Windows backup vs alternative commercial products

[Wallace]

I'm presently using Windows Backup to shadow copy my hard drive. But I know
there are commercial alternatives out there, which (sadly) cost money.

What are the advantages of going to such a product when Windows Backup is
free? Alsop what are the best non Microsoft alternatives to the Backup
utility?

At present I need to backup about 100 GB of data, but it's still chugging
away at 270 GB and expects to be about 340 GB total. Can someone explain why
it's increased in size by 240 GB.

[Malke[_2_]]

Wallace wrote:

> I'm presently using Windows Backup to shadow copy my hard drive. But I
> know there are commercial alternatives out there, which (sadly) cost
> money.
>
> What are the advantages of going to such a product when Windows Backup is
> free? Alsop what are the best non Microsoft alternatives to the Backup
> utility?

They work better. NT Backup is ancient (designed for NT) and doesn't offer a
lot of options. Also backups created with it aren't transferable to a Vista
machine should you eventually replace your XP box. Recommendations:

SecondCopy from www.centered.com, $29.95 - SecondCopy does just that: copies
files of your choosing to a location of your choosing per a schedule of
your choosing. It works very well and doesn't put the copied files into a
proprietary format.

Acronis True Image Home 2009 from various online and brick/mortar stores.
Read about it at http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/products/trueimage/.
TI does imaging (so you can restore your system to working order in a few
minutes) and incremental backups. It shows as $49.99 on the Acronis website
but can probably be purchased for less at NewEgg.com or even Amazon.com.

> At present I need to backup about 100 GB of data, but it's still chugging
> away at 270 GB and expects to be about 340 GB total. Can someone explain
> why it's increased in size by 240 GB.

Sorry, I can't answer questions about NT Backup because I don't use it.
Something is definitely wrong, though.

Malke
--
MS-MVP
Elephant Boy Computers - Don't Panic!
http://www.elephantboycomputers.com/#FAQ

[Pegasus [MVP]]

"Wallace" > wrote in message
...
> I'm presently using Windows Backup to shadow copy my hard drive. But I
> know there are commercial alternatives out there, which (sadly) cost
> money.
>
> What are the advantages of going to such a product when Windows Backup is
> free? Alsop what are the best non Microsoft alternatives to the Backup
> utility?
>
> At present I need to backup about 100 GB of data, but it's still chugging
> away at 270 GB and expects to be about 340 GB total. Can someone explain
> why it's increased in size by 240 GB.

You're in the best position to work out the answer to your last question.
Here is what you should ask yourself:
- Where did the figure of 100 GBytes come from?
- How do you know that you're not backing up some hidden folder?
- Did you make sure not to back up some previous back-up file that resides
in the same folder?

Further to Malke's reply: A backup solution is only as good as its recovery
options. If the backup process takes a long time then the restoration
process may take just as long. Have you ever tried to restore a backed-up
file? It can be quite a chore with ntbackup. We occasionally see posts from
people who have backed up files for years, and when it came to the crunch
they found out that something went wrong with the backup process and they
couldn't retrieve a single file . . . See here for a sad example:
http://www.howtofixcomputers.com/forums/windows-xp/problem-restoring-backup-ntbackup-229068.html.

[Twayne[_2_]]

Wallace wrote:
> I'm presently using Windows Backup to shadow copy my hard drive. But
> I know there are commercial alternatives out there, which (sadly)
> cost money.
> What are the advantages of going to such a product when Windows
> Backup is free? Alsop what are the best non Microsoft alternatives to
> the Backup utility?
>
> At present I need to backup about 100 GB of data, but it's still
> chugging away at 270 GB and expects to be about 340 GB total. Can
> someone explain why it's increased in size by 240 GB.

Not many details here, but ... is the location of the saved backup by
any chance on the same drive letter as the data being backed up? If so,
then you are likely in a "cyclic copy" mode. In other words, it backs
up the files, finds the program you told it to back to, finds it changed
because you've added files, checks again, sees it changed again and
tries to back it upagain, see it changed, and tries to ... .
Try being sure the backup destination is to a different drive letter
than the data you are backing up, OR, in the details settings, remove
the backup folder so it won't be backed up.

I don't know for sure that's your problem, but it's a possibility.
Never include the backup istelf in the backup or you'll get into that
looping situation. You'd think the program would take care of that, but
apparently not. This is the third instance I've seen of this sort of
thing in about a month.

Other than that; no idea.

As for other backup software, there are a few 3rd party programs around
on the 'net. Perhaps someone will jump in here with URLs for them; I
don't use them so don't feel qualified to recommend one.
The MOST IMORTANT thing to watch for with backup programs is to be
certain they use the VSS (Volume Shadow Copy is what it's usually
called), or it will not back up files in use, which means it can not
back up your operating system.

IMO the best options, though they are pay-for, are Ghost and True Image.
Both are good, Ghost costs a little more but you'll never run into a
cyclic problem with them and the bells & whistles are definitely worth
while to have. Those are known as imaging software. Casper is another
that gets talked about sometimes.

HTH,

Twayne