Backup Utility Software

[procket52]

I have a Western Digital External Hard Disk (80GB). Would like to be able to find software (preferably free or shareware) that would allow me to schedule a full fackup of my laptop's hard drve wherein I could just walk away and return perhaps a few hrs later and the deed is done. I have read reviews on Norton's Ghost etc. but was just curious if anyone has had good experience with any other available applications. Thanks very much.

[Fruss Tray Ted]

How about Western Digital's backup utility software available at their website?

[Sylvander]

I use Hewlett Packards' version of "Simple Backup".
I don't know what the latest version of that is, Possibly "Backup My PC" is close, but it doesn't make a bootable CD to run the recovery program from, the program runs from the HDD.

With "Simple Backup" you can make either a "Full System Backup" or a "Custom Backup" from within Windows, onto CD-RW disks.
Then you restore one of the backups using a DOS program run from the "Disaster Recovery diskettes".

I was investigating a program named "Paragon Drive Backup" which looked good.
It offers:
1. Backup to CD & DVD & other removable media, external storage, and local partitions.
2. Scheduled unattended backups.
3.Bootable recovery CD to restore the system, applications, data, all together or separately when disaster strikes.
4. Free to try, $50 to buy.

[jlreich]

I was investigating a program named "Paragon Drive Backup" which looked good.
It offers:
1. Backup to CD & DVD & other removable media, external storage, and local partitions.
2. Scheduled unattended backups.
3.Bootable recovery CD to restore the system, applications, data, all together or separately when disaster strikes.
4. Free to try, $50 to buy.

Hey Sylvander.

I use Paragons 7tools 2004. It comes with a partition manager (which is why I bought it), boot manager, ISO burner to make recovery/bootable disks ect... I needed a PM when I bought my external HDD(for backups) but I didn't want to put out $70 for Drive Image or Partition Magic. Paragon was only $30. :) I have not had any problems with it after two or three months.

I use it to copy HDD's for backups. It doesn't have any scheduling capabilities. But I like to make backups manually and then disconnect the drive anyway.

Only problem is that I don't have anything to compare it with since I have not used any of the other PM's. I can only say it has worked well for me. If you don't need to have a scheduled backup, I think it will do everything you need.

No one else around here has used Paragon as far as I have noticed, so I thought I would give some info on them.

here (http://www.7tools.de/pm/index.htm) is the link for the 2005 version. Still only $30. Much better than $70 for Ghost or Drive Image.

[Sylvander]

I was suggesting to my son that he urgently set up a system of backup, so was trying to find a good program to recommend.
Here were the statistics I found:
Program Name_________Downloads__Satisfied
"Backup My PC"__________304,000______48%
"Acronis True Image"______49,000_______81%
"Paragon Drive Backup"____19,000_______No Data

Although there was no personal reviews, there had been quite a number of downloads.
When I looked at the site it seemed very professional.
It had only recently been produced, was right up-to-date, offered the bootable CD and did everything I'd expect.
What bothered me about "Backup My PC" was that to run the recovery program you hit a certain key combination at startup and the program loaded from the HDD.
But what if the reason a restoration was needed was because the HDD was broken? Surely it would be impossible to restore at all!

It's interesting to hear that at least one persons experience with Paragon backs up my impression of it.
This is a German company, am I correct?
Is it as slick and professional as it looked?

[procket52]

Ted, thank you for the advice. Unfortunately, the only software at Western's web site is a product called Retrospect Express and it would appear that it ships with a specific hard drive (Dual Option) and is on a CD. Evidently this specific hard drive (dual option) has a button on the drive that one pushes and off goes the backup. I could not find anything downloadable from their site that might help me with my current USB 2.0 drive. I have e-mailed Western re my question so will see what pops. Regards.

[jlreich]

Sylvander, yes I do believe it is a German company. I just downloaded some updates for my version, so support seems to good so far. They also seem to have a good knowledge base in their support section.

