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#31
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Best Backup Program
"Stan Brown" wrote in message t... ... I'd go with Acronis True Image, but I bought my copy in 2005, which is about a century ago in computer years, so I don't know if the current version is still as good. ... I continue to use TI, but am careful about new versions. Acronis tends IMHO to let loose beta versions loose on the public for them to find the last few bugs, which can be risky for the one program you have to be able to rely on in a disaster. I wouldn't do anything irrevocable to my system until after I'd created an image, verified it, and made a recovery, which is a time-consuming checkout. I'm currently using version 9, build 2337, and have made a successful recovery during the last 12 months. "A century ago" indeed, but a byte is a byte regardless of the versions of everything else on my machine, and I continue to rely on that build. |
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#32
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Best Backup Program
David,
I'm sure that many of the imaging programs are fine. I have been using Norton Ghost for about fifteen years, as best as I can remember. I make monthly new images and daily incremental backups. It has worked the eight or ten times I've used it to restore a corrupted or damaged HD. I'm now using Ghost 9 on two machines and Ghost 10 on another. I back up the images to a second HD, and then copy them to a 16 gig. thumb drive for off site storage. Milt "David" wrote: I am looking for recommendations on the best backup program available. My workstation is currently running XP PRO/SP3, but may eventually upgrade to Windows 7, so compatability with both is a plus. I would like the ability to mirror my main c: drive to a bootable external drive. I would like to be able to backup an entire internal or external drive to a different external drive. I do not plan on backing up to DvDs or optical disk. Being able to backup individual directories/files would be a plus. Compression is unimportant. My external drive is 1TB & I have 150 GB internal capacity. I'd prefer to have a plain vanilla backup - that is I'd be able to use Windows Explorer to view the backup & retrieve a file if I choose. Quality, reliability, and ease of use take precedence over cost. If I can not accomplish what I want with one program, multiple programs are fine. . |
#33
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Best Backup Program
David,
I'm sure that many of the imaging programs are fine. I have been using Norton Ghost for about fifteen years, as best as I can remember. I make monthly new images and daily incremental backups. It has worked the eight or ten times I've used it to restore a corrupted or damaged HD. I'm now using Ghost 9 on two machines and Ghost 10 on another. I back up the images to a second HD, and then copy them to a 16 gig. thumb drive for off site storage. Milt "David" wrote: I am looking for recommendations on the best backup program available. My workstation is currently running XP PRO/SP3, but may eventually upgrade to Windows 7, so compatability with both is a plus. I would like the ability to mirror my main c: drive to a bootable external drive. I would like to be able to backup an entire internal or external drive to a different external drive. I do not plan on backing up to DvDs or optical disk. Being able to backup individual directories/files would be a plus. Compression is unimportant. My external drive is 1TB & I have 150 GB internal capacity. I'd prefer to have a plain vanilla backup - that is I'd be able to use Windows Explorer to view the backup & retrieve a file if I choose. Quality, reliability, and ease of use take precedence over cost. If I can not accomplish what I want with one program, multiple programs are fine. . |
#34
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Best Backup Program
David wrote:
Perhaps we could reinitiate this conversation in a more amiable manner. I was hopeful you might have a solution to my real problem - making the USB drive XP/PRO bootable. In general - Windows XP will not boot from an USB drive. If you _cloned_ your disk to it (with your favorite imaging program), took it out of the USB case, put it in the machine - it probably would work just fine - boot and be happy after a few tweaks in the BIOS and *maybe* one to the drive itself. BartPE and its children-projects will boot from USB/CD/DVD - but you wouldn't be making an image of what you have to to that - not the way it works and it would be quite limited in functionality in comparison to what you want. With any imaging application worth its salt - the size of the cloned-to disk is only a concern if it is smaller than the data on the original source disk. Usually a good cloning application would give you the choice of taking up just what you need *or* the rest of the disk you are cloning to (or something in-between.) I believe your best bet would be one of