Back-Up software.......which is problem free and better?

[bugmeso]

For many years I have used Ghost, even before Norton bought the original people out. I made a disk that just used Ghost and would boot very easily. Now I use more that 1 H/D and it has become hard to tell which H/D is what because Ghost only shows the H/D OEM GB and a Drive# (number) which can not be relied on 100% of the time. I have looked a few others but I can't see how a program can do a good back up with in the program you are trying to back up..............(if you know what I mean).

 

[Lady Fitzgerald]

I also used to use Ghost and never had problems with it; it just got too old and I was too cheap to upgrade. I now use Macrium Reflect which has an excellent free version (ironically, I now use a paid version but I had no problems with the freebie). One of our own here at Win 7 Forums has written an excellent tutorial on how to use it.

I personally use imaging to backup my boot drive and cloning to backup my data drives. Most people prefer to use imaging for both. A lot of people here use Macrium Reflect so, if you ever have problems using it, there is plenty of help available.

 

[Mark Phelps]

I used Ghost for years and then, when I really needed to do a restore, it failed on me. Same is true of Acronis True Image.

I switched over to using Macrium Reflect, never had any problems with that (done numerous migrations and restores), and liked it well enough to purchase the Pro version. The free version does image backups and restores.

 

[whs]

I can only confirm what was already said. I used Ghost during the whole time I had Vista. It served me well. With Windows7 I switched to free Macrium and never looked back.

Macrium is a lot easier to use than Ghost and it has proven to be 100% reliable. Have a look at my tutorial that LF has linked and you will see.

 

[Lady Fitzgerald]

Nothing is ever going to be completely trouble free and reliable but Reflect comes about as close as one can get. And, if you use the free version, the price can't be beat.

 

[truckinguy]

Nothing is ever going to be completely trouble free and reliable but Reflect comes about as close as one can get. And, if you use the free, version, the price can't be beat.

You are so right. I paid $50 for Paragon Home and Recovery 2012 and it is so hard to use and doesn't do the job without errors.

I tried Macrium Free and it works great. Easy to use and works wonders. What a waste of money on Paragon.
I used Pargon OS to SSD and that worked well.

 

[whs]

I used Pargon OS to SSD and that worked well

I think that is their best product. I used it several times without any problems. But I also had problems with their imaging program. When it came out, I got a free license because they had asked me to test it. It did not excite me.

 

[bugmeso]

I have not responded to any of the posts........as of yet. Still reading a lot about back up programs. BUT at this point I can see that I will give Macrium Reflect a try (the free version first). It's just like many others, I am old school and have a hard time believing a software can work within the O/S to back up a H/D. To boot to DOS and then mirror one H/D to another was always the way. Change is hard
But thank you all for the input.

 

[Lady Fitzgerald]

Keep in mind that imaging programs work from within RAM after being loaded from the drive, then read what is on the drive being imaged.

 

[truckinguy]

I have not responded to any of the posts........as of yet. Still reading a lot about back up programs. BUT at this point I can see that I will give Macrium Reflect a try (the free version first). It's just like many others, I am old school and have a hard time believing a software can work within the O/S to back up a H/D. To boot to DOS and then mirror one H/D to another was always the way. Change is hard
But thank you all for the input.

It does work well. Nice to be able to back up or copy disk while still using the pc. I have copied my C drive many times to an external drive and as back up and then reinstalled the copy to the C drive because of going to SSD then HDD then back to SSD. Don't ask me about all that ..It'll take too long to tell. It' involves getting a replacement PC from Dell for one they couldn't fix for me so I had to migrate the OS to the new PC. I was lucky. All I had to do was have the new pc with my old hard drive look into the HDD that came with my new exchange. The two units were similar but different models. But Maricum does a perfect copy. Not sure about Back up but Copying the partitions to an external HDD then back into another one? perfect. Believe it. I'm typing now on the result of many clones/copies using Macrium. I just made a Copy today for backup in a old HDD I have. I use a SSD as my C drive and have a HDD for storage in Dells media bay. I copy the storage drive to a external HDD too in case of emergancy. Love Macrium. I wish I gave them the $50 instead of Paragon.

 

[bugmeso]

Well, since this is my post..... I am going to jack it. Got the software and made a clone of one of computers. This is in case I loose info or have a H/D problem.
I am also watching and reading about the "image" process. My question is: when one makes a backup disc...either win or Linux, I don't think it necessary to make one each time an image is made.................HUH? Or will this be necessary for each computer and each time?

 

[linnemeyerhere]

Personally my back up plan is more a drive mirroring software called Memeo Auto Sync. As soon as a file is added or changed on one drive it mirrors that with another of your choice. I say don't forget to back up when you can Sync and just forget it !

 

[Lady Fitzgerald]

Personally my back up plan is more a drive mirroring software called Memeo Auto Sync. As soon as a file is added or changed on one drive it mirrors that with another of your choice. I say don't forget to back up when you can Sync and just forget it !

The only problem with that is, if you accidentally delete a file or it gets corrupted, the mirror will do the same thing.

