Backing Up
Q: How often should I use THETA Backup's Backup?
A: Most users backup daily. If you are a frequent computer user and create/change numerous files daily, you might want to backup daily. If you do not use your computer frequently, backing up weekly may work best. THETA Backup's Backup has the ability to perform automatic backups on a daily, weekly or monthly schedule.
Q: How often will my computer be backed up?
A: As often as you wish, because you set up and administer the backup schedule that works best for your company.
How long does the backup take?
Backups are extremely fast. Our technology transmits only the changed portions of changed files during each backup session. Exactly how long that takes depends on the size of your backup, speed of your Internet connection, and amount of "changed" data.
Because the initial backup requires transmission of all data, it takes the longest and may require multiple sessions to complete. The service will "chip away" at the initial backup until it's complete with no user intervention required. After the initial backup is complete, nightly backups are significantly smaller and result in a faster backup.
Q: How many backups do you retain?
As many as you require! You can customize a retention scheme that works best for your company. Most clients use a grandfather-father-son scheme where daily backups are retained for 1 week, weekly backups are retained for 1 month, and month-end backups are retained for 1 year.
Q: What tasks do I have to do every day to run a backup?
A: None! Once you schedule the time and frequency of your backups during installation, the backups run automatically.
Q: Are the backups incremental backups?
A: They can be. Again, you have complete control, full, incremental or differential or a mixture of all 3. It's up to you!
Q: Which Backup Modes to use?
A: The THETA RBackup offers you three backup modes:
- Full: All files that match your selection are included into the backup.
- Incremental: Only those files will be included which have been changed since the last backup.
- Differential: Only those files will be included which have been changed since the last FULL backup.
We suggest you to choose one of the following three approaches of using the Backup Modes:
- "Always Full" - every time you back up all project's included files, whether some of them were changed or not. This approach is good when the project includes not so large amounts of data.
- "Full+Incremental" - you create a full backup relatively seldom: once a month, or once a week, or on achieving some important point in your work. All other backups you create with Incremental mode, getting backed up only files changed since the last backup (whatever its mode was). This approach is good when the project includes too many files to back up them all each time. It's fast and takes less time for incremental backups. Incremental backups take less disk space. It allows you to create backups frequently. However, to restore all the files, you have to restore the last full backup, and all the following incremental backups.
- "Full+Differential" - is intermediate between the first two approaches. It is also good when the conditions are intermediate. Each differential backup includes all the project files changed since the last full backup. It takes less time and space than "Always Full", but more than "Full+Incremental". The good thing is that restoring is simpler than for (2) - you'll have to restore the last full backup and the last differential backup.
You can choose any approach for each of your projects according to their size and frequency of file modifications. E.g. if almost all the included files appear changed before an incremental backup starts, the incremental backup will be almost of the same size as a full backup would be. If so, let it be "Always Full" to simplify the restoring.
Q: What if I have a transmission or modem connection failure during the backup?
A: If a transmission is interrupted in the middle of a backup, the software will continue to retry to connect for up to 1hr. until a connection can be re-established, then continue the backup where it was interrupted. If it takes longer then 1 hour to re-establish the connection, it will try again on the next scheduled backup.
Q: How are open files handled?
A: This is rarely an issue since backups are performed after business hours.
Q: Do I need to back up my entire computer?
A: No. Clients back up only their data files. Select only the files, directories, or drives that you wish to back up. Of course, THETABackup.com can only restore the data you schedule to back up. Make sure you are backing up all your critical files, and have your programs and operating systems offsite.
Q: How much data can I back up?
A: As much as you want. You will be charged on the amount of actual compressed data you store. Click here to see pricing for a range of storage sizes.
Q: How much compression can I expect from my data?
A: That depends on the type of data. Word files might get as great as 85%-90% compression, while JPEG files would hardly get any compression at all. Other file types fall somewhere in between. The following table will give you an approximate ratio for differing file types. For estimating purposes, assume a 50% compression of your native backup set size.
| File Type |
Description |
Ratio |
| hlp |
Microsoft help files |
2:1 (49%) |
| doc |
Microsoft word files |
6:1 (86%) |
| exe |
Windows executable |
2:1 (54%) |
| dbf |
Database files |
2:1 (56%) |
| txt |
Text files |
1.7:1 (45%) |
Q: How does the automatic backup scheduler work?
A: At the time you have scheduled, your computer will make a secure connection to our servers. Your data will be encrypted before leaving your site, then transmitted to THETA Backup and stored in our secure facility.
Q: How do I backup multiple computers? What about remote sites?
We will gladly install the software in any and all of your systems to ensure complete security.
Q: What happens if I unknowingly back up corrupted files?
The corrupt files get backed up and stored on our system. A backlog of backup sets that you can restore from will allow you to go back and restore files from the last date that the files were valid. That's why having a sufficient backup retention is important.
Q: Do I need to backup my entire computer?
A: No. You only need to backup important user files, not program or system files. If your computer crashes, you can restore programs and the operating system from the original CD-ROMs. Your important user files can be restored from your THETABackup.com Account.
Q: How much data can I backup?
A: THETA Backup offers flexible account sizes. Click here to see account sizes and pricing.
Q: Can I backup my entire drive with THETA Backup's RBackup?
A: No. THETA Backup's RBackup is designed to only backup user files and not system or program files. In the event of a computer crash, it is recommended that you reinstall the operating system and all programs from the original disks.
Q: How do I get a larger THETA Backup Account?
A: Because you are billed monthly by usage, there is no need to upgrade. Simply backup the data that you want to and we do the rest!
Restoring Data 
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