There are too many back-up programs on the Market. Brink do you know any three that you can swear by, whether they are commercial or freeware ? Bets are on that ease of use and power, are probably commercial.
Hello Chris,
I like the built-in Windows Backup and System Image features. I have found it to be reliable, but others have had issues with it not be reliable at time. Personally, if you do not modify or mess with the backup, then it should be fine.
Macrium Reflect is another great free 3rd party program for backups.
I know you asked Brink but I also use Windows 7 built in with no problems. When Windows 7 can do something I don't go looking for something that may or may not work.
What type of backups are you trying to do, where do you want to back them up to, and how much data is involved?
I also use both Windows 7 and Macrium with no problems I have done lots of restores with both, but more with Macrium,
Macrium does an image backup faster.
I would not recommend true-image.
To paraphrase a former President of the United States, that depends on what your definition of "swear by" is.
To me, "swear by" implies a very, very high degree of reliability.
A review of this forum would lead you to believe that none of the imaging products have a "very, very high degree of reliability".
However, your definition of "swear by" may mean "it usually works" or "it works 9 times out of 10" or "it works more often than the other products". In which case, take your pick and cross your fingers.
You should prepare for and assume the application of your choice will fail when you need it. I use imaging, but refuse to rely on it.
Backup products that don't use imaging are another matter. They are more reliable, but I have the feeling you are referring to imaging.
Im very happy with Macrium, I use the free version a lot and its fast and has a nice UI. I like how you can browse an image in Windows Explorer. You just mount it and browse away. So handy if you just wanna recover a few lost files or something.
All you can do is reduce the risk of not being able to reimage. The risk will never be absolutely zero but you can make it very small.
I personally use what Brink has recommended. I actively use and recover using Windows built in imaging and Macrium Reflect.
If you are risk averse then it is best to image / backup to more than one external HDD. These things do fail. For backup, in my opinion, 2 smaller external HDDs are better than 1 large (even if the $/byte is higher).
I use Acronis and it works well for me.
I don't use a lot of the "advanced" features.
I manually create a backup image for a single OS partition as needed.
I tried the Windows backup, but didn't care for it.
I have multi-boot PC's, and I didn't find a way to backup a single OS partition.
It always backed up all OS partitions, and the backup image was very large.
(I only needed to backup a single OS)
Recently I started testing Macrium free.
For people I help, most have no backups, or understand the need for them.
Windows backup may not be an option, depending on their OS.
While WD or Seagate Acronis free may be an option, i'm wondering if that is the best choice.
If someone has a WD HD, uses WD Acronis free, the HD dies and is replaced with a Samsung, could the WD Acronis free image be restored?
I don't know for sure, and have no way of testing this now...
For a multi computer family I think it might be better for them to use the same program (Macrium free) for everyone/all PC's.
That might help avoid confusion for them using/learning different programs on different PC's.
I don't recommend using any program to anyone until i have tested it and have confidence in it.
Thus, I'm learning/testing Macrium on my test box.
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