Best Windows backup program

[Godfreyz]

What is the best Windows backup program to use? I have an external drive to
store backups on. Thanks

 

[Godfreyz]

Failed to mention that I am using Windows XP home edition. I have tried to
use Retrospect Express which came with my Western Digital USB hard drive but
have had a myriad of problems with it. Suffice to say is that it is hit or
miss and a bear to understand and use. Not user friendly at all in my
opinion. Also, I understand that it doesn't back up email files (I use
Outlook Express). Have tried Ntbackup but it doesn't provide me with the
ability to look at individual files that are backed up. Am looking for an
easy, user friendly backup program that will let me view individual files
and will also back up my email. Thanks

 

[Bioboffin]

Failed to mention that I am using Windows XP home edition. I have
tried to use Retrospect Express which came with my Western Digital
USB hard drive but have had a myriad of problems with it. Suffice to
say is that it is hit or miss and a bear to understand and use. Not
user friendly at all in my opinion. Also, I understand that it
doesn't back up email files (I use Outlook Express). Have tried
Ntbackup but it doesn't provide me with the ability to look at
individual files that are backed up. Am looking for an easy, user
friendly backup program that will let me view individual files and
will also back up my email. Thanks

My recommendation is that you buy a USB external drive, and copy your files
to that.

Additionally (quicker and more professional method - after buying your USB
external drive) is to buy Acronis true image - which gives you an effective
file backup and also a useful disk imaging program to back up your system
drive too. Acronis true image 10 is just released.

http://www.acronis.com/promo/ATI/tr...ge|726752417&gclid=CJbH5cvG2IgCFRZZXgodoSRghg

 

[Malke]

Failed to mention that I am using Windows XP home edition. I have
tried to use Retrospect Express which came with my Western Digital USB
hard drive but
have had a myriad of problems with it. Suffice to say is that it is
hit or
miss and a bear to understand and use. Not user friendly at all in my
opinion. Also, I understand that it doesn't back up email files (I
use
Outlook Express). Have tried Ntbackup but it doesn't provide me with
the
ability to look at individual files that are backed up. Am looking
for an easy, user friendly backup program that will let me view
individual files
and will also back up my email. Thanks

I like Second Copy from www.centered.com. I have no affiliation with
them; I just like the program and have used it for clients for many
years.

Malke

 

[Anna]

My recommendation is that you buy a USB external drive, and copy your
files to that.

Additionally (quicker and more professional method - after buying your USB
external drive) is to buy Acronis true image - which gives you an
effective file backup and also a useful disk imaging program to back up
your system drive too. Acronis true image 10 is just released.

http://www.acronis.com/promo/ATI/tr...ge|726752417&gclid=CJbH5cvG2IgCFRZZXgodoSRghg

GodfreyZ:
John's advice is sound. Do consider a disk imaging program such as the
Acronis program recommended by John. As he points out, the great advantage
of these types of programs over other types of backup programs is that not
only do they back up your user-created data files, but also your operating
system and all your programs & applications - in short, everything that's on
your working HDD. So if & when the time comes when you have to restore your
system you can do so relatively easily & reasonably quickly

By & large these programs are fairly easy to use and quite effective in
their results. Since you indicate that you're interested in viewing the
actual files that are backed up, you would most likely prefer to use the
Acronis (or similar) program for disk-to-disk cloning. These programs also
have the capability of "disk imaging" which, in effect, creates a backup
file which is a snapshot of your system. But you cannot view the individual
files in that instance until you undertake the recovery process. So a
disk-to-disk cloning operation would probably best meet your present needs.

I recently posted to this newsgroup a step-by-step guide for using the
Acronis program. It covers both the disk-to-disk cloning process as well as
the disk imaging process. If you're interested you can find it in the thread
"Re: XP home backup utility" dtd. 11/18.
Anna
Re: XP home backup utility

 

[Dora Smith]

I have a question - how well do images of your hard drive actually work for
restoring your system following a lost hard drive?

When I used to work for a temporary at various Texas state agencies, IT
would always try to "image" our drives to set them up, and I don't believe I
ever once saw them get a computer to work using that method.

So I'm suspicious. If you have a spare hard drive, will it work to simply
copy your hard drive? What is the point of this "imaging" notion?

 

[Dora Smith]

Does Second Copy copy the hard drive or "image" it? Because I'd sure have
alot more faith in a copy than an image.

