need good back up software

duleekboy

i need to start creating back-ups of my C: drive on my office/home network (3 computers)

basically looking for an easy way to restore in case of fatal PC failure.


i Purchased & Installed 2nd internal hard drive in main PC for this purpose we also have QNAP NAS which could also be used.

I Tested Nero 7 BackITup 2.
It took about 3 hours to create the back-up.
The back-up files (combined) were same size as the C: drive.
Restore looks for a file (back-up) name in C: So If we loose C: how will be get to this file in order to restore.
Conclusion:Nero 7 BackITup 2 is crap.

The QNAP has back up software alsao but i cant figure out how to use it

What software (freeware or not) would be the best to create back-ups of C: and save the back-up files to this new internal drive. Need an easy way to do recovery as well.

A friend recommended Casper XP a the simple solution of cloning the hard drive onto another, If anything goes wrong, simply change the boot order in the BIOS to the other hard drive.Has anybody used this?

thank you for assisting in disaster recovery (well sort-of)

duleekboy

anybody?

majiktripp

If you want to try Cobian backup....its a free backup program, you should look at Acronis true Image or Norton Ghost 10 ( hate recommending Norton products but the just bought the original company that made the software)
Failing that get a REV drive and Backup Exec 10! (if you have money to burn!)

majiktripp

Why backup the whole drive? I find that in most caes when PC's die,people dont really care how long it takes to get back up and runnning as Long as their important stuff was safe...is it really necessary to do a whole drive backup? I do a Acronis True Image twice a month, and incremental email/my doc's/assorted important files backup once a month as well, to different sources to as backup drives fail aswell!

duleekboy

hi thanks for reply

you are correct dont really need to back up whole drive what i want is to get image of drive after reinstall with all software reinstalled office/accounting package etc and to have this as my last ditch back up.

how does the acronis software work?looks interesting

does it create a bootable image

whats the true image about? can this be scheduled to do back up of important files every 2 weeks or so?

Tails142

ghost would be perfect for you then

majiktripp

Acronis iself cannot be scheduled to do a backup as far as I can see from the software (just took a quick look there) You can create a bootable cd using the software once you have it installed whihc will allow you to boot your machine should you original hard drive die and allow you to restore an image to a new drive fairly quickly.

beolight

re: ghost

just read this

http://reviews.cnet.com/Norton_Ghost_10/4864-3682_7-31473745.html?ctype=msgid&messageSiteID=7&messageID=1973004&cval=1973004&tag=uolst

is it true? anybody experience this? kinda makes it pointless if true

Capt'n Midnight

if you have XP pro you can use ntbackup ASR to make a backup - NB. a full restore wipes the DRIVE not the partition.

with ntbackup you can restore individual files or the whole thing if you have an install of the same version of windows to run it from. so you could install windows use ghost ( licesnse ) or one of the many freeware imaging programs to take an image of windows.

Mr Mojo

Acronis True Image ftw, version 10 has a scheduler. Here's the trial version if you're interested.

kaizersoze

Capt'n Midnight wrote:

if you have XP pro you can use ntbackup ASR to make a backup - NB. a full restore wipes the DRIVE not the partition.

with ntbackup you can restore individual files or the whole thing if you have an install of the same version of windows to run it from. so you could install windows use ghost ( licesnse ) or one of the many freeware imaging programs to take an image of windows.

Ntbackup is handy in one way but it's a pita that you need to create a floppy disc aswell. Not a lot of good on a system without a floppy drive.

conzy

Mr Mojo wrote:

Acronis True Image ftw, version 10 has a scheduler. Here's the trial version if you're interested.

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