Extremely Slow XP Backup

[vlilley]

I'm trying to use XP backup to back up everything (about 10 GB) from
the 2 x 120GB SATA hard drives on my PC to a 200GB SATA drive in a
caddy connected directly to the mother board. My normal backup software
Acronis does this in 10 min. I am trying to use XP backup as an extra
safety precaution in case something goes wrong with Acronis. However,
XP Backup keeps changing its mind but estimates sometimes it will take
5 hours. I would expect it to take longer but not that much longer. At
that rate, 5 hours for 10GB , when the disks were full at 200GB the
backup would take 100 hours. I wondered if Acronis had written
something to the disk to speed their software up but they assure me
this is not the case. Could anyone tell me if there is a way for XP
backup to do it much faster.

Regards,

Vic

 

[DL]

I cannot answer; I use Acronis and a second backup app, never used NTBackup
You will find backup app's freely available on PC mags/sites (PC Plus, PC
Pro being two) Genie backup being featured on both
You could also use a batch file, xcopy or similar

 

[vlilley]

Thanks for the confirmation that it is possible to use other backup
software as a second backup to Acronis and the suggestion of
alternative backup software.

Doing that will solve the problem and quickly. However, the advantage
of the XP backup is that you don't need to install recovery software on
the target PC, if this needed to be a different PC. This may never be
needed though. Xcopy is an idea but I think it will probably be too
slow

Vic

 

[Zilbandy]

I'm trying to use XP backup to back up everything (about 10 GB) from
the 2 x 120GB SATA hard drives on my PC to a 200GB SATA drive in a
caddy connected directly to the mother board. My normal backup software
Acronis does this in 10 min. I am trying to use XP backup as an extra
safety precaution in case something goes wrong with Acronis.

I'm not sure what you mean about "something goes wrong with Acronis."
Make a backup of the Acronis program and your key and keep it safe. If
something "goes wrong", just reinstall it. I used to use Stomp
Software's "Backup My PC" along with Acronis, but finally switched
over totally to Acronis. If you have the Acronis recovery cd made, (I
made two of them), you can alway boot with the cd and restore an image
that way. With Acronis 10 now, (I just recently switched from version
7) I can create custom backup tasks, so I see no need for additional
backup software. Sometimes, I'll just copy and paste a few folders to
another partition as a safety margin when I'm playing instead of going
through the formality of creating a backup.

 

[vlilley]

I'm not sure what you mean about "something goes wrong with Acronis."
Make a backup of the Acronis program and your key and keep it safe. If
something "goes wrong", just reinstall it. I used to use Stomp
Software's "Backup My PC" along with Acronis, but finally switched
over totally to Acronis. If you have the Acronis recovery cd made, (I
made two of them), you can alway boot with the cd and restore an image
that way. With Acronis 10 now, (I just recently switched from version
7) I can create custom backup tasks, so I see no need for additional
backup software. Sometimes, I'll just copy and paste a few folders to
another partition as a safety margin when I'm playing instead of going
through the formality of creating a backup.

Any bit of software can go wrong including backup software. The site
that recommended Acronis to me also recommended backing up using
different software and media. That might seem too cautious to you but
not to me.

Vic