? Thanks,

 

[alive15]

Actually, I would prefer an image file backup? This way, I don't have to reinstall programs onto a new laptop, I can just open the image file and make everything the same on the new laptop as it was on the old laptop, if something like this exists?

 

[cardosocea]

Actually, I would prefer an image file backup? This way, I don't have to reinstall programs onto a new laptop, I can just open the image file and make everything the same on the new laptop as it was on the old laptop, if something like this exists?

The programs mentioned in the thread let you create an image of your hard drive and then copy it onto a new hard drive. The problem there is that the OS installation is for whatever processor/motherboard you have and it's unlikely it'll be compatible with the new processor/motherboard unless they're the same family and the computer may not boot.

What I've seen other people do is run what IT geeks call P2V (Physical to Virtual). This creates a virtual machine of your physical computer which you can run on your new computer as a virtual machine. I particularly remember one Rockwell tech that had 3 of his old laptops (with varying OS's) in his current laptop to access all the software he needed without having to install and deal with incompatibilities. Oddly, we needed his oldest VM to use Internet Explorer to be able to access Hirschman switches. LOL

https://www.vmware.com/uk/products/converter.html

If you don't want to pay for a license, Virtualbox can take VMware converter machines. Although I haven't had much luck lately with it and just buy a commercial solution instead.