Like I said, since I have nothing else to compare it with, I can't say it's the best thing around or anything like that. They do have free trials to download. Of course the apply button does not work with the free trial. But you can see if it will do what you need it to.


procket52, there are free programs out there for copying HDD, but I don't think any of them support USB 2.0 or unattended scheduled backups. :( If I am wrong someone will correct me. You will probably have to buy Ghost, Drive Image or the above mentioned Paragon Drive Backup(all support USB 2.0 and unattended scheduled backups). Ghost and Drive Image are well known and have a good reputation. Paragon is fairly new to the scene. There are others less known programs as well.

[Fruss Tray Ted]

Sorry,
I missed the fact you want to backup a laptop. What is it? Maybe the manufacturer has a program to download.

Western Digital has a program called Data Lifeguard and the quote below is from This page (http://support.wdc.com/dlg/facts.asp).

Data Lifeguard Tools Software Utilities

* Easily partitions and formats the new hard drive.
* Overcomes operating system and BIOS limitations.
* Quickly and safely copies the contents of the existing hard drive onto the new hard drive.
* Tests drive for Ultra ATA compatibility.
* Can quickly diagnose and repair many drive problems that may arise.

I assume it even makes the new drive bootable.

[procket52]

Sorry,
I missed the fact you want to backup a laptop. What is it? Maybe the manufacturer has a program to download.

Western Digital has a program called Data Lifeguard and the quote below is from This page (http://support.wdc.com/dlg/facts.asp).



I assume it even makes the new drive bootable.


Ted, thanks again for further update. I did download the Data Lifeguard and it looks like it may be a go. As always I appreciate the great help from the PC Guide Forum. Sylvander, thank you also.

[Sylvander]

I have used the "EZ-Install" program [that's included on the self booting "Data Lifeguard" floppy disk] to copy one HDD to another.
I have the disk before me now and have noted on it that it partitions & formats a drive and copies one to the other.
It makes "active" Primary Partitions on both drives and therefore both are bootable.

Vic 970 routinely uses this zero cost method.
It does have the disadvantage that you must physically replace one HDD with the backup HDD.
Either that, or backup the master HDD to the slave HDD, and then switch master/slave jumpers to make the backup the master when you need to put the backup in place.

Send him a PM and ask him about it.

[Paul Komski]

BING or BootIt-NG (http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/bootitng.html) can be used as boot manager, image maker and partition manager and the full version can be tried out for free and is not a massive download; the retail cost is about $35. It has worked very reliably for me.

How to do what you want depends on whether you want to back up the whole drive as an image file or as a clone or whether you want to automatically make backups of specified files and folders. DataKeeper (comes with Partition Magic) is a real good program for the latter since it can make automatic backups (including incremental backups as files are updated) on the fly. It can do this to a primary and a secondary location which would suit the use of a removable HDD, which would be the primary backup. When not connected the backups would continue to the secondary location on the fixed disk and be transferred across once the external drive is re-connected.

[James_12]

Hi,

I am using "IBackup" (http://www.ibackup.com/). It is secure and supports mirroring of files/ folders to maintain the directory structure, which has worked great for me and the best part is if you delete the data from your desktop, IBackup retains the backed up data for the life of the account unless you specifically delete it from your IBackup account.
Their IBackup for windows is really fast and reliable.
Price, privacy and control are other reasons why i recommend IBackup.

James

[Alister]

You may want to try syncback. It's free, but I haven't tried it myself.
You can find it here
http://www.snapfiles.com/get/SyncBack.html

[netcracker]

As i know one of the favorite advisor in software is CNET.Resently CNET reviewed buckup utilities (http://http://www.acroniscom/homecomputing/products/trueimage/ ) and you can see some of them

http://reviews.cnetcom/Acronis_True_Image...80.html?tag=tab
^it's Acronis product,but you can choose another one.
Also there a table of comparison of different products;)

[Paul Komski]

netcracker
You have linked to Acronis products in every or nearly every of your 7 posts since joining here. What is your vested interest - or is this just overenthusiasm?

[netcracker]

It's kinda hard question;)
It will be the first post without Acronis linking,but game linknig

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/rallen/hapland.swf

Are you smart enough?Just joking.If you have enough time you succed in this game;)

[pop pop]

Something's fishy here. A dodgy answer and isn't this thread about backup utilities?

[PrntRhd]

It's kinda hard question
Actually kinda easy question.

[Paleo Pete]

I assume it even makes the new drive bootable.

