Backup to second hard drive.

  • Thread starter Thread starter glad heart
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glad heart

Hi everyone. I've read some of the treads in this NG. Some real
quality here - thanks! I now have a second hard drive which I got for
the purpose backing up. Now I realize I need some software to make
that happen. Duh! Names like DriveImage 7, Norton Ghost, and
Drive2Drive have come up in this NG. I'd welcome a recommendation
with rationale. I'm attracted to Drive2Drive based on price. Does it
have limitations that would make another choice better? I use WinME.

Thanks a million.

Jim
 
glad said:
Hi everyone. I've read some of the treads in this NG. Some real
quality here - thanks! I now have a second hard drive which I got for
the purpose backing up. Now I realize I need some software to make
that happen. Duh! Names like DriveImage 7, Norton Ghost, and
Drive2Drive have come up in this NG. I'd welcome a recommendation
with rationale. I'm attracted to Drive2Drive based on price. Does it
have limitations that would make another choice better? I use WinME.
Click to expand...


I like Acronie True Image 7. It's $49.99, and has some great features
such as:

-Ability to image your HD without rebooting or stopping what you're doing
-Scheduled, 100% automatic backups
-Incremental backup support (rather than making a full image of the
drive, it just backs up what has changed since the last backup)
-Back up over "Network Neighborhood" (SMB)
-Linux filesystem support


I haven't used drive2drive myself, but it appears to just be a drive
cloning application? In your case, it would be a waste of your drive
if it was only used to store a mirror image of your main drive.
Imaging software would allow you to use the drive to store multiple
levels of backups along with anything else you wanted to put on it,
space permitting.

Ghost is cheap, but feature-wise it doesn't come close to TrueImage. (I
dont' believe it supports any of the above outlined features). DI7
seems to be a step in the right direction, but didn't quite do it for me.


-WD
 
Hi everyone. I've read some of the treads in this NG. Some real
quality here - thanks! I now have a second hard drive which I got for
the purpose backing up. Now I realize I need some software to make
that happen. Duh! Names like DriveImage 7, Norton Ghost, and
Drive2Drive have come up in this NG. I'd welcome a recommendation
with rationale. I'm attracted to Drive2Drive based on price. Does it
have limitations that would make another choice better? I use WinME.
Click to expand...

Havent tried it. Ghost 2003 as part of SystemWorks
Pro 2003 is dirt cheap too, particularly off ebay etc and is
much more widely used, so you're going to find assistance
with the detail a lot easier to find in newsgroups etc.

The user interface in Ghost 2003 still has some downsides
and it still does the real work at the DOS level, which has
some real downsides with more exotic types of drives
because you need a DOS driver for them, but other than
that its quite usable and damned cheap.
 
I like Acronie True Image 7. It's $49.99, and has some great features
such as:
Click to expand...

I'll second this. It's much easier for me than Ghost, which is rather
a pain in the butt to use. TI7 is extremely user friendly, both in
the initial backup and in restores. You do need to check that the
recovery disk is compatable with your hardware, like with anything.

Backup and restore from a boot CD is also very quick and easy, and
I've cloned a few laptop HDs this way.

The only downside I've seen is on a laptop that backs up over a
wireless network. I occasionally get an "unhandled exception" error
from TI7 at the scheduled backup (possibly due to the network drive
being unavailable or network glitches), at which point it just sits
there until someone notices. It's not very good at recovering from
this type of thing, or calling attention to itself for non-technical
users.



Neil Maxwell - I don't speak for my employer
 
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