 

[Anna]

(e-mail address removed)

I have a question - how well do images of your hard drive actually work for
restoring your system following a lost hard drive?

When I used to work for a temporary at various Texas state agencies, IT
would always try to "image" our drives to set them up, and I don't believe
I ever once saw them get a computer to work using that method.

So I'm suspicious. If you have a spare hard drive, will it work to simply
copy your hard drive? What is the point of this "imaging" notion?

Dora:
Let me respond to your question with specific reference to the Acronis True
Image program with which I've had a fair amount of experience.

With this program (like a number of other so-called "disk imaging" programs)
you have two basic options for backing up your system and restoring it.
1. You can clone the contents of your day-to-day working HDD to another HDD
(internal or external), or,
2. You can create a "disk image" of your HDD, essentially a "snapshot" (a
single file) of your system.

Obviously, with a disk clone, should the recipient of the clone be another
internal HDD, then you have a bootable HDD immediately available at your
disposal for recovery purposes. If, on the other hand, the recipient of the
clone is an external HDD (USB or Firewire for example), that device is not
ordinarily bootable so the contents of that drive would be cloned back to an
internal HDD for recovery purposes.

With a disk image, the recovery process is built-in to the Acronis program,
either using the GUI or a bootable Acronis "Rescue Media". In either case
the recovery process is straightforward and quite effective.

We've been working with the Acronis program for more than a year now and
we've found it very effective in terms of its backup & recovery processes.
It has a reasonably straightforward design and is relatively easy to use.

I've explained the details of using the program (including the differences
between the disk cloning & disk imaging processes) in the thread as noted in
my previous post (see above). Why don't you take a look at it and see if the
program may meet your needs?
Anna

 

[Byllon]

Second copy doesn't "image" the disk. As the name you can see, it
creates the second copy of files.
"Dora Smith дµÀ£º
"

 

[Byllon]

A USB external drive is a good choice for backuping. Uplus sync can
help you to scheduled backup works to the usb drive automatically. You
can find the new version at the website http://www.uplussync.com

"Godfreyz дµÀ£º
"

 

[Leythos]

I have a question - how well do images of your hard drive actually work for
restoring your system following a lost hard drive?

When I used to work for a temporary at various Texas state agencies, IT
would always try to "image" our drives to set them up, and I don't believe I
ever once saw them get a computer to work using that method.

There are many types of Images, one is the Disk Image, and it's a
perfect/exact copy of your drive, and doesn't care what is on it, it
just makes a exact copy of the drive. This image type works perfectly
when replacing a drive.

There are some other images that attempt to make a Backup of the disk
and don't really allow a bare-metal restore, these are good for daily
backup of data.

So I'm suspicious. If you have a spare hard drive, will it work to simply
copy your hard drive? What is the point of this "imaging" notion?

I've imaged thousands of drives for all sorts of reasons/systems, every
one has worked as expected - I even use Imaging to resize partitions to
new drives so that I can expand smaller partitions as needed.

 

[Guest]

I've just been using Norton Ghost 10.0. Saved my skin recently by copying my
old hard drive's data to a new hard drive literally just a few hours before
the old hard drive died. Easy to use. Short but quite good instruction
manual. By God's grace I posted a help note here about my getting Data Error
msgs just a few days before it went out completely and got urgent warnings
from the experts hereto back up my data immediately.

One shortcoming I found is that the check boxes allowing you to make the
target disk into a bootable disk did not work for me on XP Pro. But all I had
to do was :
1) reinstall Windows as a Repair Install (not as a fresh install or your
data get obliterated!!) and that fixed the boot partition just fine.
2) rename my target drive to C: (i'd named it F: thru Norton Ghost)
3) reactivate and re-register a couple of my programs (Photoshop and 123di)

I then bought a 2nd new disk and repeated the process, now I have 2 bootable
hard drives. Final step will be to reapply SP2 (my XP disk was SP1). Turns
out the Windows Update url still thinks I have SP2 installed even though Auto
Updates on my computer knows I don't. So I'll have to download and install
SP2 again manually (wanted to make sure I copied what I have working before
taking another step, then I'll copy it again and have two updated drives that
I'll keep in sync).

