Mounting/Unmounting a local drive for "cold" backups

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FlyingPenguin
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Mounting/Unmounting a local drive for "cold" backups

Post by FlyingPenguin »

Okay, I thought I had a pretty good backup system here. I have secure cloud backups that are "cold" (disconnected). Ransomware can't see the backups and if my files get compromised, and backed up, I still have previous versions in the cloud before the corruption. So if ransomware encrypts the files on my PC or server, the backup won't overwrite the good files with the now encrypted files.

That's backup 101, and what every one of these small towns that got their systems infected by ransomware in the last month should have done, BTW. No excuse for that. Even a simple Carbonite account would take care of that.

However I never bothered to do the same thing with my weekly/monthly Acronis image backups (I image my server boot drive monthly and my workstaion's boot & data drives weekly). I do occasionally copy the latest image to a second off-line drive, but not regularly. Both my server and workstation save backup images to their own external USB 3.0 hard drives on a schedule. But those drives are always connected and if ransomware got into my workstation, it would see the external drive and probably encrypt my Acronis images. These are "hot" backups not "cold" (disconnected) backups.

Yeah it's nice that my data is securely backed up in the cloud, but if my system got compromised it would be nice to have a recent image to restore the boot drive without having to re-install Windows.

Listening to Steve Gibson discuss his methodology for making local "cold" backups the other day, he gave me a great idea. He does what I do - weekly images of critical drives on a schedule - but he dynamically mounts and unmounts the backup drive, so the drive is only visible to the operating system during the backup.

I did a little research and found the handy dandy commandline called MOUNTVOL: http://winteltools.com/mountvol/

I wrote two batch files: one to mount my drive and one to unmount it, and inserted them into the Acronis image job pre/post commands option. Most backup programs have this. It's a command or program you specify that you want to run before or after the backup runs. So I run the mount batch file before the backup (PRE) and the unmount batch file afterwards (POST).

You do need to get the unique Volume name for your backup drive, but that can be done with the MOUNTVOL <driveletter>: /L commandline in a DOS window.

I've posted some code here if anyone wants to do this. Just keep in mind that the drive will not be visible to Windows while it's unmounted, if you use that drive for anything else. You can manually run the mount and unmount batch files to make the drive accessible and then hide it again if you need to. The examples below presume the drive letter is "W" but this can be changed by changing the DRIVE variable:

MOUNT.BAT:

Code: Select all

@echo off

REM Be sure to change this to the drive letter you want to mount the drive to!
set drive=W

REM Be sure to change this to the Volume Name of the drive you want to mount!
REM Get the Volume Name by using command line command: MOUNTVOL W: /L
set volume=\\?\Volume{6092273f-1638-11e6-8276-d017c2a807be}\

:start
echo Mounting Drive...
mountvol %drive%: %volume%
echo Drive Mounted!

exit
UNMOUNT.BAT

Code: Select all

@echo off

REM Be sure to change this to the drive you want to unmount! 
set drive=W:

echo Unmounting Drive...
mountvol %drive% /p
echo Drive Unmounted!

exit
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psypher
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Re: Mounting/Unmounting a local drive for "cold" backups

Post by psypher »

Nice find!
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Losbot
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Re: Mounting/Unmounting a local drive for "cold" backups

Post by Losbot »

I need to spend some time on this. I'm guessing you boot an Acronis thumb drive or something to make those images?
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Re: Mounting/Unmounting a local drive for "cold" backups

Post by FlyingPenguin »

I'm guessing you boot an Acronis thumb drive or something to make those images?
No. On my workstation and server I have Acronis installed, so that the weekly image backups can run on a schedule in the background. Acronis uses it's own scheduler service, not the Windows scheduler.

I use a bootable Acronis thumb drive on all my other PC's (like my laptop and gaming system) because I only image those on an irregular basic.

I still use Acronis mainly because of inertia - mainly because I've been using it so long, and I'm very comfortable and familiar with it, and I have years of old archives I may want to recover some day.

If I was going to start all over with a new program, it would be the one Steve Gibson uses, and I've also bought it for some of my clients: Image for Windows https://www.terabyteunlimited.com/image-for-windows.htm

I think it's a better product and much more reasonably priced.

My biggest issue with Acronis is their GUI is God awful nowadays. They decided to "dumb it down" for the benefit of noobs, but in the process they made it extremely un-intuitive and unwieldy. Thankfully the thumb drive version retains the old classic GUI.
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Re: Mounting/Unmounting a local drive for "cold" backups

Post by b-man1 »

The free Veeam Backup & Recovery Community Edition is fantastic for a full featured backup solution. The CE gives you full featured scheduled backups (full + incremental, synthetic backups, etc) and multiple physical and/or virtual systems with the free license. Check it out if you haven't. I use Veeam in my day to day job to back up hundreds of physical and virtual servers, but the free version does almost all the same stuff. For home labs or even small office scenarios, it's great.
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Re: Mounting/Unmounting a local drive for "cold" backups

Post by psypher »

The product I've switch to from Acronis is Macrium. I really hate how Acronis has changed over the years plus all the various stupid issues I've encountered over the years.
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Re: Mounting/Unmounting a local drive for "cold" backups

Post by Executioner »

I agree. I quit using Acronis and have switched to Macrium. The free version works perfectly for making an image and cloning. I hate the Acronis desktop. The last good one was back in 2012 or 2013. I still use it with my windows 7 rig, but with my laptops and helping others, I rely on Macrium and their simple interface that does not change with every revision.
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Re: Mounting/Unmounting a local drive for "cold" backups

Post by FlyingPenguin »

I only keep using Acronis out of inertia and historical compatibility with old archives, but yeah I despise the new dumbed down interface and some very stupid decisions in the latest version. For instance, even though Acronis 2016 makes a log during a backup, there's no way to read the log from within the program. You have to download a separate app for that.

Also, the built in file consolidation feature has been broken since 2012. I don't even bother with it. I write my own batch file to prune the oldest backups.

I was just on Macrium's website, and I'm pretty impressed with the features. I might try it out.
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Re: Mounting/Unmounting a local drive for "cold" backups

Post by Executioner »

I even used it to backup my Linux Mint drive.
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Re: Mounting/Unmounting a local drive for "cold" backups

Post by FlyingPenguin »

Okay, I'm trying the Home 30 day trial out (I need some features that aren't in the free version). I like the Macrium Guardian that prevents write access to any Macrium images to prevent them from being encrypted by ransomware.

I still like the idea of mounting/unmounting the drive anyway because - in theory - ransomware could be developed that will circumvent Guardian, where if the drive is unmounted and invisible it's totally protected. Still, a nice feature, and I'll use it on the gaming PC where I don't worry about mounting/unmounting the drive because I use it for other things.
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Re: Mounting/Unmounting a local drive for "cold" backups

Post by normalicy »

I find it easy enough to just use a USB drive that I turn the power off on when done.
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Re: Mounting/Unmounting a local drive for "cold" backups

Post by psypher »

normalicy wrote:I find it easy enough to just use a USB drive that I turn the power off on when done.
I think this is more for the people that have automated scheduled backups.
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