Which backup software, Norton or Microsoft?

Skulblaka · Aug 30, 2010

Greetings to all,

It's my birthday today, and I was able to acquire a 2Tb external drive.

Now I cannot really decide on which backup program to use.

I have Norton 360 which has an inbuilt backup program, now I'm wondering which backup program to use. The one Norton 360 has or the inbuilt Windows type.

My decision is somewhat in your hands. :sarc:

pparks1 · Aug 30, 2010

Guess it depends upon what you want to backup. For example, I really only care about my data. So, for that, I just use a utility like robocopy to mirror my data directories on my internal hard drive to my external drive. This works well as it only copies files that have changed since the last backup. That's what gets backed up regularly to my external USB drives.

Now, I will occasionally do a system image of my Windows 7 desktop from my C drive to my D drive (different physical hard drives). This I can use to reimage my machine if I somehow blow it up.

The only thing that I keep offsite is my data backups though...these images are just "nice to haves". Not terrible important to me.

Skulblaka · Aug 30, 2010

One question about backups, does it get updated every time you back up? Such as, when I uninstall a program, the program on the backup is also removed or delete a file.

pparks1 · Aug 30, 2010

Skulblaka said:
One question about backups, does it get updated every time you back up? Such as, when I uninstall a program, the program on the backup is also removed or delete a file.

Depends upon the type of backup that you do. If you are doing a file/folder backup as I do...your backups don't contain anything with regards to your actual programs. I just back up the actual data files.

If you are doing a system image, each time you image it, it would be a snapshot of exactly how your machine looked at that exact moment in time. Therefore, it would be aware of your apps and anything that you recently removed, would be removed in your latest image.

Skulblaka · Aug 30, 2010

pparks1 said:
Skulblaka said:

One question about backups, does it get updated every time you back up? Such as, when I uninstall a program, the program on the backup is also removed or delete a file.

Click to expand...

Depends upon the type of backup that you do. If you are doing a file/folder backup as I do...your backups don't contain anything with regards to your actual programs. I just back up the actual data files.

If you are doing a system image, each time you image it, it would be a snapshot of exactly how your machine looked at that exact moment in time. Therefore, it would be aware of your apps and anything that you recently removed, would be removed in your latest image.

Thank you for your help, I'll add it to your reputation.

karlsnooks · Aug 30, 2010

Win 7 Backup and Restore is actually two program classes in one.

You have the system image backup which is copy of everything on the partitions which you select and stored in a VHD format.

You also have a folder backup which produces an incremental backup of your selected folders stored in ZIP format.

This is a very general overview. I strongly recommend reading the tutorial by Brink on Win 7 Backup and Restore:
http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/663-backup-complete-computer-create-image-backup.html

I use Win 7 Backup and Restore-very successfully.

I am a strong advocate of Win 7 Backup and Restore.

The image backup is not an incremental backup but rather a fresh image.
The one characteristic of Win 7 Backup and Restore which I would like to see changed is that the new image backup overwrites the old. Thus you must rename the old before making a new if you want both. Brink explains this in his tutorial.

Wishmaster · Aug 30, 2010

I find Acronis to be the best (IMHO)

Lots of extra options and great compression.

Maxxwire · Aug 31, 2010

I tried using Acronis on my Vista x32 laptop and it constantly consumed 250 MB of RAM and since that was about 50% of the RAM that it took to boot the computer I decided to use a lighter program in the form of Macrium Reflect which runs for just over 15 MB of RAM and has never failed plus thanks to Wishmaster's help and insight I was able to get Reflect x64 to work on my Win 7 desktop.

~Maxx~

jimbo45 · Aug 31, 2010

Hi there
The FREE version of Macrium reflect doesn't do FILE backup / selective file restore.

I think Acronis is the easiest and fastest package anyway -- the size doesn't matter since if you are doing a full system backup INCLUDING DATA FILES you really don't want to be working on the computer.

Macrium reflect (the free version) doesn't handle spanned media or multi-volume files either and doesn't do Incremental backups either.

Also Acronis allows you to schedule backups automatically and supports other devices like cartridges etc.

Cheers
jimbo

Skulblaka · Aug 31, 2010

I'll use with Windows Backup and Restore, thank you everyone for your tips.

Maxxwire · Sep 1, 2010

I used to depend only on Windows backup and restore also until system restore failed 4 times in a row and I was forced to give up a year's worth of work on my computer and reinstall the Factory Image.

~Maxx~

Maxxwire · Sep 1, 2010

jimbo45 said:
Hi there
The FREE version of Macrium reflect doesn't do FILE backup / selective file restore.

jimbo

The free version of Macrium Reflect also does not include the Win PE 2.1 that is needed to restore images in Win 7 nevertheless I continue to use and recommend it because it has never failed.

