Dia on 28/4/2013 at 22:10

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I use the internal Windows backup program (same for restore point) & an external hard drive. The only problem is remembering to do the backup on a regular basis. Easy to use, even if it does seem to take a lot of time to complete the backup.

Muzman on 5/5/2013 at 23:11

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Cheers

For the windows internal job, do you need the windows disk to run it and restore etc?
I'm just contemplating the worst case 'house burned down. still grabbed my backup drive" kind of scenario

heywood on 7/5/2013 at 10:08

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Four of the five tools on that list are really just disk imaging tools and not suitable for doing regular backups. Paragon Drive Backup seems to be the exception. Backup tools should be automated things that run in the background, performing incremental/differential file backups daily and full backups fortnightly or monthly. I think disk/partition imaging is an important part of a backup strategy, but imaging is a time consuming manual process that you don't need to do regularly.

I use a disk imaging tool when upgrading hard drives, and to save a baseline "clean" image once I'm done setting up and configuring a new computer. That way I'll always have a known good image to revert to if my regular backups get corrupted. The classic case of that is getting a virus/trojan/rootkit/etc. By the time you're aware you have a virus, you've likely backed it up already. If the malware is difficult to expunge and it's in your backups, you may choose to restore an older clean image and then selectively pull & scan files from your backups. So IMHO imaging is good, but it's not something you want to be doing on a regular basis because it consumes too much time and disk space. It's better to create disk images occasionally and do file backups regularly. Some tools do both.

Here are the tools I have recent experience with:
- Acronis True Image (imaging & backup)
- Clonezilla (imaging only)
- Windows System Image (imaging only)
- Windows Backup & Restore (file backup only)

I paid for Acronis True Image because it was the most flexible and could restore an image to a smaller partition than the one it was created from, which is really useful when switching from a HDD to a smaller SSD. It's also suitable as a regular backup tool, although I don't use it for that. Before I purchased Acronis, I was using Clonezilla for imaging Linux partitions and Windows System Image for Windows partitions. On restore, both require the destination drive to be the same size or larger than the source partition. Windows System Image is more convenient to use because it's accessible within Windows.

For backup, I've only used the built-in Windows Backup & Restore and the Windows Home Server backup feature. In older times, I used Windows Backup on my main desktop computer, writing to an external HDD. Then ~3 years ago I got a HP EX495 which runs Windows Home Server. All our devices now back up automatically to the server over the network. The server keeps redundant copies of all files on separate HDDs within the server storage pool (similar to RAID 1), and also backs itself up periodically to a set of external disks. I also have a copy of important data on a portable HDD at my Dad's place, so I've got an off-site backup in case my apartment ever burns down.



You don't need an original Windows disk to restore a saved system image. If you haven't done so already, burn a Windows system repair disk. You can boot from the system repair disk and initiate the restore. If your HDD dies and you don't have a saved system image to restore, you can alternatively restore a factory fresh configuration using the recovery media you burned when you first got the computer (assuming you did). Once you've restored a working system from either a system image or the recovery media, then you can restore your files from the latest backup made using Windows Backup. So a full restore is often a two-stage process using the built-in Windows features.

bikerdude on 19/5/2013 at 22:14

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I used to use ghost upto WinXP then since Win7 I've been using Acronis.

What both tools have in common and its why I use them is the ability to make bootable usb recovery stick, imaged about 20 machines at work last week.