Backup software

Hi
I want to install backup and hard disc recovery software on my laptop and two PCs.

I am impressed with Acronis True Image Home 2009 but this requires a seperate license for each machine.

However, Active@Disk Image allows installation on 3 machines and is cheaper.

The OP on the laptop is Vista Home Premium, and on the PCs XP Home SP3.

What do people think of either choice?

umm, why not just use the free imaging software by Paragon? its an excellent program, and I have used it on my wife's Premium x64 machine.
Free Drive Backup Express - disk backup software

franka said:

Hi
I want to install backup and hard disc recovery software on my laptop and two PCs.

I am impressed with Acronis True Image Home 2009 but this requires a seperate license for each machine.

Click to expand...

Franka, there are oodles of backup software out there, some free as noted below, and others commercial. I used ATI2009 and it has some advantages. It's relatively fast but in contrast to the paragon literature, not that user friendly.

For example, I downloaded the manual and it's about 180 pages! Now, perhaps I'm just simple minded, but any manual that huge for a comparatively simple app is waaaay too long! Sure enough, I tried to understand it and gave up.

One plus: paragon/ATI2009 does have a very good forum where many questions are answered.

But when it comes to backups, I am anal obessive paranoid!

For me, backup programs must have three features:
1-easy to use and understand [ATI gets a C grade on this--it's confusing]
2-easy to update as needed [ATI gets another C--it goes into way too much detail on system vs incremental vs full vs something else, and the explanations are poor.
Secondly, it puts the "tib" file "someplace".
3- this is a showstopper! It MUST be easy to use when recovery is needed.

I give ATI2009 an F on this one.

After finishing all the steps, i rebooted to the ATI recovery disk, and it COULD NOT FIND THE BACKUPS MADE FIVE MINUTES EARLIER!

So, it was worthless!

After putzing for hours, and help from the acronis forum, plus tech help, I finally got it to work.

But backups must be simple to restore,. and you need to test it to ensure it actually works.

This is my grief with imaging or ghosting software. The steps you have to take to see it work are way too time consuming and frustrating.

Personally, I prefer Casper or Vice Versa Pro 2 that make file by file copies of the entire drive. No images, no ghosting, no special boot disks to get them working.

I would say the majority of users make backups, but never test them to see if they worked.

Sorry for the long post, but this subject is critical to me, and most others.

Hi

Thanks for the replies.

Thanks to you Robertpri. Your experiences are very similar to those I experienced when using PARAGON HARD DISK MANAGER 2008 some 12 months ago on XP. I too found it very hard to resurrect a disk from an image file.

I also used it recently to defrag my laptop. Halfway through it crashed my machine and I had to remount the factory setup from a recovery disc.

Thanks again for replying.

franka said:

Hi

Thanks for the replies.

Thanks to you Robertpri. Your experiences are very similar to those I experienced when using PARAGON HARD DISK MANAGER 2008 some 12 months ago on XP. I too found it very hard to resurrect a disk from an image file.

I also used it recently to defrag my laptop. Halfway through it crashed my machine and I had to remount the factory setup from a recovery disc.

Thanks again for replying.

Click to expand...

One reason backups are so critical to me, besides the obvious, is that I have created and installed backup systems to a few offices here in town. They have mission critical files, tax returns, emplyee records, cusomter databases, etc, and the loss of data is beyond a catastrophy.

So, I have installed second hard drives in every machine. Around 3 a, every one makes a file/file copy to the second drive. I have not created dual boots for the users, fearful they might screw it up.

But in a total crash, and it has happened twice] I can swap connectors and hard drive jumpers and restore in 5 minutes. I then bring a new hard drive, replace the failed C drive, copy back and have two drives again.

This is my primary complaint about backup systems and applications: they are quick to point out how important they are, as if we didn't know, but then skimp over the details of restoring the backup!

Many are just impossible to be called user-friendly.

I have zero issues with Acronis...been using it for years.
Verify images and store them on a partition that does not get defragged until you burn them to CD/DVD and it works fine...
On that note i'm currently testing Macrium Reflect...FREE.

patio said:

I have zero issues with Acronis...been using it for years.

On that note i'm currently testing Macrium Reflect...FREE.

Click to expand...

Covering my belt, I also have ATI 2009 and make backups, but since that first time when the Acronis boot disk could not find the backup file, I also backup with other methods.

Just in case...

Acronis is a time tested and good product, but I have learned to not put all my trust in one backup system.