~Maxx~

jimbo45 · Sep 1, 2010

Maxxwire said:
jimbo45 said:

Hi there
The FREE version of Macrium reflect doesn't do FILE backup / selective file restore.

jimbo

Click to expand...

The free version of Macrium Reflect also does not include the Win PE 2.1 that is needed to restore images in Win 7 nevertheless I continue to use and recommend it because it has never failed.

~Maxx~

Hi there
If a Backup doesn't backup your DATA as well then IMO this isn't a sensible backup strategy.

You need to be able to backup both your system as an image and YOUR DATA from time to time.

Just backing up the OS is fine for a number of cases but DATA does get deleted, lost or destroyed from time to time.

Also Macrium does not handle Spanned or Multi volume stuff.

Cheers
jimbo

Maxxwire · Sep 1, 2010

jimbo45 said:
Maxxwire said:

jimbo45 said:

Just backing up the OS is fine for a number of cases but DATA does get deleted, lost or destroyed from time to time.

Also Macrium does not handle Spanned or Multi volume stuff.

Cheers
jimbo

Click to expand...

I just got done doing a pair of Macrium Reflect Image Backups to my 2TB LaCie Raid 0 and 1TB WD backup drives each of which already has complete updated sets of additional data consisting of over 400 GB on each drive as well as a Windows 7 System Image. A 3rd 1TB WD Drive also has the same 400+ GB of updated data on it also and a 4th 500 GB Verbatim drive has another ~200 GB subset of that data which I use frequently including 100+ GB of digital photos.

Acronis True Image may be just perfect for each and every one of your backup needs, but when I tried the program it continuously used 250 MB of RAM every minute the computer is running and that is just too high of a price for me to pay in that it is many times over the amount of memory that any of my other electively used programs consume.

~Maxx~

Click to expand...

fireberd · Sep 1, 2010

Another vote for Acronis True Image. What I use and what I recommend to the clients I support (and most are using it).

I do full backups, not incremental. If you need to restore or rebuild a hard drive it is faster with just one backup file than having to install the initial backup file and then subsequent incrementals, and it can get confusing and easy to miss one. Where I worked (I'm retired) we initally did a full backup of our file servers on Monday and then incrementals on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday and finally a full backup again on Friday. We found out if a server had to be restored it was faster and easier with a full backup so we changed to doing full backups every night.

pparks1 · Sep 1, 2010

Maxxwire said:
Acronis True Image may be just perfect for each and every one of your backup needs, but when I tried the program it continuously used 250 MB of RAM every minute the computer is running and that is just too high of a price for me to pay in that it is many times over the amount of memory that any of my other electively used programs consume.

Out of curiosity, what process do you see running in Task Manager that consumes 250MB of RAM at every second of every day? I have Acronis True Image 2010 installed on my machine and I don't see any acronis process running right now. And looking at all processes, I have nothing consuming anywhere near 250MB of RAM. My highest used app is Firefox at 114MB, followed by svchost at 55MB and outlook at 44MB.

Maxxwire · Sep 1, 2010

pparks1 said:
Maxxwire said:

Out of curiosity, what process do you see running in Task Manager that consumes 250MB of RAM at every second of every day? I have Acronis True Image 2010 installed on my machine and I don't see any acronis process running right now.

Click to expand...

I have come to rely more upon Mark Russinovich's Process Explorer rather than upon Windows Task Manager to assess process resource consumption within my computer and according to Process Explorer Acronis True Image 2009 used a constant 250 MB of RAM right from startup on my x86 computer. This was just my own personal experience with Acronis 2009 and its good to hear that Acronis 2010 is so resource friendly on your computer.

That said so far Windows 7 System Image Backup has worked perfectly every time I have used it so far and it restores a System Image very quickly from the LaCie Raid 0 drive. Its great to have a choice of 2 reliable backup programs neither of which have failed.

~Maxx~

Maxxwire · Sep 2, 2010

I was up late last night making some ?genius adjustments? to my Win 7 x64 computer and when I booted it up this morning it took 50 seconds which is twice as long as it normally does. I figured that I could either spend most of the day trying to figure out what I had done wrong or I could spend a few minutes and reimage the computer with Macrium Reflect.

Reflect restored a recent 7.9 GB backup Image to my Win 7 computer in 4 minutes and 40 seconds from the LaCie Raid 0 drive. Then I restarted the computer it got to the desktop in 25 seconds as usual. Not only that, but using 40 MB RAM less I've seen at the desktop than usual.

~Maxx~

kituhi1234 · Sep 3, 2010

use Norton Ghost dude...

it's awesome software to take backup... its trustworthy....

Which backup software, Norton or Microsoft?

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