Acronis TruImage home v10. Just came out.

I've used DriveImage (great image backup, but DOS only), Retrospect (bulletproof for incremental daily backups but cumbersome if used for "cold metal" image backup; somewhat odd user interface), and a variety of other products over the years. TruImage combines the image backup of DriveImage with the daily usability of Retrospect. It's also very fast. Highly recommended.

Thanks folks. I'd forgotten about Acronis and will definitely check it out.
One question though as their site and FAQ were kind of vague.
Can I specify a specific series of folders, such as only the student projects, to be backed up (as opposed to an entire drive)?
Thanks.

Mike

I have used WinBackup 1.86 which seems to work well and is FREE.

I have backed up to DVD blanks and other hard drives with zero problems.

John

Mike, with Acronis you can choose to backup files, folders, or an entire "snapshot" of the hard disk. First it'll do a full backup, then you can set it to do incremental and it'll only save the changes made from the previous backup, say, the night before. Or, you can do differential which will save the changes made since the last full backup. I think most people do the incremental.

For what it's worth, their service for Enterprise products sucks. But I like the product enough to still recommend it.

Oh, last thought on Acronis. Why I choose it for the day job (IT admin) was because it is easy to restore a crashed system in a few minutes (say if a harddrive fails). Many backup solutions require you to install Windows, then install the backup software, then restore from backup. (at least a few hour ordeal)

With Acronis, you make a bootable CD that looks an operates just like the software would under windows. I backup to a firewire drive and this bootable CD sees the firewire drive and any other shares you might have on your netowrk. In other words, you can stick a new harddrive into the computer, boot from CD, point to your last backup, click restore and the damn thing copies the image of your old hard drive to the new one and you are working within 30 minutes.

>>...wondering if there's anything else out there.

I have been using *Retrospect* for years.

That in conjunction with Acronis TrueImage (to back up the whole disk partition) is an unbeatable combo.

Works great.

i use Acronis 9, its recomended by most folks here, and i just bought Acronis 10 for my laptop and its even easier and has some added features.

Windows Live OneCare has everything you ask for in backup plus virus and adware exclusion, firewall and system maintenance. $49.95 a year for three computers.

I never push Windows stuff because of the companies politics but when Vista is out third-parties wont get access to the kernel as they do now and the Windows in-house utility will be the most reliable for the anti-virus part.

Michael