Best way to backup/ programs to use

[Disturbedguy]

Hello all

As some may know from my New Case thread, I have a new case arriving next and have decided that seeing as I am putting everything into the new case, I am going to format my PC as well.

I have a 300Gb Hard Drive which I have almost filled, so I have a lot that I want to and need to back up as well as bits that I don't need to back.

I was wondering what process people use if any to back up and what programs if any people use when creating backups.

I have seen programs like Genie Back Up Manager recommended and have also seen Arconis True Image suggested for creating an image of the entire Hd.

Any suggestions, tips and that like?

[Agent]

I use Acronis Home when I need an exact disk image or cba to go through each directory backing stuff up. Its quite fast and the compression is impressive

The big advantage for me is that I won't ever miss anything. Oh, and the images are browsable in explorer just like a normal HD

[lodore]

i couldnt reccomend acronis true image. it never worked for me all backups reported corropt and didnt uninstall properly. also doesnt work for alot of people, see the acronis fourm at wilders security forums.
somethin like paragon,image for windows,ghost 12,shadow protect desktop,ive installed all theese program as trials and backed up and restored successfully.
for file backup and replication try karens replicator

[Koolpc]

What is cba

[Saracen]

What is cba

Can't be ars ..... erm ..... bothered??

At a guess.

[Koolpc]

Oh, i see. Ta

[Agent]

i couldnt reccomend acronis true image. it never worked for me all backups reported corropt and didnt uninstall properly. also doesnt work for alot of people, see the acronis fourm at wilders security forums.

Weird, never had an issue with it at all across many machines. Nor on the network at work as far as I've heard. It has also won some HEXUS awards....very surprised to hear that

[Splash]

Weird, never had an issue with it at all across many machines. Nor on the network at work as far as I've heard. It has also won some HEXUS awards....very surprised to hear that

Ditto on the no issues front here. I tried TrueImage Home when it was in beta and it was a tad flaky then, but since it went gold it's pretty solid. Recent versions of Ghost seem to be on a par too, so it might be worth giving it a whirl.

Most of these apps have a 30 day trial, so you can test them out and see what works best for you.

[graystreet]

Another no issue vote for Acronis here as well. I've been using it for a few years now and it's never let me down.

[Disturbedguy]

Looks like am going to give Acronis a go.

One question, this might sound a bit stupid but here goes. With the image, what exactly does it back up and can I pick through the image and choose what I want reinstalling?

[mark22]

I've done this recently, I don't think you can choose what to reinstall as it's just a copy of a partition etc. You can set files to be excluded, I'd suggest hiberfil.sys and pagefile.sys there as they will significantly increase your backupfile size for no reason. I use it to back up the c and d partitions as I install windows on c and all my apps on d. It can restore an image of that in a few minutes very nicely and the two mentioned excluded files are recreated by windows on the first startup.

[Jay]

for images I use Ghost (the old version that runs via PCDos)

[pau1777]

I have used ghost in the past and it has worked fine.

[graystreet]

Just to add to what Mark says, you can also browse the image to choose to just restore individual folders or files ( e.g Mydocuments or individual documents). But you can't, for example if you have Word installed, choose to just restore the Word application.

You can also schedule backups so for example, I run a complete c: drive backup once a week but have scheduled a backup of my email daily.

This is using Acronis but I would imagine Ghost offers the same faciltiy.

[Disturbedguy]

Cheers gray that sounds good, I can backup all my crap with Acronis then just select what I want restored, such as music and stuff.

[Hunain]

I have been using acronis home for a long time now, have backed up alot, it works totally fine for me, the compression is pretty awesome and it is very fast. Works for me perfectly fine, i would heartily recommend it