Image backup recommendation - need incremental support

Hi all,

Although I have searched the backup and restore thread I didn't find a solution to my problem.

I have been using windows image backup for some time now (I learned the hard way that you need an *image* backup to restore a failed *system* drive) which is scheduled and works fine.

My problem is that it takes about 50 minutes to run, during this time the pc is unusable due to backup eating up all resources. Since my system disk is basically not changed (profiles are in another disk) I need a backup solution that would do incremental or differential backup (basically it would backup the differences every time and not the whole system partition every day). Such a backup would probably complete in 2-5 minutes and I could run it many times per day instead of once.

Requirements in detail:
1) I need a windows solution and not a "boot with cd, load linux and take image" thing (like ghost).
2) It should take image backup from inside windows (ie after a restore you should be able to fire up the system, not reinstall windows on top of the restored files)
3) It should be able to be scheduled in task scheduler.
4) It should be able to work in an incremental mode.

Many thanks for your ideas! :)

I don't know of any free solutions but the paid one I use, Macrium Reflect Professional Edition, would probably meet your needs. It supports incremental and differentintial backups (as well as full backups, of course). When using it on my notebook, which also has only two CPU cores and has only 4GB RAM, I barely can tell when Reflect is running full blast, if I can tell at all, while running other apps. My desktop rig is much more powerful and I never can tell when Reflect is running. If you are really working the snot out of your machine, Reflect can have its priority reduced so other processes have first crack at the available capacity.

Free Aomei backupper - excellent. Incremental/differential/scheduling/mounting/imaging/cloning /make winpe media

AOMEI Backupper ? free disk imaging and cloning software, backup and recovery for your computer.


Paid = Paragon Home/Suite/Pro.

PARAGON Software Group - partition manager, drive backup, hard disk partitioning

Mine does.

You may be right. I assumed it was a schedule of some kind.

I have no use for scheduling - so never tried it.

Thanks all for your suggestions! I will check and see which one works best.