Drive Image-Level Backup - Backup Plan Configuration, Limitations, Advantages, Common Issues

In this article, you will get information on how to configure image-level backup using Xopero ONE.

Drive image-level backup - backup plan configuration, limitations, advantages, common issues

This type of backup allows you to create a backup of the entire device - with the operating system, installed applications, settings, services, and data. Thanks to this, in the event of a failure, you can quickly restore the entire environment on an old or completely new device.

The backup covers the entire disk. Only selected partitions cannot be backed up.

Choosing devices

After selecting this type of backup you can select one or more devices that the plan will apply to. It's done by clicking on the Devices section and selecting hosts that should be assigned to the plan.

The image-level backup plan is dedicated to devices with the Windows operating system only.

Choosing data for protection

In Data to protect you can select the data that you want to include in the backup plan.

Using global rules:

Global rules allow you to choose drives that will be protected. This method provides for you Xopero Variables, a predefined list of variables like SYSTEM_DISK, ALL_DISKS, DISK_0, DISK_1.

Selecting from devices:

This method allows for the selection of disks individually for each device by connecting remotely to its file system. As a limitation, it is not possible to select selected partitions. The entire disk is always backed up, including all its partitions.

If a disk with a boot partition is not included in the backup, the operating system restore function will not be available from the backup.

Common issues

If the disk image backup task did not ended correctly, check if you have a .NET Framework tool installed on your system, version 4.6.1 or higher. You can download it from the manufacturer's website - the Microsoft company.

If the backup still does not work after installing .NET, access to VSS services may have been taken away by another process. In this case, go to the plan editing window and select the Continue backup after VSS error option in advanced settings, and then save the changes. That should fix the problem.

The manual on restoring data from a disk image backup can be found an:

pageDrive image backup recovery

Too small buffer for S3-type storage. S3 storages have a buffer limit, which is set to 128 MiB by default and allows you to transfer ~1250GiB of data. If you exceed this value, expand your buffer using the information in the article on optimizing your backup:

pageBackup optimization (backup window, task balancing, storage location, shutdown computer after backup