two things: 1) Imaging the disk to an external file(set of files actually) for restoration at a later time. This way you can keep your external drive formatted as is/use it for other things, etc. This could just be a directory on the external disk. The disadvantage is that to really get a good solid image with most applications of the entire disk - you should likely boot to something other than what you are taking the image of for speed and 'files in use' reasons. That means having a BartPE or UBCD for Windows CD, boot from it, mount your external drive, start up your imaging application, make your image, boot back to the internal hard drive. Advantage - the process to restore it back to that point in time is the same in reverse - apply the image to the disk (or any disk you put in that machine.) Also - you could have several different images representing different points in time - as long as you have space on the drive. 2) Just get a drive exclusively for backup - the Seagate Replica is a good example. It can back up all your files/folders, keep 'versions' of files you change often so you can go back to yesterdays, the day before, etc and can do a bare metal restore if needed. (Everything crashed - you need to start over.) Not ot mention if you get the 500GB version - you could use it on multiple machines to work its full magic. -- Shenan Stanley MS-MVP -- How To Ask Questions The Smart Way http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html |
#35
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Best Backup Program
David wrote:
Perhaps we could reinitiate this conversation in a more amiable manner. I was hopeful you might have a solution to my real problem - making the USB drive XP/PRO bootable. In general - Windows XP will not boot from an USB drive. If you _cloned_ your disk to it (with your favorite imaging program), took it out of the USB case, put it in the machine - it probably would work just fine - boot and be happy after a few tweaks in the BIOS and *maybe* one to the drive itself. BartPE and its children-projects will boot from USB/CD/DVD - but you wouldn't be making an image of what you have to to that - not the way it works and it would be quite limited in functionality in comparison to what you want. With any imaging application worth its salt - the size of the cloned-to disk is only a concern if it is smaller than the data on the original source disk. Usually a good cloning application would give you the choice of taking up just what you need *or* the rest of the disk you are cloning to (or something in-between.) I believe your best bet would be one of two things: 1) Imaging the disk to an external file(set of files actually) for restoration at a later time. This way you can keep your external drive formatted as is/use it for other things, etc. This could just be a directory on the external disk. The disadvantage is that to really get a good solid image with most applications of the entire disk - you should likely boot to something other than what you are taking the image of for speed and 'files in use' reasons. That means having a BartPE or UBCD for Windows CD, boot from it, mount your external drive, start up your imaging application, make your image, boot back to the internal hard drive. Advantage - the process to restore it back to that point in time is the same in reverse - apply the image to the disk (or any disk you put in that machine.) Also - you could have several different images representing different points in time - as long as you have space on the drive. 2) Just get a drive exclusively for backup - the Seagate Replica is a good example. It can back up all your files/folders, keep 'versions' of files you change often so you can go back to yesterdays, the day before, etc and can do a bare metal restore if needed. (Everything crashed - you need to start over.) Not ot mention if you get the 500GB version - you could use it on multiple machines to work its full magic. -- Shenan Stanley MS-MVP -- How To Ask Questions The Smart Way http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html |
#36
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Best Backup Program
It looks like you missed Ken's other post where he said:
"Glad to hear you say that, and I hope you're right and I was wrong." You seem to be confusing the terms image and clone. An image is one gigantic archive file (or it can be a series of such files) that contains the "essence" of the totality of what is on the hard drive. You can store this archive anywhere you'd like: on an external drive (but it would be non-bootable *in that state*) or on a DVD (or several DVDs, depending on the size of the archive -- even with compression, images can be quite large!) You can use the same software that created the image to restore it back to the same hard drive (or another hard drive in its place, say if the first drive physically dies). Once the image is restored, the result is a hard drive effectively identical to how it was when the image of it was