Yep, I've used it several times. Most hard drive manufacturers have similar software that transfers all data from an old drive to their new one and will copy all data to the new drive, including a bootable, working Windows installation. Just did one on my own Win98 business machine a couple of weeks ago in fact, copied an old 2GB drive to a much newer 20GB WD drive, had to manually replace the registry before booting into Windows due to corruption caused by failing older drive, (which I already knew about and was the reason for the swap), it still works perfect.

Syncback:

I've tried it out along with 3 or 4 other freeware backup utilities, Syncback is the one I chose for a couple of customers that needed low cost backup software. It works well, has loads of configuration options and will run an automatic scheduled backup once a "profile" is set up. It will also shut down any running programs you specify in the configuration before it starts the backup, which is a handy feature. Full or incremental, ignore certain files, and plenty other options. Small download, seems to be reliable, does what it says it will do and both Adaware and Spybot found zero on an already clean win98 machine after installing it. That was the first thing I tested. Will use floppy, zip drive or hard drive for destination, seems like I remember a couple of other options, (tape drive and maybe a network drive I think) but can't remember what they were. I don't think it will automatically burn a CD but you can manually burn the destination folder to CD later.

Overall, I like it but the scope of configuration options might be confusing to someone not very familiar with computers in general. For folks like the techs looking in on this thread, it should pose no problems. Expert mode has a lot of options, basic has most everything needed to set up a good unattended backup routine.

One other note, on NT based systems, maybe win9x too, task scheduler is used to schedule backups and it will fail to run if the administrator password is not entered into the program's scheduling configuration. Read the help file on scheduled backups, it explains it better than I can, and I can't remember all the details. Don't have a copy up and running close at hand to check the details on. READ the help file...

[Sylvander]

Would this restore the C: partition when the OS won't boot?

And will it back up to an external IDE HDD in a housing connected using USB2?
And restore a backup held there [when the OS won't boot]?

[Alister]

As i know one of the favorite advisor in software is CNET.Resently CNET reviewed buckup utilities (http://http://www.acroniscom/homecomputing/products/trueimage/ ) and you can see some of them

http://reviews.cnetcom/Acronis_True_Image...80.html?tag=tab
^it's Acronis product,but you can choose another one.
Also there a table of comparison of different products;)

Since you seem to know True image, I wonder if it can restore files and folders of your choice from the image backup instead of restoring the full image?

[PrntRhd]

Alister,
Acronis True Image is a imaging product more suited to complete restoration of partitions than backup of specific folders. It also is approx $49.99 per PC, from what I have seen.
Pete's recommendation of SyncBack may be more suitable for selected files.

Alister, also please do not fill in the Thread title box when replying to posts, just leave it blank. Only use it when starting a new issue (thread).

Netcracker's reply may have had more to do with a possible afilliate status than anything else, he was banned for spamming in 9 of 10 posts, and double spamming in the one after he missed one. :eek: The PC Guide discussion forums do not support buying and selling products in forum posts without permission and spamming is not allowed at all.

[pop pop]

I can vouch for Syncback. I use it. It is great for file and folder type backups, manual or scheduled. Very versatile. Has a nice "dry run" type feature where you can set up your backup filters, etc and make sure it works the way you want before you really run/schedule it.

[Paul Komski]

True image, I wonder if it can restore files and folders of your choice from the image backup instead of restoring the full image
Yes - "After a system crash you can restore the entire system or simply replace lost files and folders from your disk backup" from http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/products/trueimage/

PowerQuest's Drive Image allowed you to do the same thing using an ancillary utility called Disk Explorer but that technology now seems to have been incorporated into Norton Ghost 9.0 from http://www.symantec.com/sabu/ghost/ghost_personal/ In fact Drive Image 7/2002 itself, may no longer be available as such.

[mike2002]

Genie Backup came out top in one test (can't remember who it was).
Re: Acronis; on occasions I've had excellent results with this, disastrous on others. The first install wouldn't write to CD-R (only to CD-RW). Acronis advised me to upgrade to the latest 'build'. This time it was the opposite; for some reason it would only backup to CD-R, but I was happy with this. I did a few complete system restores in under 10 minutes - wow, the whole system restored while you make a coffee!
This was using just a single disc, the problem arose after I had installed more and more programs, and it required 2 disks. It did the backup, but failed to restore it. First it asked for CD1, then rejected it and wanted CD2, and vice-versa.
It makes me laugh when you you insert a CD and the program (Nero does it as well), immediately ejects it and asks you to put the CD in again!
But, to be fair to Acronis - when it DOES work it's brilliant.

