What backup program should I use?

Read the article that everyone's commenting on.
Subscribe to the RSS Feed for comments on this article.

I tried Norton Ghost a few years ago and it required a second partition to do the image backup. But I would have had to reformat the drive to make the second partition, which would have destroyed the stuff I wanted to backup!
Recently I again wanted to try doing a image backup. The Norton Ghost site would not display the Ghost documentation to let me see if things had changed.
I checked out "Acronis True Image" on its site and the documentation is readable and understandable. I tried it and it runs easy and seems to work, I haven't needed to restore yet.
Anyone have any experience with Acronis True Image?

Hi Leo...
Whilst I must agree that '10 Quick Steps to Perfect Backups' is perhaps worth the small outlay, it only mentions and recommends Retrospect 7.5 which at more than $100 bucks is, I think, a bit heavy weight.

Having researched further, I can see that things have moved on un petit peu, and have to consider the convergence of Vista...

With this in mind, I have found what appears to be a fairly new prog by the 2 Bright Sparks co http://www.2brightsparks.com/ namely SyncBackSE 4.1.3...
The 2 Bright sparks say somewhere in their blurb that they were fed up with Backup software not quite doing things the way they would do them, and so developed a program that would - I'm impressed! And this showed to my way of thinking that they knew what they were doing...!

I should like to ask if you or any readers know the program and have anything to say...?

Costs: SyncBack - Freeware
SyncbackSE - $30.00

Change for my Partitioning Prog...

Thanx in advance

Lou

There is an excellent FREE backup program called "driveimageXML". http://www.runtime.org/dixml.htm
I've been using it for over a year and I have not been disappointed.

I recommend Norton Ghost 12. I also recommend that you ALWAYS back up to a separate drive. If your primary drive dies, so does your backup.. No point in that. With Norton Ghost 12, you can back up to a network computer (and recover from a network computer) using the windows software or the bootable CD (saved my butt so many times). I have 2 back up places, a different drive on the same PC, and a network drive on another PC. Works great and only takes minutes to do both!

This article makes reference to "10 Quick Steps to Perfect Backups". However, the link to get a copy is "http://go.ask-leo.com/10qsback" which comes back with 404 error.

The site www.10quicksteps.com is currently inactive and says it will return shortly.

Is there another source for "10 Quick Steps to Perfect Backups"?

Thanks.

I Have been using Acronis 10 for a long time, and find it very good and easy to use, as a bonus it will back up your email in a separate file about 60 seconds. I use an external usb drive and internal drive for main back up. I use the external drive for a very good reason, I had a bad experience when my computer went mad and deleted my backup drive as well as my C:\drive,
I did not think it possible to delete two separate drives but it did and I did not touch f/disk or format at all hence the external drive, when I am doing any thing like format etc I make sure that I turn it off.
Regards to all
Ron.

Karen Kenworthy's Replicator program (for Windows) does everything I need for regular backups. As with all Karen's programs it's freeware and is available from her site at http://www.karenware.com The page for the Replicator can be found via the following TinyURL:
http://tinyurl.com/cnta
You can set up all the backup jobs you need, both large and small. It's a very flexible program, and unless you really must create drive images I don't see any need for another program.

Hi to all! I tried the Karen Kenworthy product and it was OK (her other stuff is pretty cool) but SynchBack SE is SUPERB! Bit complex, maybe, but defaults will get you 99% of the way there. Filter and schedule features optional and very helpful. We backup data partitions (drives) from multiple machines across a network to a central USB file repository. All local data is on drive d: and subsequent F G H etc. Meaning we do not back up the C: Windoze OS files to the network repository -- that is another matter entirely because of registry issues. Possible solution might be Acronis Drive Image 10 on each local machine. Don't know... Or a real OS like Unix: we're thinking about it! Hey: Anything but Windoze: it IS time.

I recently tried and bought Acronis True Image 10 after many years of using Retrospect (anyone remember when Retrospect was called DiskFit?). My issues with Retrospect had to do with occasionally damaged backup files (Retrospect calls them "Catalog Files").

However, Acronis TI 10 was a major disappoinment to me. It has some serious SLOW speed issues during incremental backups! It can take HOURS to incrementally backup and verify the smallest incremental changes!! The program verifies the entire backup and NOT just the changes. Go to the Acronis forum and see for yourself. This is a known problem and the developer claims to be working on a fix for a later version. Try the demo first and be 100% certain that this program will work for you!!!!! Acronis product support is as slow as their software and consists of generic advice.

I reluctantly went back to Retrospect and upgraded to the latest version ($49). I have been pleasantly surprised with the robustness of the program. Kudos to the new owners, EMC Insignia, for the improvements. Retrospect is back in my good graces! :)

Leo: Am a Senior and have had 1 crash in 3 yrs. I have foto files for 3000+ and the thought of losing all that work drives me crazy. I have bot CD's to copy but don't know how many fotos each will take. Is there a way to determine this so I don't lose all my work? Many thanx for yr articles which I just stumbled across!

To post a comment on "What backup program should I use?", please return to that article's main page.