Best backup software?

[The Fish]

I am currently doing the B?U thing using progs. Currently on Acronis Home. I don't think the trial will be purchased...I find it slow in the GUI and several annoying things like unable to turn off the constant b/u feature.

I tried Paragon Free as I read a Sound on Sound article about it. The ability to just back up changes after a full one was attractive. Indeed it does do 'differential' b/u. But it seems to want to do a full one each time. Tested the rescue disc and it worked, well got to the point where it offered to install over anyway.

Used Macruim Reflect before that but changed as I wanted a prog that would do 'differential' back up.

So now I am thinking of just going back to a manual back up as I have a 240Gb drive with XP O/S on and two 500Gb drives. I basically mirrored them. And just having a full back up once a month on the O/S or after any major changes using Paragon. Macruim wanted to do the WIN P/E thing.

Then my data is generally safe and I don'y have to spend 10 hours getting the O/S back to how it was after reinstalling.

It seems you to have to spend a LOT of money to get a reliable, bug free B/U prog. I am disappointed with Acronis thats for sure.

[Legria]

I tend to keep all data on an external hard drive and then the format of the Windows drive is pain free and quick.

[peterb]

I've used Casapar in the past to clone drives, but if it is a drive image you want, running a live linux CD and using the dd command will do that on a disk or partition basis.

It takes a while though, and the image will be the same size as the disk. You could pipe the output into a compression utility like gzip which will reduce the size a little bit.

[Paul_tech]

I'm looking for the best backup software but it has to be free please.

I just want to make an image of my drives so that when the **** hits the fan then I can simply flash back quickly and safely without having to worry about errors or corruption or any nonsense that I think can come with file backup software...

I use and recommend you Handy Backup, is a hard drive image backup software for complete PC system backup. Performs automatic disk imaging and backs up operating system, boot records and all data on your computer.

[j.col]

As for general backup, I find Windows 7/Vista backup for taking a system image and backing up other crucial files to be quite efficient and non-intrusive. I backup to a NAS, you can get a cheap ones these days (handy if you have multiple PCs to backup) or just use an external USB/eSata drive.

I am fairly sure all editions of Vista let you do that, although only Pro and above editions of Windows 7 allows backup over LAN.

+1 for windows backup, i have used it often