Advice Sought on Good Real World Backup S/W?

farss wrote on 12/6/2007, 2:55 AM

True Image from Acronis, saved my butt a few times.

Dead easy to use, I'd deleted an email that contained a quote I'd sent. Opened the backup on my SAN, dragged the email from the backup into my current Sent folder, job done.

Bob.

Grazie wrote on 12/6/2007, 2:58 AM

Ah! "True Image 10" is made by Acronis?

What is a "SAN"?

TIA

Grazie

Grazie wrote on 12/6/2007, 3:12 AM

http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/downloads/2157451/acronis-true-image-homeATI-11 is going for £18.55?![/link] - That's ALMOST 50% off of the Ghost price!

Grazie

farss wrote on 12/6/2007, 3:57 AM

Sorry I should have said NAS, Network Attached Storage.
In my case I have a Thecus 5200 which sits on the network along with all my PCs. I have a drive mapped in each PC to the NAS box, so I just configured True Image to do it's backup to say drive I\backups\aaaaaa where aaaaaa is the backup file name, create a unique file name for each machine on the network, use say the machines name like Edit1, Edit2, Ingest1 etc. But this is all very flexible, if you don't have a NAS you can backup to a USB drive or a thumb drive if it'll fit.

You can do complete backups, that backups everything or incremental backups, only backs up the files that have changed since the last backup or from memory you can keep each separate, so you keep the state of every file at each backup etc.

Also the install CD is bootable, so if the worst happens you can boot an OS from the CD to restore your system drive and all the files.

Bob.

mekelly wrote on 12/6/2007, 4:59 AM

Tried most of them. Acronis is the best by far, awesome products.

Coursedesign wrote on 12/6/2007, 7:22 AM

Amen on Acronis True Image, works great.

riredale wrote on 12/6/2007, 7:51 AM

Ditto.

One thing, though: I've never been able to get Acronis to backup to DVD-R directly. Instead, what I do is to make images broken into 4.34GB chunks, then use Nero to burn those chunks to DVD-R.

Grazie wrote on 12/6/2007, 8:31 AM

Thank you friends!

Been reading your responses and doing more research.

And yes, Riredale, on of the main crits of Acronis was an inability to burn directly to DVD, and the need for an interim 3rd party burner s/w.

So, it look as if Norton ain't it. I guess you guys HAVE used it in the past?

Grazie

Bob Denny wrote on 12/6/2007, 8:41 AM

Like everyone else, Acronis TrueImage! I have used it for several years. I originally got it to help on a notebook drive replacement, but it changed my whole way of doing things.

One thing to note: Be sure to make the boot CD and TEST IT. It might not boot, or it might not come up on your network (you have those NAS disks). The problem is likely that it doesn't have the driver for your network card.

If you end up not being able to use the Acronis boot disk, there's still hope! Check out BartPE at http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/. This is a relatively simple system for building bootable CDs using the Windows files on YOUR system (in the i386 folder). It has a way for you to add drivers manually, and it's relatively simple too. Acronis has a "plugin" for BartPE (you have to hunt for it on the Acronis site) which will allow you to run TrueImage from the booted PE CD. I even got all of this to work on a USB Key!!! (that was NOT very easy!).

Grazie wrote on 12/6/2007, 8:43 AM

Bob! Wow! - Great advice. I bow to your depth of knowledge on this topic.

Grazie

Coursedesign wrote on 12/6/2007, 8:59 AM

I bought Acronis primarily to upgrade one of my PCs to a larger C: drive without reinstalling everything. Worked perfectly and quickly.

Overstock sells TrueImage 11 for $36.99 today.

Soniclight wrote on 12/7/2007, 8:17 PM

"So, it look as if Norton ain't it. I guess you guys HAVE used it in the past?"

Oh, yeah, been there, done that. Huge headaches in my case -- had to even go up the corporate ladder at Symantec to finally get some actual help. That experience and constant problems before and after made me...

... join the club of all others here. Been using TI 9 for a few years = smooth as silk. I don't even feel the need to upgrade. Can't ask anything more from an app.

