Yes, definitely use the compression. Using compression does not make your data any less accessible, nor does it make it less likely you will be able to recover your data. Remember, the TIB file that Acronis Trueimage creates is already a proprietary file. What is more, it is a single file. If that single file becomes corrupt, then all your data can be lost, whether or not that file is compressed.

Even though compression should not worry you, if you have some superstition about it, and therefore don't want to use it, then an alternative for data backup is to simply use a large hard drive, and then copy all the data. This is much slower, but it avoids any issues you may have with backup technology. I use a program called FileBoss when I make these kind of backups. All it does is copy, but it has one important additional feature: it can be set so that it only copies files which are newer than ones already on the target drive. Thus, after I do my initial backup, I can repeat that backup a week later, and only the files which have been updated or added will be copied. This "incremental" backup operation usually only takes a few seconds.

I have a different opinion. I can't remember the last time an uncompressed file failed to open. ISO's, zips, rar's all fail from time to time for whatever reason.

The whole point of backing up is knowing the back up will work. I don't put any program in charge of compressing or "packaging" my back up. Period.

Here is my strategy.
I use the free application Fastfilesync. It will back up whatever you need to where ever you want and then compares files and does incremental back ups. Storage, especially mechanical is so cheap why fool around?

In addition, by having your back up in a usable format you can easily mirror a laptop drive, use the laptop for a weekend, and then mirror it the other way. Since you've probably only changed a few files the "back up" only takes seconds generally. Now you have yet another back up on your laptop, or HTPC, or memory stick, or whatever.

For Windows 7 use the in-built backup - it works very well. Do NOT compress - there is no need to do this and it does add a complication to the creation, restore stages that you do not want.

If you want to use compression to data files - and this unfortunately has no meaning in the video stream world - data like word documents - then compression might be a handy feature. The only time I use compression is in a second level backup - one backup always remains uncompressed.

The idea underlying this thread is that compression somehow adds a "risk" that you might not be able to retrieve your data.

If the file is readable (i.e., not corrupt), then this idea is wrong. However, if the file is corrupt (reported as not readable), then there is some truth to the idea.

Let us suppose that for some reason two files are reported as corrupt: the first is a regular file, and the other is a similar file, but it has been compressed (with zip, rar, 7z, or a backup program).

What can you do, and are your options any different for each type of file?

There are some specialty programs designed to retrieve corrupt files of certain types. For instance, you can find programs that will attempt to retrieve corrupt Excel files. Just Google "corrupt file utility" and then add the name of the type of file type you are trying to retrieve. For instance, here is the search for Excel repair utilities:

corrupt file utility excel

If the file has been compressed, and the compressed file is corrupt, then you will not be able to use such a utility. Therefore, for these types of files (i.e., files for which specialized repair utilities exist), compression could make retrieval more difficult, or impossible.

However ...

For the vast majority of file types, no such utility exists. In addition, most files we deal with in this forum do not contain human readable information, and therefore you cannot use a hex editor or other utility to reconstruct the data. Having said that, it is true that for certain types of video files, it is sometimes possible to recreate the index file (AVI files, for instance).

Therefore, IMHO, your sense of security in not using compression is somewhat false for most types of files.

For me, compression has too many advantages to not be used. It obviously makes the backup smaller -- MUCH smaller, in most cases. Disk drives may be cheap, but I'd rather deal with twenty disk drives and not fifty.

Media files are the exception because they don't compress and therefore compression is a waste of time. Therefore, if you are backing up media files then you should just use Windows Copy.

For non-media files, compression also makes things faster. I first found out about this almost a quarter century ago when the first disk compression utilities hit the market. It turns out that the speed required to uncompress files is almost nothing compared to disk read speeds. Thus, if a file is half the size because it has been compressed, it takes about half the time to read it. This was true even back then, but it is even more true now that processor speed has increased 100x since those days 40-50 MHz processors.

Finally, most backup software does have the capability to recover some of the files from a corrupt backup, so when you use the compression that is part of the backup software (like Trueimage), you are not adding any risk whatsoever to your backup and restore process.

Zip and other data compression apps save very little space when it comes to audio and video files, unless one needs to make a single file of a project. so I see no point in it especially with the mentioned 'risk factor'.

I use two methods, I do not store any video/audio files on my OS drive, so I clone that to an identical SSD using Casper, once a week. Casper does an incremental copy, so it only takes a few minutes and is done in the background.

I then backup the audio/video material to a different drive, a slower WD Red drive that is there for the sole purpose of providing an archive.

The advantage of the Casper clone is that if anything happened to the main OS drive, I simply swap the two drives over and instantly I am back and operating again, no need for a restore or re-install.

My C drive contains the OS and also numerous other files BUT NOT my video files--they reside on several other hard drives.

I've used Acronis for many years (automated incremental backups every 2 days) on multiple systems and have always used compression. My objective is to get the quickest backup possible. I recall that if I had a powerful processor then the high setting was quickest because it involved the least amount of data going to the backup drive. Run some tests yourself and see what setting works the best.

For the past year I've used Macrium Reflect with compression, again with absolutely no issues.

This board had done a similar discussion some months back. I fail to comprehend the concern some have regarding compression, based on my own experience.

though win 7's inbuilt imaging is excellent it IS NOT suitable if your system has UEFI as opposed to BIOS.

It is also very slow when compared to something like Macrium reflect

Thank you all for your varied and in-depth replies. For now since I have plenty of backup space, I'm going to stick to non-compressed OS backups -- full, not incremental or differential. Call me paranoid or squirrely, guilty as charged. As to the built-in Win7 backup, I used it once, didn't like it so don't use it.

As far as non-OS, i.e. Vegas, Cubase, PI etc. project files as well as their media, I use the free Cobian backup that I keep open when working in such programs whereby I have custom incremental backup "jobs" for these. I.e. if I'm working in Vegas but am not adding new media, I have an all-.veg backup I hit periodically (all my project files are in the same directory). When I add new media, I have its own directory backup and so forth. When I'm in Cubase, also have its own "job," and ditto for still photo-artwork stuff, etc.

Yes, I could use something like Excalibur for .veg files and have in the past but the trial ran out, budget is tight and my manual Cobian way works for me. The only glitch this program seems to have is that when a new job is created, it only copies the folders, nothing in them. So I simply manually copy-paste the stuff before using the new job, then it all works fine.

In short, as reflected in your posts and mine, to each his/her own way of doing things.

@ GeeBax

I also use Casper the same way you do. I especially use it when testing updates, upgrades and new software. Something goes wrong, put the backup in and it is as if nothing bad ever happened.

https://vimeo.com/channels/cocnwp

www.dannyfye.com