made. Therefore, it would be bootable. If for some reason, you desire to make an exact copy of the hard drive directly to another hard drive, this would be a clone. If this other hard drive is in an external enclosure, unless it is eSATA, you would need to remove it and place it in the correct slot in your desktop tower (probably where the original one was). This drive would also be bootable. It's like an identical twin. Note that if you restore an image to a bare metal drive, the result is the same: something that is effectively an identical twin. Cloning is preferable if you do not want to take extra time to restore the image. You can configure your motherboard's BIOS to boot off an eSATA clone, even if it is not in the tower. With eSATA, the PC doesn't distinguish between internal or external drives. If you clone your drive to a drive that is in an external USB enclosure, it will only boot if you physically remove it from the enclosure and place it inside the tower. It will not boot from the external enclosure if there is no eSATA connection (despite what WaIIy stated). David wrote: Ken: Perhaps you just wanted to argue with yourself. I don't know. In any case, I used the wrong term. Does a mistake like that constitute an arguement? The whole point that I tried to make is I want my external USB drive to boot Win/XP PRO in case the main hard drive fails. I had thought an image would require a second hard drive exactly the same. I am not sufficiently well versed to know. In any case my main hard drive is 150GB and the USB drive is 1TB. The 150GB drive is listed in my paperwork as serial-ATA. The 1TB USB drive is an IOMEGA eGO desktop USB drive in its own case, type unknown. Perhaps we could reinitiate this conversation in a more amiable manner. I was hopeful you might have a solution to my real problem - making the USB drive XP/PRO bootable. On Tue, 11 May 2010 16:50:32 -0700, "Ken Blake, MVP" wrote: On Tue, 11 May 2010 19:31:09 -0400, "Daave" wrote: The term "mirror" is used for RAID technology: I tried to tell him that, but since he just wanted to argue with me, I didn't bother replying to his second message, quoted below. http://www.bestpricecomputers.co.uk/glossary/raid-1.htm http://www.recoverdata.com/raidfaq.htm This does not sound like what you were asking about. From your description below, you are referring to cloning. Is your external hard drive specifically an eSATA hard drive? Does your motherboard support eSATA hard drives. If you answer yes to both, then you can use a cloning program to accomplish what you want. Also know you can create an image of your hard drive and then restore that image to the same or a different hard drive and your new drive is *effectively* a clone of the original. It takes longer, but it still safeguards all your data and allows you the luxury of not having to reinstall the OS, updates, applications, etc. Or you can choose to clone directly. Your choice. David wrote: Ken: I do mean mirror, not copy. Unless I am mistaken, when you copy one drive to another, you get the contents of the first drive copied to the second. This means that the contents are the same, but the location on the second drive may not be the same. Mirroring a drive (at least to me) means just that. Not only are the contents copied, but the exact locations on the second drive are the same. Mirroring, I believe, also copies the boot tracks which is essential if the mirrored drive is to be used as a replacement boot drive in the event c: fails. I have an external USB hard drive. the bios on my workstation allows the external USB drive to be bootable (assuming I read the manual correctly). I want the c: drive to be mirrored to the external USB hard drive so I have a functional backup hard drive in case c: fails. David On Tue, 11 May 2010 08:04:26 -0700, "Ken Blake, MVP" wrote: On Tue, 11 May 2010 05:18:18 -0400, David wrote: I am looking for recommendations on the best backup program available. My workstation is currently running XP PRO/SP3, but may eventually upgrade to Windows 7, so compatability with both is a plus. I would like the ability to mirror my main c: drive to a bootable external drive. What do you mean by "mirror." That term is normally used just for RAID1, which is very different from backup. But if you just mean something like "copy," no problem. I would like to be able to backup an entire internal or external drive to a different external drive. I do not plan on backing up to DvDs or optical disk. Being able to backup individual directories/files would be a plus. Compression is unimportant. My external drive is 1TB & I have 150 GB internal capacity. I'd prefer to have a plain vanilla backup - that is I'd be able to use Windows Explorer to view the backup & retrieve a file if I choose. Quality, reliability, and ease of use take precedence over cost. If I can not accomplish what I want with one program, multiple programs are fine. Acronis True Image. |
#37
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Best Backup Program
