best backup strategy for XP w/ T61?

Hi,

What's the best backup strategy for my T61 running XP? I have a 100MB
drive, and access to a 160MB external drive (which I am also using
store some other data). Plust the writeable DVD drive.

I hear there is a great backup program bundled with Vista, but not
with XP. And I have read not such great reviews of the Thinkvantage
backup and recovery program.

Is there a package that would also let me "ghost"? the drive and
then do incremental backups until I decided to do another whole
copy of the disk?

Can anyone recommend a good/reliable free (or cheap'ish) program that I
can use to back up my system? How do you handle this task?

Thanks,
Esmail

ps: I'm not an enterprise, just a single use who wants to keep his data/programs intact.

 

XP also has a program for backup. You didnt say if you has Pro/Home/or Media Center. But I know in Pro and I belive Media Center it is included.

Start Menu>Acceceries>System Tools.

^^^If not in there do a Windows Search for "backup"
--Hope I could Help

 

if you're willing to splash money, I'd recommend Acronis True Image.

 

I use Norton Ghost 12.0 and absolutely love it. It has saved my butt many quite a few times.
Plus its is compatible with XP and Vista, 32 and 64 bit editions.

 

That's about $50? .. actually, until today when I was searching through the messages for backup info I had not heard of this pages.

I guess they must have been around for a while since this is version 11.
Would it be worth picking up version 10 instead if I can find it cheap or does the latest version ad something super-duper?

I'm running XP for the foreseeable future.

 

Thanks for the suggestion, I'll have to take a look.

I used to use Norton Utils *way* back, but then I felt most of their software become way too top-heavy and bloated and have stayed away from them.

I'm running 32-bit XP Professional, so my needs are modest

 

Thanks for the suggestion. I actually have XP Pro, so I'll look for it. In the past I have been somewhat disappointed with some of the MS software, so it didn't even occur to me to look for this.

 

Acronis.

Saved my butt 78 times.

Alacrity

 

my first experience is with version 9. and I'm satisfied with that.
You could read this article if you're considering between ghost and trueimage.
http://www.techsupportalert.com/drive-imaging-reviews.htm

 

Thanks, I will take a look at the software, seems to quite popular with the forumites. I believe there is a 15 day trial version (hopefully fully functional)

hmm .. though 78 times .. would make me wonder what the problem is

 

that was an interesting article, thanks for the link. i'll have to look for more recent comparisons, but my own experience with recent symatec/norton programs leave me a bit weary of them.

I plan to download/try the trial version of trueimage and see how that works.

 

esmail,

With Acronis True Image Home 11, you can replace the TP hidden RnR partition with an Acronis hidden partition....triggered at boot with F11.

The advantage is that you do not have to go thru a long TP recovery process AND start with the original PC configuration. With Acronis you can be travelling and have a corrupted file, boot, press F11, and you have a recent XP or Vista configuration in 10 minutes.

Post if you try the trial and have a question.

I use Acronis a lot only because I am always experimenting with different o/s, mbr, vmware, gaming drivers, and other software.

Alacrity

 

Wow .. that sounds quite impressive. Does this mean the OS and any sort of updates restore? That would include the ThinkVantage software/apps right?

Data and other apps would be restored differently I assume?

My initial impression of the software is positive.

Does it compress when it backs up? I also tried to find a menu entry that would give me "properties" for the backed up archive, but didn't find one (this was while I was trying to determine if any compression was happening)

Thanks for the offer, so here's a longer question:

Right now, I have a system with two drives, C (contains OS, almost full) and F (still plenty of space).

What I would like to do is consolidate everything to the larger F drive (and get rid of the C drive).

Using the trial version, I've created mirror images of both drives.

This will be my approach, let me know what you think:

Clone C to F => creating a "new C". From what I read this would expand to the new size of the drive.

Then use Partition Magic to resize "new C" down so that I create a new partition. Then restore the original F drive to this new partition. That should work right?

This seems would be the easiest way of doing this, no? I don't have that much time to mess around, and with the different partitions I would think that the various paths would still work (assuming the drive lettering doesn't get changed).

Ideally I'd like to have everything in one partition on the "new C" but I'm not sure how easy this would be.

Any ideas/suggestions?

I'm using XP SP2.

Thanks.

Esmail

 

Hope that helps your progress.

Alacrity

 

Thanks! .. I'll probably give it a try later this week.