A second thing I've seen that I need to look into is that now my Windows
boots noticeably slower. It stays on the Windows Is Starting Up message for
almost a minute. But I was blessed to save 40 GB of pictures plus all kinds
of other valuable data so these few steps weren't that much trouble and I'd
rather see my Windows boot up for a minute than not see my data any more.

Cheers,
GettingByOK

 

[Rock]

I have a question - how well do images of your hard drive actually work for
restoring your system following a lost hard drive?

When I used to work for a temporary at various Texas state agencies, IT
would always try to "image" our drives to set them up, and I don't believe
I ever once saw them get a computer to work using that method.

So I'm suspicious. If you have a spare hard drive, will it work to simply
copy your hard drive? What is the point of this "imaging" notion?

--
Yours,
Dora Smith
Austin, TX
(e-mail address removed)

In my experience with Drive Image 7, originally from PowerQuest and recently
bought out by Symantec and incorporated in Norton Ghost, disk imaging works
fine for imaging and restoring. Restores can be done of the whole partition
or individual files.

I don't know what program the IT dept used that you had experience with but
times and programs change.

 

[Godfreyz]

Anna...thanks for the response. Questions: My hard drive is 80gb, how
long will it take to back it up to my WD external USB drive (120gb) using
Acronis? Also, do I have to do a complete backup each time after the
initial backup using the "clone" function? Is there a way of just backing
up the data that has changed since the last backup? Thanks, Godfrey

 

[Anna]

Anna...thanks for the response. Questions: My hard drive is 80gb, how
long will it take to back it up to my WD external USB drive (120gb) using
Acronis? Also, do I have to do a complete backup each time after the
initial backup using the "clone" function? Is there a way of just backing
up the data that has changed since the last backup? Thanks, Godfrey

Godfreyz:
Understand that there are two basic approaches one can use with the Acronis
program as I explained in the step-by-step instructions I posted.
1. Cloning the contents of one HDD to another HDD, or,
2. Creating a disk image (a single file - in essence a snapshot of your
system) of your HDD.

Using the disk cloning process, figure on a data transfer rate of somewhere
between 450 MB/min to 800 MB/min. So if you were cloning say, 40 GB of data,
it would take about an hour, more or less. As I mentioned in the
instructions it's considerably faster when disk cloning from one internal
HDD to another internal HDD. The data transfer rate will basically depend
upon processor power and the performance of the HDDs involved. The figures
I'm citing are rough estimates.

Using the disk imaging process, the original (first) backup of the system
will be roughly the same as the disk cloning process, perhaps a trifle
faster. But since you can create incremental backups using the disk imaging
process, subsequent backup time will be very short, practically negligible,
if you were backing up your system on a daily basis using incremental
backups. Probably under 5 minutes or so for each incremental backup. This,
of course, is the great advantage of using disk imaging rather than disk
cloning since there's no concept of increments with the disk cloning
process.
Anna

 

[Godfreyz]

Anna...Thanks for the quick response. If I do use imaging, can I still view
lets say a certain picture or a specific document that is out there on the
backup drive? Also, if I would back up my harddrive every week for lets
say 50 weeks and I have a crash, do I have to load each of the 50
incremental backups to be back in business? Thanks, Godfrey

 

[Anna]

Anna...Thanks for the quick response. If I do use imaging, can I still
view lets say a certain picture or a specific document that is out there
on the backup drive? Also, if I would back up my harddrive every week
for lets say 50 weeks and I have a crash, do I have to load each of the 50
incremental backups to be back in business? Thanks, Godfrey

No, the disk image is a single backup archive (file) or can be a number of
disk image files should there be incremental backups following the original
backup image. A recovery would be needed to access individual files.
Obviously the disk clone, since, in effect, is a copy of the source HDD,
would have that capability.

No to the second question. A simple "click" (selection) of the last
incremental file would be all that is necessary trigger the recovery
process.
Anna

 

[Godfreyz]

Anna...thanks. The reason I would like to see a picture or a document from
the backup disk is to know that the backup actually works and that I can see
the file out there. BTW, I assume that incremental backups also backup the
emails? Thanks again, Godfrey

 

[Anna]

Yes to your question.
Anna

Anna...thanks. The reason I would like to see a picture or a document
from the backup disk is to know that the backup actually works and that I
can see the file out there. BTW, I assume that incremental backups also
backup the emails? Thanks again, Godfrey