Whats a good backup software?

Im trying to back up my files on my pc, and i want to find a good software to do the job.

Norton ghost worked fine for me for a while but its not what im really looking for as it lags too much...n i dont know why.

I need to software to be able to backup all files on my pc and being able to restore to that state when I backed it up if it ever crashes...

Any good suggestions? thanks.

 

Acronis True Image is a very good program

Also, if you have Vista Business or Ultimate, you can create "Complete PC Backup's" I've used this before and it works great.

 

Well theres windows system restore to begin with..

Theres Acronis TrueImage to make a exact copy/image of your HD and back it up on a external hdd

 

I use Paragon Drive Backup Personal

 

:X windows restores sux...and i seriously dont trust it after many mishaps in the past.

Ill give acronis a try.

 

Windows system restore restores only registry settings not the entire system.

 

Acronis True Image Home 11 is a very good program and you can back it up to an external hard drive, plus any partition you create that doesn't have an OS on it.
PM me if want want some good information about Acronis

 

yea, acronis FTW, does worth the money to purchase it.

 

I Swear by Acronis True Image! I've used it religiously for about 4yrs without one problem. Much more reliable (for me) than Ghost and (the many) other programs I've tried.

 

I have Acronis, but I'm not really sure how to use it. I'm trying to back up my 100 GB hard drive to an 80 GB external, so I only really have room for two full compressed backups. After 2 backups, how do I get Acronis to delete the earliest one to make room for a new backup?

 

you can just open it with explorer and select the image you want to delete by Date......

 

+1 for Acronis True Image. It does system images as well as individual files, complete, differential, and incremental.

I'm using it for weekly backups onto a homemade NAS box.

 

I picked up a second hard drive, identical to the one in my notebook, so that I can periodically validate that my backups in fact do properly restore without destroying my actual system.

Unless one actually does this now and again, any backups taken are unproven and therefore are somewhat of a risk.

 

I shouldn't have to do that manually. Doesn't Acronis have any sort of feature to deal with limited space?

 

You can set a backup "Quota" in TI using the Management Console, but with an 80GB drive I don't think I would bother. There isn't enough room for TI to manage it. Just delete the previous one before you make the next.

I always name my backups BUyyyymmdd (BU=backup yyyy=year mm=month dd=day) so I know exactly what it is and when it was made.

 

I read somewhere that Vista Ultimate had many, if not most of the features that Acronis has. Any of you folks here run Ultimate and can comment on the differences between the two?

 

System Restore isn't backup software. It's mostly related to just software settings, installs, and related stuff [like Registry, as already mentioned]. Just thought I might reiterate

Try doing a RAID 1 setup if you have dual hard disks on your laptop

 

I think he was talking about the Backup and Restore feature, which is different from System Restore.

 

Just write your own script. Very easy to do. For example this is like one i use to backup my documents into a folder that has the date in the file name:

Code:

cd C:\Users\Chris
for /F "tokens=2-4 delims=/- " %%A in ('date/T') do set mdate=%%A%%B%%C
md backup_%mdate%
xcopy Documents backup_%mdate% /E

save this as whatevername.bat (using notepad) and then run it every time you want to back up your files.

Change the first line to the directory that contains the folder of files you want backed up (in this case my windows user folder).

the md backup_%mdate% is making a new folder titled "backup_032608" you can change the first part to whatever you want. If you wish to have a space in the filename just put the name in all quotes.

Then change the last line where it says Documents to the exact folder you want copied in that first directory. The last part that says backup_%mdate% is just the folder name that it will copy the files to (which happens to be the new one that you created).

Additionally you could add another xcopy line of other folders you wish to copy as well.

You could additionally set this to run in task scheduler, or run at startup/shut down etc. Much easier than paying for a backup program.

I'm sure there are even better ways to do this, but in my "noob" experience, this works well.

 

I have a very old version of Acronis. It works well, but I think it only restores to drive C. For example, I have two drives C and D. When I use Acronis to restore, it wipes out drive D and restore to drive C. Does the new version let you choose which drive to restore to? Thanks.

 

I ended up with Acronis TI 11 and it allows you to choose to BU or Recover based on partition. I have 2 partitions and I regularly BU each separately and I have recovered my OS partition twice in the past month with Acronis without any problems. However, there are some problems running Acronis as an installed app (go to their website and then follow the links to their forums), I run it from a bootable CD. All works well except a problem compressing a backup with music files. They are aware of these problems and told me a new version is coming soon. They also have a disk-cleaner on the CD that works very well also.

You might want to dl the trial or wait until TI 12 arrives, but I got mine at Fry's in the retail box and it was $20 cheaper than buying it from their site.

 

YES..........