It looks like you missed Ken's other post where he said:
"Glad to hear you say that, and I hope you're right and I was wrong." You seem to be confusing the terms image and clone. An image is one gigantic archive file (or it can be a series of such files) that contains the "essence" of the totality of what is on the hard drive. You can store this archive anywhere you'd like: on an external drive (but it would be non-bootable *in that state*) or on a DVD (or several DVDs, depending on the size of the archive -- even with compression, images can be quite large!) You can use the same software that created the image to restore it back to the same hard drive (or another hard drive in its place, say if the first drive physically dies). Once the image is restored, the result is a hard drive effectively identical to how it was when the image of it was made. Therefore, it would be bootable. If for some reason, you desire to make an exact copy of the hard drive directly to another hard drive, this would be a clone. If this other hard drive is in an external enclosure, unless it is eSATA, you would need to remove it and place it in the correct slot in your desktop tower (probably where the original one was). This drive would also be bootable. It's like an identical twin. Note that if you restore an image to a bare metal drive, the result is the same: something that is effectively an identical twin. Cloning is preferable if you do not want to take extra time to restore the image. You can configure your motherboard's BIOS to boot off an eSATA clone, even if it is not in the tower. With eSATA, the PC doesn't distinguish between internal or external drives. If you clone your drive to a drive that is in an external USB enclosure, it will only boot if you physically remove it from the enclosure and place it inside the tower. It will not boot from the external enclosure if there is no eSATA connection (despite what WaIIy stated). David wrote: Ken: Perhaps you just wanted to argue with yourself. I don't know. In any case, I used the wrong term. Does a mistake like that constitute an arguement? The whole point that I tried to make is I want my external USB drive to boot Win/XP PRO in case the main hard drive fails. I had thought an image would require a second hard drive exactly the same. I am not sufficiently well versed to know. In any case my main hard drive is 150GB and the USB drive is 1TB. The 150GB drive is listed in my paperwork as serial-ATA. The 1TB USB drive is an IOMEGA eGO desktop USB drive in its own case, type unknown. Perhaps we could reinitiate this conversation in a more amiable manner. I was hopeful you might have a solution to my real problem - making the USB drive XP/PRO bootable. On Tue, 11 May 2010 16:50:32 -0700, "Ken Blake, MVP" wrote: On Tue, 11 May 2010 19:31:09 -0400, "Daave" wrote: The term "mirror" is used for RAID technology: I tried to tell him that, but since he just wanted to argue with me, I didn't bother replying to his second message, quoted below. http://www.bestpricecomputers.co.uk/glossary/raid-1.htm http://www.recoverdata.com/raidfaq.htm This does not sound like what you were asking about. From your description below, you are referring to cloning. Is your external hard drive specifically an eSATA hard drive? Does your motherboard support eSATA hard drives. If you answer yes to both, then you can use a cloning program to accomplish what you want. Also know you can create an image of your hard drive and then restore that image to the same or a different hard drive and your new drive is *effectively* a clone of the original. It takes longer, but it still safeguards all your data and allows you the luxury of not having to reinstall the OS, updates, applications, etc. Or you can choose to clone directly. Your choice. David wrote: Ken: I do mean mirror, not copy. Unless I am mistaken, when you copy one drive to another, you get the contents of the first drive copied to the second. This means that the contents are the same, but the location on the second drive may not be the same. Mirroring a drive (at least to me) means just that. Not only are the contents copied, but the exact locations on the second drive are the same. Mirroring, I believe, also copies the boot tracks which is essential if the mirrored drive is to be used as a replacement boot drive in the event c: fails. I have an external USB hard drive. the bios on my workstation allows the external USB drive to be bootable (assuming I read the manual correctly). I want the c: drive to be mirrored to the external USB hard drive so I have a functional backup hard drive in case c: fails. David On Tue, 11 May 2010 08:04:26 -0700, "Ken Blake, MVP" wrote: On Tue, 11 May 2010 05:18:18 -0400, David wrote: I am looking for recommendations on the best backup program available. My workstation is currently running XP PRO/SP3, but may eventually upgrade to Windows 7, so compatability with both is a plus. I would like the ability to mirror my main c: drive to a bootable external drive. What do you mean by "mirror." That term is normally used just for RAID1, which is very different from backup. But if you just mean something like "copy," no problem. I would like to be able to backup an entire internal or external drive to a different external drive. I do not plan on backing up to DvDs or optical disk. Being able to backup individual directories/files would be a plus. Compression is unimportant. My external drive is 1TB & I have 150 GB internal capacity. I'd prefer to have a plain vanilla backup - that is I'd be able to use Windows Explorer to view the backup & retrieve a file if I choose. Quality, reliability, and ease of use take precedence over cost. If I can not accomplish what I want with one program, multiple programs are fine. Acronis True Image. |
