Can someone explains some of the idiosyncrasies of Backup software. I have used various applications over the years Norton Ghost, Acronis etc. and all claim to restore an image of your HD in the event of failure or installing new drive. Having used these applications to restore a number of times I never cease to be puzzled by the results and wonder if I'm doing something wrong. When I have restored an image then yes what looks like my previous HD is miraculously restored to new HD, all my Word docs, Excel docs and general data are there and on the face of it my old programs. However, it's the programmes that have me puzzled. I can click on a desktop icon to open a programme but when I try to open it generally nothing happens and I am prompted to install the programme CD. If all the Backup does is save data and not actual programmes then why don't the instructions just say so?
Backup software - what exactly is backed up?
- Thread starter Faustus
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brendy said:
They most certainly were as I have only just started to use a slave disk and the main and only disk on previous backups was a single volume. I've read other people have experienced just the same problem, it's as though the programmes are there but to access them the CD key needs to be entered again. As I said before all the data was OK but e.g. HP printer although there in appearance would not work until I put the CD in the ROM drive and when through the install again.
Slightly off topic but related - I am trying out a trial version of the Memeo backup software at present and I'm quite impressed (lazy mans backup utility). Memeo backups up in the background and backs up any files or data that are changed. Tried altering a few Word docs and sure enough they were altered almost straight away in the backup folder - impressed as scheduled backups become a thing of the past
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This may seem like a really obvious question and if I'm being thick then please bare with me. Just what do programs like Acronis backup or take an image of, in particular I'm enquiring about the operating system. If as an example my HD crashed today (god forbid) and I then clicked restore in Acronis from my slave drive (having fitted new primary drive HD) would Windows along with everything else be restored to new HD or would I have to reinstall Windows first?
Soldato
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I believe that you can tell Acronis what to back up. But Acronis True Image CAN back up your ENTIRE operating system. So should anything go wrong, you could just restore your OS in minutes.
Some people like to use nLite to remove rubbish out of XP so they are left with a minimal install size, only the functionality they need and a faster OS. Once they've got XP working as they want it to, they then Acronis it meaning at the click of a button they can restore it anytime they want.
http://eu.acronis.com/homecomputing/products/trueimage/
Some people like to use nLite to remove rubbish out of XP so they are left with a minimal install size, only the functionality they need and a faster OS. Once they've got XP working as they want it to, they then Acronis it meaning at the click of a button they can restore it anytime they want.
http://eu.acronis.com/homecomputing/products/trueimage/
Faustus said:Tried altering a few Word docs and sure enough they were altered almost straight away in the backup folder - impressed as scheduled backups become a thing of the past
now that completely defeats the object of backup for me. what if i make changes that i don't want to keep? where's my original document?
marc2003 said:now that completely defeats the object of backup for me. what if i make changes that i don't want to keep? where's my original document?
I'm not sure about all the backup software on these drives but with some you can save a copy of the original document along with the changes. I think Vista gives you this option for certain files too.