Especially one that's seriously saved my butt several times. The kind of stuff that could tear one's mind apart (computer-user psychotic break type thing :)

Oh, and try NewEgg. I got my TI there.

ushere wrote on 12/7/2007, 9:55 PM

acronis 10 got my vote....

leslie

ken c wrote on 12/7/2007, 11:50 PM

i've been using acronis for many years, exclusively, works great to backup and ghost drives...

-k

Soniclight wrote on 12/8/2007, 9:25 AM

Well, Grazie, looks like it's an overwhelming slam dunk in the opinion department this time -- and no Norton trolls either :)

blink3times wrote on 12/8/2007, 10:59 AM

BOOTitNG

It operates independently from any OS and boots on its own so it will image ANYTHING on the disk. Vista, xp, win98, linux, win3.1...etc

http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/bootitng.html

jrazz wrote on 12/8/2007, 11:30 AM

Graham,

If you go with Acronis, you may want to find a copy of 10. I use it and like it very well (8,9, & 10), but I have heard that 11 is not as stable. Now, that could just be hearsay or it could have been correct and released a patch, but 10 works great.

j razz

Grazie wrote on 12/8/2007, 11:43 AM

but I have heard that 11 is not as stable. Now, that could just be hearsay or it could have been correct and released a patch, but 10 works great.

Excellent! Now that I've downloaded and paid for 11! Great! - I hate I.T. I really do . . .

I'm gonna make supper . . . .

Soniclight wrote on 12/8/2007, 3:11 PM

Even if the stability thing is true (have no clue if so), relax, Grazie: Acronis is pretty responsive in terms of support. So enjoy thy Numero Eleven, mate, and foggedaboudit :)

craftech wrote on 12/8/2007, 3:57 PM

I have a mobile rack that I installed in my XP Pro box. Since it is for EIDE drives and my motherboard has SATA ports I have one of these IDE ATA-133 to Serial ATA SATA Converters attached to the back of the mobile rack.

When it boots up the drive in the rack is recognized by the SATA controller even though it is an IDE drive. The drive normally in the rack is a WD1600JB 160 GB EIDE drive. When I want to do a backup I do the following:

I put an EIDE drive into the rack equal in size to my main drive. My main drive is a 74 GB WD Raptor so I put a $45 WD800JB 80 GB EIDE drive into the mobile rack (actually I have a second mobile rack drawer with the backup drive in it already).

I change to "Boot from Floppy Drive" in my bios then start my machine. In my floppy drive I have a copy of Norton Ghost 2003 with W98SE startup files on it so it will boot. Ghost 2003 starts automatically and I make a disc to disc copy erasing the last backup in the process. When it is done I now have a bootable clone of my main drive.

The important thing to remember is to turn off the PC when you are back at the A:/ prompt and switch drives before you restart. You don't want to boot into Windows XP with two bootable OS drives in the same system. Norton Ghost 2003 was free and I have a perfect backup every time on a removable cloned hard drive that can directly substitute for my Raptor if it ever dies or Windows does the nasty.

John

Soniclight wrote on 12/8/2007, 8:41 PM

My set up is a bit simpler....

I backup to off-system external Firewire IDE -- and -- I make alternate TI backups:

--- One to "SYS BU 1" folder in one partition, then the next time, to "SYS BU 2" on the other. When the time comes again, I delete the one in SYS BU 1, do backup there, and so on. This way II always have a second-to-last backup just in case.

It's come in handy.

MarkWWW wrote on 12/9/2007, 6:51 AM

I'd also vote for Ghost2003, booted from a floppy. It's the only disk/partition cloning software that I've never run into problems with. With all the others I've tried (Acronis, Drive Image, etc) I have always run into some combination of hardware or disk layout that they couldn't handle.

Although Ghost2003 is branded as Norton, it is a product they bought in from another company (Binary Research from New Zealand) and they hadn't yet ruined it by the time of Ghost2003. Unfortunately, all subsequent versions of "Norton Ghost" have not been based on the original Ghost that Norton/Symantec had bought from Binary Research, but on Powerquest Drive Image (which they had also bought in) and are nothing like as good (though they look pretty).

Ghost2003 hasn't been available for a while, but if you can get hold of a copy and are prepared to use it in the old-school boot-from-a-floppy way I'd be surprised if you run into anything it can't handle.

Mark