Favorite Backup Software

Comcast is now giving NIS away for free

But that is not unusual. ATT gives McAfee to new customers.

I use Paragon HDM Server 2010 and Macrium free mainly .

Some like Acronis - it has an attractive interface - I found it very inefficient compared to the others - that may not matter to you.

There are others Drive Snapshot - Disk Image Backup for Windows NT/2000/XP/2003/X64 is popular - they do a 30 day free trial. The website and marketing is appalling - don't let that put you off, it has many fans.

The free ones are really these two - they are both excellent - try them and you may find that is all you need:

Paragon Backup & Recovery 10 Free

Macrium Reflect FREE Edition - Information and download

GFI is popular - but it is for file and folder backup - it is not a drive image program.

If you just want file and folder backup the free Karen's Replicator is hard to beat.

whs said:

What problems did you have with NIS2010. I am about to replace my MSE with NIS2010 (I still have a NIS product key valid for 850 days). I would be interested in your assessment.

It has some great features, but it's a bit resource heavy and does slow the machine down compared to MSE. And MSE uses about 300 MB less memory when the machine is just idle.

My biggest problem with it occurred recently. I've been developing some code, and an installer for it, and every new exe file I made was quarantined by NIS's SONAR function. It's like if Norton hasn't seen the file before, it's dangerous, and it's very difficult to override that feature without shutting off SONAR entirely, which causes more issues.

The last straw was this past Tuesday night. I had trouble with a RAID card install, and after the reboot, Norton was demanding that I activate my software because the trial period had expired, but I still had 200+ days on my current activation. I reactivated, and every time I did a restart, I had to activate again. This also happened a few months ago, and I spent a great deal of time talking to a nice, but not so helpful support tech. In the end I had to re-install. Faced with doing it again, and looking at the Symantec support forums where people were complaining constantly about the same issue, with no solution offered, I took it out and installed MSE.

New code -> New exe + New installer = No problem now.

Thanks Mellon Head, that was a useful overview. Most of your problems would not apply to me, so I guess I will dare to do it. I have a relatively muscular system, so resource usage is not a concern.
I had a similar problem with MSE as you had with the Sonar function. An innocent video editing program that I used for years was kidnapped by MSE. It took up to 5 minutes to load because the msmpeng.exe held it hostage. But after putting it on the "Excluded files and locations" list, MSE left it alone.
RAID I don't have. But I have an OCZ SSD. We'll see how it likes that one.
My problem with MSE is that it does not protect you well. I caught a trojan and a browser highjacker and MSE did not catch it. Fortunately I automatically make an image every morning when I boot the machine. So it was not a big deal to fix the problem. But it makes you wonder.

whs said:

Thanks Mellon Head, that was a useful overview. Most of your problems would not apply to me, so I guess I will dare to do it. I have a relatively muscular system, so resource usage is not a concern.

No prob. I really liked the Norton series. I've used it for about 10 years now in one form or other. It's been a pretty good product, and NIS2010 isn't nearly the resource hog that 2009 was. I'd still use it except for the SONAR thing. It's too aggressive, IMO, and Symantec doesn't seem to have a fix for that. If they fix it, then I'll probably use it again.

I'd do it if I were you, too. A big long license like that. Why not? :)

I use Paragon and tried the full restore, boot recover and so on... It all worked with no problems to report... I noticed at time to time they offer it free... Worth checking out nightly for your chance... GL :)

notsograymatter said:

I refuse to touch anything Norton anymore. I've had way too many issues with it. The last stable Norton product I used was the Corporate Edition of the Anti-Virus back when XP was in it's heyday. Zone Alarm products are actually starting to join Norton in the landfill as welll. I never thought I'd say it about ZA but all of their products seem to lock up my system.

Back to backups... I created a Rescue CD the second I switched to Macrium. I wanted to make sure that I would be able to restore before I deleted my old Windows system images. I may try out GFI if Macrium gives me any issues, but I don't really see that happening any time soon (fingers crossed).

Was a die hard ZA fan for years... Started to have problems and moved on... I'm a type of person who doesn't look back after I'd made a choice... GL :)

notsograymatter said:

I refuse to touch anything Norton anymore. I've had way too many issues with it. The last stable Norton product I used was the Corporate Edition of the Anti-Virus back when XP was in it's heyday. Zone Alarm products are actually starting to join Norton in the landfill as welll. I never thought I'd say it about ZA but all of their products seem to lock up my system.

Back to backups... I created a Rescue CD the second I switched to Macrium. I wanted to make sure that I would be able to restore before I deleted my old Windows system images. I may try out GFI if Macrium gives me any issues, but I don't really see that happening any time soon (fingers crossed).

What I like about GFI is that it doesn't use a proprietary format for the backup. Just plain ol' zip files, and you can encrypt them if you want.

I like the idea that I can just unzip everything without necessarily having to load a rescue disk.