[Sylvander]

Timing is important when you restore from CD's.
When I'm asked to supply a disk, I put it in the drawer, close it and watch the flashing LED [on the CD drive] until the flashing stops, and only then hit "Enter".
The backup program then tries to read the CD, succeeds because the CD has been registered as present, and continues with the procedure.
If the sequence of events is wrong you get all kinds of "hiccups".

[pc_addicted]

nevertheless ATI is imaging much faster than others and you can schedulued it as you want too. It has convinient interface like Win Xp has. It's great that there are a lot of Backup utilities, cause you can choose the utility you want, need, and like :)
ATI is my choice.

[Alister]

They claim that a full system restore is possible including the installed programs.Programs these days use a technology called "Registering class interfaces". This technology allows a program to work properly if it is properly installed; Meaning that if you back the whole system up and then restore, the program will most probably not work. Has anyone actually tried this? Do the programs work after a complete restore?

[Sylvander]

"They claim that a full system restore is possible including the installed programs."
And it's true. :)

"Has anyone actually tried this?"
I do it all the time.

"Do the programs work after a complete restore?"
They most certainly do!
I'd be shocked if they didn't.
I routinely and regularly "jump back" to a previously saved software setup to fix this or that problem.
MY STORY
Yesterday I installed Win200Pro as an update to Win98SE on my older PC. Had trouble with the drivers for the video card and NIC, but eventually got them installed and all was looking good. Then I tried to access the [FAT32] D: drive from NTFS C: drive and "BANG", black screen & reboot, and the PC kept restarting [wouldn't boot into Windows and I didn't yet have a backup]. So I repartitioned & reformatted the Primary Master HDD and restored a [Win98 1st edition] backup of C: kept on CD-RW disks. The backup include lots of programs and configuration tweaks that I wouldn't want to lose. Now normally that would have produced a working system, but this particular backup [the only one I now have of that PC's C:] is faulty and fails to restore 4 vital files, so it won't boot. So what I did this morning was to run Win98SE "Setup.exe" to update it. That both fixed the problem of the missing files AND updated to Win98SE. I think I'll leave it in that state for the time being.

[Paul Komski]

Meaning that if you back the whole system up and then restore, the program will most probably not work. Has anyone actually tried this? Do the programs work after a complete restore?
It actually depends on how and what you restore as well as which software you are referring to. If you made a clone of the whole of the original partition and saved it as an image file, for example, then since this is effectively identical to the original one can go back "to that moment in time". On the other hand, if you boot into Windows and restore "Program Files" using a restore or backup program then any Registry entries are not going to be restored synchronously and so such software may well not work without reinstalling it.

[hannah]

IBackup:

Would like to suggest this online backup (http://wwwibackupcom) service for its reliability. We have been using it for about 6 months and think it is excellent. The data stored or backed up can be accessed from anywhere and you can share a particular file or folder with your friends or business partners.

The best part of it is the versioning feature by which you can go back to the earlier version of the same file.

[PrntRhd]

Hannah,
I hope it was enthusiasm that made you post a link to commercial product in your first post, but that generally is frowned upon here. This forum is set up to help users with PC problems, not just push product.

[bruder]

I've had excellent results with PowerQuest DriveImage 7
Can make a full system backup, then boot off the PowerQuest disk and run a restore. Can also restore specific files from the drive image.

No one is using Microsoft's Backup app? I've never got it to work reliably, but I always wondered if it's user error (my fault).

[Sylvander]

"No one is using Microsoft's Backup app?"
I've used it, but like it the least for the following reasons:
1. Because it works within Windows whilst Windows is running it CANNOT backup all files; it ALWAYS skips some, therefore fails to restore all files.
2. Because it works within Windows it cannot restore if Windows fails to boot.
I always try to use a system that can restore even if Windows won't boot.