Image backup other than Acronis and Norton

[Hans L]

For those of you who havent seen my older posts reguarding acronis true image ill do a quick recap.
I tryed acronis true image 9 and i couldnt create a successful backup so couldnt even test restore.
the old acronis forums at wilders show the problems people have. the later versions of acronis simply added bloated and didnt fix what was broken.

I would like to point out norton ghost is a great product. it uses an older version of the software used in shadow protect desktop at a cheaper price.

the other products i mentioned in my above posts i have personaly tested backup and restores and they work great.

Lodore, I have a rather consistent tendency of abandoning software when they become bloated (and I mean with additional functions). So, I will, during the next few months, look at the apps that were mentioned in this post by various posters.

I can report that I got the first backup on my wife's computer tonight (set to max 3 backups; her files size is half of mine), so, on Thursday morning, I will know if it worked 100 %. I will report back.

Regards,

Hans L

[Hans L]

I never got the backup management to work in Acronis TI and in the end gave up on it for various reasons. Moved to Macrium (both free and paid) which is brilliant and has great support (as well as being a UK product). The free version is fine though it just does full backups.

Am going to start looking at the various apps now. Is there a Macrium Reflect free version anymore? I don't seem to find one.

Regards,

Hans L

[Zak33]

This is going to feel a LOT like cracking a walnut with a huge sledgehammer, but please bare with me

If you can get an old PC, and have somewhere to place it (you won't need a screen or a mouse/keyboard for it)

and IF you can afford to buy a couple of new sata drives (for reliability.... you might already have a spare drive or two)

and IF you can afford £75 for Windows Home Server
http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/MS-Wi...10-Clients-OEM

Then you should build one!

You see, ignoring it's ability to act as a server, and all the other stuff it's capable of doing (hosting webserver, media centre potential, remote access to your own files and even remote access to your PC's THROUGH the server on the net, ie at work etc)..... it also runs full backup's of your PC's... up to ten of them.

I have one, on Jiff and DR's advice, and it's sublime. I switch it on once per week, and using the tiny software pack that goes onto each of my PC's (from the server, either by USB pen drive or by connecting to the server) I can backup my entire PC, all it's component drives as full images.

Plus.... if a PC dies, not only do I have the image, but I can "boot" it up off the server as a virtualPC, to see the files within it ... ie my wife's laptop is backed up, she takes it away with her, I need a file from it... I can run the laptop as a virtual machine within the server

And.. I can access the majority of it's funcionality using the WHS software on my regular PC, or access it using the MSTSC (microsoft terminal services client) built into most versions of windows.

So.. no monitor or keyboard/mouse needed.

Plus.. as the hard drives fill up with my valuable data, I can just add one in, because the WHS just creates one large virtual drive, and dumps the files onto as many different drives as it can, then leaves a tombstone for it, so if a drive dies, it can retrieve it from another drive.

So... if you have enough dough to get an old PC together, with a couple of new drives and £75 for the OS.....

you'll have a nuclear warhead to crack a walnut AND it'll do stuff you had no idea you ever wanted

[Zak33]

so good is it.. I just reread my own post and decided I was more right than a right bloke with no left side./....

[Hans L]

Well, Zak, you sure feel good about yourself And, seriously, nothing wrong about that. And I am sure you are right. Next time we upgrade our hardware, my wife and I, we need a few database apps and a calendar and maybe more apps in common, so a server would then be a thing to look at (for apps and shared storage). I will save your post.

Regards,

Hans L

[leonkehoe]

Clonezilla - it's been mentioned but I thought I'd share my experience with it. Used it for the first time this weekend, incredibly straight forward, worked like a charm. Highly recommended.

[Hans L]

Leon, sounds good. However, I also read this:

"Due to the image format limitation, the image can not be explored or mounted. You can _NOT_ recovery single file from the image."

And while there is a workaround ("However, you still have workaround to make it, read this."), I need to be able to recover files in an easy way. So, I will not try Clonezilla at this time.

Regards,

Hans L

[Tonka777]

I recently started using Cobian for backing up important files once a day, and find it works really well. Simple to setup lists and tasks, and just works.

[Hans L]

It seems as if Cobian is *not* an image backup application. Am I wrong?

Regards,

Hans L

[Apex]

Another vote for WHS, been playing with some builds of this and have been suprised at how much i have liked it. ( support for windows xp 64 is limited sadly )

[Biscuit]

i would quite liek to transfer my 2x500GB F3 raid0 array to my 2x320 momentus XT raid0 array but all the things i have tried so far either dont support raid0 or require the source drive to be the same or larger than the destination. The actual amount of data on the F3 raid is less than 200GB.

Any suggestions?

[Splash]

I know for fact that I've restored data backed from from one RAID array to another using TrueImage in the past. That said - does it have to be image based? If not then you could just as easily use Robocopy/Richcopy/any other robust copying tool.

[abitlover]

Windows 7 has back up feature.

[Hans L]

macrium reflect quite cheap and fantastic. ive set it up for alot of my customers to do a weekly full and daily incremental backup.
Fast and reliable.
image for windows and shadow protect desktop are also worth a look.

Lodore, just a quickie, as I cannot look through Help right now: I have an image backup from Reflect, and I double-clicked on it (xxx.mrimg). In window Backup selection, which appeared, I checked one virtual drive (G that I had backed up, and clicked OK. A new virtual drive was created (L. Great. I was able to retrieve single files (I did it as a test).

Now, how do I get rid of the created virtual drive (L? Any way within Reflect, or do I have to do it outside Reflect (and, if so, how)?

Hope you can help!

Thanks,

Hans L