PC Backup

Whats the best PC back program tp use as i wanted to make one where it would install everything including windows if i had a fatal crash.

thanks

I use Acronis True Image (2010) to make a full HDD image. This restores the PC back to the date the image was created.

Other programs that do the same thing are Norton Ghost and Drive Image (but this is quite old now and I dont think it supports Win Vista+ )

I've used Norton Ghost a few times and it's always worked pretty well for me.
I've also used Acronis True Image with success.

Have a think about using "Genie" for data and if you have Windows 7 - stick another hard drive in your machine and make it a mirror.

John

Do a fresh install, get everything the way you love it and make an image with some kind of recovery software.

When disaster strikes simply recover the image and shizam, everything is setup for you already. No boiling, nooooo fussss!!! :p

As far as which ones to go for, Norton Ghost is okay but doesnt allow incremental backups or backups directly to physical partitions as far as im aware (DVD backups only). It also doesnt have the option to verify the image when burning to disc an theres no virtual disk creation capabilities either that I'm aware either (ie. such as that you get on factory machines that have hidden restore partitions).

Acronis ticks all of the above and even has the option for multicast deployment (great if you want to put the same image on more than one machine on a network at once).

IMO Acronis is the one to go for.

To be on the safe side, be sure to buy latest version for full OS support.

---------- Post added at 15:19 ---------- Previous post was at 15:11 ----------

Not tried any of these but if you're willing to try out a few freeware imaging tools, heres a quick list of some availible ;)


http://www.techsupportalert.com/best...ng-program.htm

Norton ghost does allow you to backup your system drive to another hard drive or partition, this is how i used to do it my win98 system but now i do to dvd and span disks if needed.

Norton ghost is fine for windows. It struggles with alternative os.

I do manual backups in Linux. No use to hold entire partitions-programs there, since package manager installs new software quickly and data and settings can be retrieved from home and .settings files (hidden). So need for special procedures and stuff. If I install winblows softare taking a copy of .wine is enough:thumbsup:

Luckily even a format and distro upgrade is very quick and clean that way..:thumbsup:

is Acronis True Image (2010) any different to Acronis True Image (2011) version ?
should i seek the 2010 version or does the 2011 provide the same features?

Norton ghost is fine, but for roughly the same amount of money you can get their Symantec Backup Exec which does the same with a little more capability. We use it at work and it allows for incremental backup images, full backup images, and scheduled back ups. You can save them to pretty much any media. We use removable hard drives that are stored off-site. It works really well for us. Restore process usually takes about 15-20 minutes depending on the size of the hard drive we are restoring.

This is why I love Linux:

tar cvpzf gentoo.tgz --exclude=/proc --exclude=/lost+found --exclude=/gentoo.tgz --exclude=/media --exclude=/mnt --exclude=/sys /

Then to unpack:

tar xvpfz gentoo.tgz -C /

to whatever partition you want, install grub and away you go :)

Only takes 15 mins to pack up and restore.

I will try Acronis on my win 7 install tonight, never backed up windows before. How long would a 200gig install with games take to backup with that?

Cheers