sbier said:
Thanks, Rock. Good advice re: multiple copies. To make my backups more
usable, I use the Copy option so the files aren't compressed or encrypted.
But there's still plenty of chances for restores just not working. I used
to
use Drive Image but ran afoul of some disastrous problems, which not only
wiped out my data but made my PC unbootable - and there was virtually no
tech
support to help. I've read some very bad things about Norton Ghost and
also
Acronis True Image (not as many complaints as Ghost, though). I'm now
trying
for the zillionth time to get Retrospect Express HD for Maxtor OneTouch to
work on my PC, but so far no dice. Very frustrating stuff. Thanks again!
If you're just wanting to do backups of the user folders, I'd suggest Backup
Plus. It doesn't use a proprietary format. Its .BAC backup files are
actually ZIP files, which are reliable and well understood and there are
plenty of recovery tools should things go wrong. It's hard to make that
statement about ntbackup. And it's not expensive.
http://www.backupplus.net/
We normally have Backup Plus run at night, backing up incrementally to DVD,
and have the office manager change the DVD each morning, so there are five
daily DVDs. It's important to periodically verify that you can restore
files from these backups, but that's easy to do. You can pick individual
files.
This will *not* make a fully restorable, bootable image of a drive.
If you want backups of the entire drive, I have had good results on many
systems with TrueImage. Did have some issues with older versions and newer
XP installs (like TrueImage wanting to run with no UI) but updating it fixed
that. I have been able to pick individual files out of a TrueImage archive
for restoration.
When migrating machines, I often use FileSync to just move files from one
drive's folder structure to the new one. This works very well and doesn't
just give up it if can't copy a file.
http://www.fileware.com/products.htm#FileSync
HTH
-pk