#38
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Best Backup Program
Any professional in the know would be a liar if they recommended any Norton
product. You had best go back to your dorm room and study. "ANONYMOUS" wrote in message ... David wrote: I am looking for recommendations on the best backup program available. Norton Ghost 15 or Norton 360; highly recommended by professionals in the know. I don't take any advice from Microsoft Valuable Pigs or MVPs after their name as some form of microsoft tag to isolate them from ordinary pigs not eaten by jews and muslims. hth |
#39
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Best Backup Program
Any professional in the know would be a liar if they recommended any Norton product. You had best go back to your dorm room and study. "ANONYMOUS" wrote in message ... David wrote: I am looking for recommendations on the best backup program available. Norton Ghost 15 or Norton 360; highly recommended by professionals in the know. I don't take any advice from Microsoft Valuable Pigs or MVPs after their name as some form of microsoft tag to isolate them from ordinary pigs not eaten by jews and muslims. hth |
#40
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Best Backup Program
"WaIIy" wrote in message ... On Wed, 12 May 2010 19:30:42 -0400, "Daave" wrote: Cloning is preferable if you do not want to take extra time to restore the image. You can configure your motherboard's BIOS to boot off an eSATA clone, even if it is not in the tower. With eSATA, the PC doesn't distinguish between internal or external drives. snip Another feature is the ability to pull a file off the clone if need be. Acronis True Image lets you mount an image as a partition, making it easy to find, read, copy or restore individual folders or files. Someone else might know whether other imaging programs offer the same utility. |
#41
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Best Backup Program
"WaIIy" wrote in message ... On Wed, 12 May 2010 19:30:42 -0400, "Daave" wrote: Cloning is preferable if you do not want to take extra time to restore the image. You can configure your motherboard's BIOS to boot off an eSATA clone, even if it is not in the tower. With eSATA, the PC doesn't distinguish between internal or external drives. snip Another feature is the ability to pull a file off the clone if need be. Acronis True Image lets you mount an image as a partition, making it easy to find, read, copy or restore individual folders or files. Someone else might know whether other imaging programs offer the same utility. |
#42
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Best Backup Program
No, she doesn't resemble your mum at all.
"ANONYMOUS" wrote in message ... Unknown wrote: Any professional in the know would be a liar if they recommended any Norton product. You had best go back to your dorm room and study. How's your mum these days? Is she still in jiggy jiggy business to finance your drug habits? hth |
#43
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Best Backup Program
No, she doesn't resemble your mum at all. "ANONYMOUS" wrote in message ... Unknown wrote: Any professional in the know would be a liar if they recommended any Norton product. You had best go back to your dorm room and study. How's your mum these days? Is she still in jiggy jiggy business to finance your drug habits? hth |
#44
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Best Backup Program
Andy wrote:
Norton Ghost properly set up And I have had great success and superb support from Symantec (live chat) on the successors to Norton Ghost, i.e., their Save & Restore, patterned after PowerQuest Drive Image. I know, Norton has had a bad rep for years, and they *earned* it.......but in the last 5 years they've come a long long way. |
#45
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Best Backup Program
Andy wrote:
Norton Ghost properly set up And I have had great success and superb support from Symantec (live chat) on the successors to Norton Ghost, i.e., their Save & Restore, patterned after PowerQuest Drive Image. I know, Norton has had a bad rep for years, and they *earned* it.......but in the last 5 years they've come a long long way. |
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