 

[truckinguy]

I said in my above posts Macrium is simple great etc for cloning. And it was for a while now I have had bad clones...Not sure what I did or didn't do recently. It would go ahead and clone and at the end an error would come up. Why not have the error come up right off? Gee Wiz.
I must of changed a setting some were. I miss the Acronis Migrate Easy years ago. I would try that again but it won't support 7 or 64 bit I bet. It was very simple to just clone with Migrate Easy.
I have been making Macrium Images now and I hope I don't screw the settings up with that.

 

[Lady Fitzgerald]

The only time I had a problem with cloning with Macrium Reflect was when I was running Speccy at the same time so I could monitor HDD temperatures during the cloning process. Reflect would get part way through the clone and I would get a BSOD. After that happened a couple of times, I tried running the clone with Speccy turned off and that solved the problem. Since then, I avoid running any other software while cloning and haven't had any more problems.

I wish Reflect had a provision to verify clones like it does for images. You can set MR to automatically verify an image immediately after making the image. There is a setting in Reflect when cloning, under Advanced Options, for Intelligent Sector cloning which also includes a selection to verify the original file system is error free before the clone begins. I use that and, other than the aforementioned issue, never had a problem with my clones.

 

[truckinguy]

The only time I had a problem with cloning with Macrium Reflect was when I was running Speccy at the same time so I could monitor HDD temperatures during the cloning process. Reflect would get part way through the clone and I would get a BSOD. After that happened a couple of times, I tried running the clone with Speccy turned off and that solved the problem. Since then, I avoid running any other software while cloning and haven't had any more problems.

I wish Reflect had a provision to verify clones like it does for images. You can set MR to automatically verify an image immediately after making the image. There is a setting in Reflect when cloning, under Advanced Options, for Intelligent Sector cloning which also includes a selection to verify the original file system is error free before the clone begins. I use that and, other than the aforementioned issue, never had a problem with my clones.

Thank you and I'll look into that. I've never done images and have been having fun making them and then using the WinPE USB bootable drive to test. So far so good. But I will or still may try cloning some extra drives just to have more back up.

 

[kado897]

Well, since this is my post..... I am going to jack it. Got the software and made a clone of one of computers. This is in case I loose info or have a H/D problem.
I am also watching and reading about the "image" process. My question is: when one makes a backup disc...either win or Linux, I don't think it necessary to make one each time an image is made.................HUH? Or will this be necessary for each computer and each time?

It is not necessary to make the DVD each time. You only need to make a new DVD with a new version of Macrium and then only if the release notes indicate a change to the bootable media.

 

[GeneO]

I have not responded to any of the posts........as of yet. Still reading a lot about back up programs. BUT at this point I can see that I will give Macrium Reflect a try (the free version first). It's just like many others, I am old school and have a hard time believing a software can work within the O/S to back up a H/D. To boot to DOS and then mirror one H/D to another was always the way. Change is hard
But thank you all for the input.

I have done dozens of restores from Macrium Reflect, never a problem. Reflect and other backup software take a snapshot of the disk using shadow copying to ensure that they get a consistent point-in-time image of the disk. Once a snapshot is taken, overwrites and new data are written to new disk blocks, keeping the old data blocks at the time of the snapshot to use for the backup - the OS points to the new blocks, the backup to the old. When the backup completes, the shadow copy is deleted which frees any old obsoleted blocks kept for the backup. It works well.

 

[GeneO]

The only time I had a problem with cloning with Macrium Reflect was when I was running Speccy at the same time so I could monitor HDD temperatures during the cloning process. Reflect would get part way through the clone and I would get a BSOD. After that happened a couple of times, I tried running the clone with Speccy turned off and that solved the problem. Since then, I avoid running any other software while cloning and haven't had any more problems.

I wish Reflect had a provision to verify clones like it does for images. You can set MR to automatically verify an image immediately after making the image. There is a setting in Reflect when cloning, under Advanced Options, for Intelligent Sector cloning which also includes a selection to verify the original file system is error free before the clone begins. I use that and, other than the aforementioned issue, never had a problem with my clones.

MR creates a checksum from an image file while the image is being created. Verifying an image consists of reading the whole image back to recalculate the checksum, and comparing it to the original. You can do this with an image because the file is immutable. You really can't consistently do this with a clone because the clone is a disk whose contents can be modified.

 

[Lady Fitzgerald]

The only time I had a problem with cloning with Macrium Reflect was when I was running Speccy at the same time so I could monitor HDD temperatures during the cloning process. Reflect would get part way through the clone and I would get a BSOD. After that happened a couple of times, I tried running the clone with Speccy turned off and that solved the problem. Since then, I avoid running any other software while cloning and haven't had any more problems.

I wish Reflect had a provision to verify clones like it does for images. You can set MR to automatically verify an image immediately after making the image. There is a setting in Reflect when cloning, under Advanced Options, for Intelligent Sector cloning which also includes a selection to verify the original file system is error free before the clone begins. I use that and, other than the aforementioned issue, never had a problem with my clones.

MR creates a checksum from an image file while the image is being created. Verifying an image consists of reading the whole image back to recalculate the checksum, and comparing it to the original. You can do this with an image because the file is immutable. You really can't consistently do this with a clone because the clone is a disk whose contents can be modified.

The image is immutable but the original isn't. I would think the danger would work both ways.