backup question

[bruinator]

Just curious, how many of you use a backup program to backup certain things and use an imaging software for an exact image of your system for drivers, OS and software?

If so, which ones do you use?

thx

 

[bruinator]

thx for the responses guys.

 

[Ijack]

Not sure that sarcasm is going to endear you greatly to the forum users.

 

[superfuzzy]

Just curious, how many of you use a backup program to backup certain things and use an imaging software for an exact image of your system for drivers, OS and software?

If so, which ones do you use?

thx

I use imaging software - Acronis True Image to create an image of the OS on various PC's - has saved me a few time! For data - photos, music etc I backup uncompressed in the original format using xxcopy and 2brightsparks. I don't like the idea of data being in a proprietary format. I just set up a PC that is on 24x7 as a file server and HTPC - so all data is in one central location.

 

[Ijack]

I use various scripts that copy any changed files from my Windows and Unix machines, at regular intervals, to a Buffalo LinkStation NAS. It's saved me a lot of trouble on occasions, and is completely hands off.

 

[masterfrm]

Well, I am using Softland Backup4all for recovering my files and folders. Even this program can create disk imaging. Cool product you should go for ...! ENJOY

 

[the_bigd]

Just curious, how many of you use a backup program to backup certain things and use an imaging software for an exact image of your system for drivers, OS and software?

If so, which ones do you use?

thx

I've tried many different products / setups over the last several years, and have settled on the following system.

First let me preface by giving slight detail about my setup at home. I have a mix of about five client computers and one main server that does different functions for me, backup being one of them.

The backup software I have installed is EMC Retrospect. Its a little bit clunky at first (its not the most intuitive) but once you figure it out its really quite incredible, and possibly overkill for many users. Assuming you are a power user, you would probably like it.

Heres my setup:

Windows Server 2003 + EMC Retrospect + 2 x 1.5 USB Hard Drives. The software is configured to use two seperate backup sets, alternating every other time it runs. Two backup sets is not neccesarry, but it gives me reassurance with the redundancy of the backup... and I've been burned before loosing years of pictures and other documents to a corrupted backup database so I'm someone particular about backup.

The catalog file created by the backup software is then automatically backed up to an offsite online service (dropbox.com) so I never have to worry about losing / recreating that.

The backup software has bare metal disaster recovery option, so, in the worst case scenario, you can boot from CD to start your restore.

It also has client software for all the windows machines on my home network. It goes out every night and backs up the My Documents folder of all the computers in the house.

This has saved my ass several times.

For the record and the sake of conersation, I've also used / experimented with Ghost, Acronis TrueImage and other similar products, and they all seemed to have there own seperate downfalls.

I find Acronis just cant be relied upon, which is too bad becuase it has a lot of great features.