Backup Software choice?

Tell me about it, I had to buy EASUS to get back some irreplaceable photos. Was worth the cost. That thing got like 95% of the stuff back. Amazing. Luckily I hadn't done a 7 time wipe of free space......
glennc

Think about this:

You have your operating system and your personal data on the same partition (C). Everything is working OK.

Feb 1: you make an image of C (the entire partition).

Feb 5: you do a lot of work on your PC, maybe scanning in 200 new pictures or doing your tax returns.

Feb 10: your operating system becomes unstable and System Restore doesn't help. No problem, you've got the image you made Feb 1.

So you restore the image.

Well, you just lost all that work you did on Feb 5. You are back to where you were on Feb 1.

That's an example of how you can become complacent, thinking an image will always bail you out. You've got to stay on your toes.

ignatzatsonic said:

My advice is that it can be useful to have an image of the operating system, but I would not rely on an image as my ONLY backup for my personal data. Imaging generally works, but is not completely reliable and you need to back up your personal data in some other way. That other way might be a simple copy procedure with your mouse to a separate drive--or you could use a program to back up your data in an automated fashion.

I agree with you 100%. I have had "verified" images fail for reasons I never could figure out. So a Automated program such as "GoodSync" for personal data backup is the best way in my opinion. I generally separate my personal data from the partition where the OS resides as much as possible. In other words, I have separate partitions for "My Documents", "Application Data", and even one for the pagefile.sys. This keeps my OS clean, unfragmented, and manageable when making an backup image of the OS for recovery purposes. A key point her would be, although the process of backing up the data is automated, do not automate with respect to scheduling the backup process. This could allow backing up of malware or viruses. Before backing up data or creating a intermittent image, the first step is to insure a clean computer.

Has anyone played around with Acronis True Image for disk imaging? Was wondering if anyone had a decent review of disk imaging software.


dTonic

That's a nice setup for back, indeed. Sounds too expensive for me. I think I'm heading towards a second HDD for mirroring the data partitions on the working drive, then I can just syncronize the data from HDD to HDD. I also want to keep the second drive inaccessible until I chose to access it for Syncing. This ought to keep the viruses from the second drive.

dTonic

Hello to all,
Thank everyone for joining in the discussion. I still haven't decided.
But I have a more immediate issue. I have tried to do a Windows backup with System Image and so far it has failed twice. Double checked settings and reset backup to search for devices to backup to. On the second try I got a 0x8007002 Error. I rebooted again and did a create system image by itself. It did it without a hitch. Now I'm attempting to do a backup without the system image. As I'm sitting here it just failed twice, almost immediately after starting.
Now a word of background. It appears that Backup wants to store on the root of the my E: drive. That is where it always did it before. The backup from prior to doing the multiple reformats was copied back to a Folder, not back to root where it was originally. I don't know but could this be a problem?????
Endeavor to persevere.
glennc

Hello geek,
Thanks for the time. I agree that there is more out there. Thanks for the vote of confidence on that product. Will review after doing a complete clean install of the OS.
Take care.
glennc