Backing up harddrive

Acronis True Image

I personally like Acronis too.

I Think it´s better than Norton Ghost! You can boot from an Part of your HardDisk

Yeah, Ghost is good.

I've got a copy i don't use, pm me if intereted in buying

I have tried both!
Ghost does an excellent job, but the recovery environment )their CD using Win PE) is a bit slow in laoding.
Acronis True Image also does an excelent job. The CD is faster (kind of embedded unix) and the price is more competetive.
Both can build so-called "live-state" images, that is backing up you system partition while you are working, though you still have to be a bit carefull with this (so switch on the validation).

Other's in the market are Terabyte Unlimited (google for "bootitng") and Paragon, but I don't know anything about them apart from their existence.

I am using Ghost at the moment, but I would switch to Acronis if they would offer the same competitive upgrade for Ghost users as they do in Germany at the moment.

Check out CasperXP. I used it to clone my drive and convert to NTFS, and it can be used to maintain a clone in the background. Alsothey have great customer support.

Maybe one of you can help me out on this Acronis True Image (I hope) - I started to use Acronis for the first time doing the full backup and told me I'll need 13 CDs.
After starting to burn the 8th CD, it said backup failed and I viewed the log which has 3 red Xs next to some data. Why it has 3 red Xs I don't know (viewed it rather quickly, more of a glance due to no time). Then I clicked OK....nothing else happen. I don't even know how to continue this backup from where it left off. The laptop hardly got anything on it as it's only one month old (haven't even had time to explore its protentials yet). Does that mean I have to start from scratch again and those 8 CDs are wasted?
Thanks!

Hi,
Some thing weird always happens to me when I use True Image. I have tried so many times to make it work for me because I like it's features, but have always failed the integrity tests. The surest way to do a back up for me is to use norton ghost 2003 for system imaging and SyncBack for data back up. I've given up on Acronis' True Image until perhaps a new version comes out.

This is what I did (both acronis and ghost):
First run the partion image on one drive only and image it to the other drive (use validation to see if the "hot backup" actually works), and use maximum compression.
See if you can mount the image you created and if you can extract individual files from it.
Only after this I would consider using DVD/CD.

Since personally I don't fully trust the 'hot backup' features I run imaging from the CD and back it up to the USB HD. Probably validation issues relate to the 'hot backup', and you can have them in ghost as well as in Acronis, Paragon, Terabyte unlimited (and probably others). Try to avoid too much change on the disk while the backup is running. Acronis TI 9.1 and Ghost 2005 pretend to be safe by now, but, I am rather absolutely save than sorry when the restore fails.

Secondly, use rewritables when you are testing, it saves you disks. and use maximum compression to save a few more disks,and use DVD rewritables to save even more disks.

knownuts, you cannot continue the backup where it left of, your disks wil have changed in the meantime, so unless you used rewritables you 8 disks are lost

Apart from that both Symantec and Acronis (through their forum at http://www.wilderssecurity.com/) are usually very helpful, even for non-customers. And I am sure so are Paragon and Terabyte Unlimited (or CasperXP).
Has anyone with problems contacted them?

just my 2c

Drio

I'm glad to hear that someone else also have problems using the Acronis. I was beginning to think that I must have been a real idiot. Just to let you know that from what I've read about the new version of Acronis V.9., it's still giving some problems and I think we'll have to wait for quite awhile before everything goes smoothly. The version I was using was V.8. since as it's all sorted out and a lot of people who have this version doesn't have the problem like in V.9. But when they updated it to V.9., they started to have problems. I thought you might like to know that.

Thanks a lot Drio for your info and I have been to their website at wilderssecurity to have a look and it was most interesting just like this one of course. I can always learn something new from these forums. I will give one of those softwares you've mentioned and see how I get on. If I get into problems again, be sure that I'll definitely call on you for help if that's OK with you?

If you have a DVD burner, I suggest using DVDs to burn backups to versus CDs. Obviously, it takes a lot less of them.

I loved Power Quest's Drive Image but they were bought out by Symantec. I like Acronis True Image but I normally perform backups to an external hard drive - less problems that way. And, I transfer the major backups to DVD. I have restored my system many times with a True Image file image with no problems. That's how you find out how good a backup program works is by performing restorations.

BTW, make sure you turn off Windows system restore feature. It wil save you hard drive space and frustration.

GI Tom, thanks for the tips and I'm definitely going to do the backup to an external drive next time so I don't have go through what I went through recently. It was maddening. Is the Acronis you are using version 9 or 8?

I will make sure I turn off the Windows system restore next time I try to use Acronis again.....if I dare to waste time again.

Thanks again.

Hi,
This is how I do my backups. It is long and not as efficient, but due to the nature of system backups, I only really run a backup when I install a new program or some systemwide changes.
To start off, I bought a Seagate 2.5" 120GB from Newegg for $120+ a free external 2.5" enclosure from Fry's electronics ( with rebate). This is where I store my backups.
So after I get my system the way I want it, it looks like this:
C: my OS + Programs.
D: my docs + Ghost image of C:

To run backup on system, I run ghost 2003 and save that image in the D drive. Then I use Syncback from 2brightsparks and clone everything on the D drive to my external disk.
That's it. Takes bout 1 hr. Completely safe. Ive had system crashes, viruses, you name it; but have always been able to recover with this without losing a piece of data at all.

* I also use Hiren's boot cd to restore from dos.

Eniqmah, that sounds like hard work to me. Guess I'm a bit of a lazy person but seriously, I really don't have a lot of time to spend hence I used Acronis thinking it will be an easy and simple way to do a backup not consuming too much of my time. Also, I haven't got an external HD at the moment but will be buying one soon for backups. Thank you for your info on how you do your backup.

I would like to thank all of you for helping me on how you do your backups. I never realised that there're so many different ways of doing one. I guess I just have spend a lot of time to try one of these different ways of backups in order to find out which one I prefer. When I try one of your backups' be sure that I will call on you for help when I get into problem(s) with it - hope you don't mind me asking you for help. Once again, thanks a lot to all of you here for sharing your info with me.