good PC backup software

Superficial · 17 Jun 2008 at 19:51

Can anyone advise on a good quality, simple to use backup package for a home office?

Essentially we have a PC and a Laptop on a home network using a mybook world RAID NAS setup - the idea atm is to send all work related data to a network drive on the MBW but, for data restore purposes we need some software that can be initiated each evening to store backups of everything on the MBW to either a different folder or to, perhaps a different partition on the MBW.

is this doable?

cheers,

brakeinup · 17 Jun 2008 at 20:30

Aconis True Image Home

Defiance_co · 17 Jun 2008 at 20:50

Hiya,
My bro uses Acronis and also rates it good

Not tried it myself though but he uses his regularly lol

Ciao

Def

Superficial · 17 Jun 2008 at 23:07

nice

thanks - am playing with the demo now

Bane · 20 Jun 2008 at 23:44

I was reading a customer review of Acronis, and one limitation mentioned was no support for Vista GPT partitions. Is this still the case with True Image 11 Home?

swinnie · 22 Jun 2008 at 15:24

If you just want to copy documents or data then Robocoby might be what you are after.

Acronis True Image, or Norton Ghost for full drive imaging.

iMacMart · 22 Jun 2008 at 16:03

Anyone tried a "C" drive back and then restore with Vista??

Did a fresh install on my machine yesterday added all the drivers and updates and then took an image using Vista Ultimate's built in tool..

willhub · 22 Jun 2008 at 16:26

Norton ghost is what I use and seems fine and can boot out of windows to restore.

Defiance_co · 22 Jun 2008 at 17:15

I took an image backup with ultimates built-in doo-dahh

This was in x64

Went to install it and it wouldn't

I did save the image to another drive so dunno whether that was my problem ?

Ended up with a fresh install but may try again just to see with the image saved on same drive as OS

Ciao

Def

ps: think it said image could not be found

Swordfish · 22 Jun 2008 at 17:18

I use Acronis all the time for any machines I build / install and have only ever had one failure in 5 years of using it.

For my flahs drives etc I just use palin old windows backup - it does what is sasy on the tin !!

iMacMart · 22 Jun 2008 at 17:19

I've got mine on the same drive but another partition?

Although if the whole drive failed I would be screwed!

jbloggs · 22 Jun 2008 at 18:02

tweakinfreak said:
Anyone tried a "C" drive back and then restore with Vista??

Did a fresj install on my machine yesterday added all the drivers and updates and then took an image using Vista Ultimate's built in tool..

I am using ATI Home 11 with Vista Business 64 bit, have made a number of full Backup Images of C:\ partition (an Intel RAID0 setup), and have had to run ATI Home 11 on at least one occassion to Restore a previously made Backup Image onto C:\, worked without any problems.....

iMacMart · 22 Jun 2008 at 18:57

jbloggs said:
I am using ATI Home 11 with Vista Business 64 bit, have made a number of full Backup Images of C:\ partition (an Intel RAID0 setup), and have had to run ATI Home 11 on at least one occassion to Restore a previously made Backup Image onto C:\, worked without any problems.....

ATI

RJC · 22 Jun 2008 at 19:06

tweakinfreak said:
ATI

Acronis True Image

eXor · 22 Jun 2008 at 19:09

tweakinfreak said:
Anyone tried a "C" drive back and then restore with Vista??

Tried for the first time today. No sysprep, just straight to ImageX. Imaging took less than ten minutes, restore took less than five. Tweaked BCD before imaging ( avoids partition signature related boot problems ).

Superficially, the restored system seems fine. ( Saw some cryptic "SACL is going away" messages during the restore. A "general volume" driver was installed on the first boot, which required a reboot.)

The above method is file based and excludes some files ( pagefile.sys ), so it's not an exact copy.

My next experiments will be with ntfsclone and dd ( partition zeroed + gzip ).

iMacMart · 22 Jun 2008 at 19:12

RJC said:
Acronis True Image

Oh lol yeah just realised

iMacMart · 22 Jun 2008 at 19:23

eXor said:
Tried for the first time today. No sysprep, just straight to ImageX. Imaging took less than ten minutes, restore took less than five. Tweaked BCD before imaging ( avoids partition signature related boot problems ).

Superficially, the restored system seems fine. ( Saw some cryptic "SACL is going away" messages during the restore. A "general volume" driver was installed on the first boot, which required a reboot.)

The above method is file based and excludes some files ( pagefile.sys ), so it's not an exact copy.

My next experiments will be with ntfsclone and dd ( partition zeroed + gzip ).

Some of the above is a bit dutch to me, I'd just pop the Vista DVD in the drive, go to repair, point to the backup file (20.9gig in my case) and expect it to restore back to OS goodness?

May look at ATI "

" though

jbloggs · 22 Jun 2008 at 19:41

tweakinfreak said:
Some of the above is a bit dutch to me, I'd just pop the Vista DVD in the drive, go to repair, point to the backup file (20.9gig in my case) and expect it to restore back to OS goodness?

May look at ATI "" though

Sorry, was a bit quick there should have thought first, but I have also used the Backup/Restore feature in Vista Business (same feature as in Ultimate), and it also works fine for both uses, ie Backup & Restore (on a RAID0 setup)..

iMacMart · 22 Jun 2008 at 19:52

Oh cool where did you store the image file?

Was it on the actual drive that had issues or a seperate drive in the same machine?

Was thinking about moving the image over to a 40gb spare sata I have and hide it away on the shelf in my office

jbloggs · 22 Jun 2008 at 20:16

tweakinfreak said:
...Was it on the actual drive that had issues or a seperate drive in the same machine?

Was thinking about moving the image over to a 40gb spare sata I have and hide it away on the shelf in my office

I stored it on another HDD on the same machine, you could store it on the same HDD (if you only had 1 HDD in that system), BUT on a different partition I would reckon.

I would reckon you could also move it over to another HDD and store it elsewhere....