Now that we can browse images, why files?

general discussion
1

My situation: I am backing up several windows computers to a local windows server (running win 10 pro). This server is backed up into the cloud. The data partitions are backed up as files, the system partitions as images. Reasoning is easy restoration and minimization of backup volume. Thus I have quick local access to files and an off-site disaster fallback.

Now that we can browse images on the server, I am wondering whether I should continue file backups for data partitions? I am a bit bothered by the expansive file structure on the server of the file backups, handling them is a bit of a pain. Windows complains about paths being too long. And there seem to be millions of files. My cloud backup service seems to be choking on all those files and long paths.

So the plan is: Buy block tracking for the clients, and just do everything as an image backup. Would that accomplish my goal of radically weeding out the file structure on the urbackup server? Would there be any disadvantage compared to file based backups?

2

If you have multiple you could just try it with one and see how it works out.

With file backups you get global file level deduplication, plus you can select what you want to have included in your backup. Plus you can run incremental forever style file backups.

UrBackup can run incremental forever style image backups but only with btrfs/ZFS (Have to implement it for ReFS at some point).

3

By “incremental forever style” you mean doing incremental backups without the need for a full backup now and then?

Deduplication is not so much a factor on the data partitions. And thus far, I have been very lazy about selecting what to backup, just doing full backups.

Getting my cloud backup to work properly is probably the most important motivation. It is most pressing for my personal laptop, I think I’ll get block tracking for that computer first.