best backup software with USB external hard drives?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Joe
  • Start date Start date
J

Joe

I looked at USB hard drives at Best Buy the other day- I plan on buying a 1
TB drive. The backup software all seems similar at least from what the boxes
say.

or would it be better to use third party software like Acronis?

My PC has Vista- the backup software with that is extremely minimal.
Joe
 
Joe said:
I looked at USB hard drives at Best Buy the other day- I plan on buying a 1
TB drive. The backup software all seems similar at least from what the boxes
say.
Click to expand...
or would it be better to use third party software like Acronis?
Click to expand...
My PC has Vista- the backup software with that is extremely minimal.
Joe
Click to expand...

It depends on your needs. The backup software coming with these things may
negatively surprise you, better not depend on it.

You can either do something using basic commands like robocopy, rsync,
etc., as Lynn suggests.

Or you buy a full-fleged backup software. If you are going to, a lot
of the available commercial backup software options have fundamental
flaws. TrueImage is one of the few that does well in all regards.

My personal solution is to backup Win 7 with Linux, using ntfscopy
for the NTFS system partition and plain GNU tar for the FAT32
data partitions.

Arno
 
Joe said:
I looked at USB hard drives at Best Buy the other day- I plan on
buying a 1 TB drive. The backup software all seems similar at least
from what the boxes say.
Click to expand...
or would it be better to use third party software like Acronis?
Click to expand...

Thats what I prefer, mainly because it give you more capability.
 
I looked at USB hard drives at Best Buy the other day- I plan on buying
a 1 TB drive. The backup software all seems similar at least from what
the boxes say.
Click to expand...

I know where my data is. So I only use drag-and-drop to copy files, then
use TreeComp to verify by content!
 
I use the Windows 7 backup, which I hear is a quantum leap better than
anything that came with Windows before, but I have no idea, as I never
used any of the stuff that came in Windows before. I hear one of my
systems has failed in Canada. I have backed it up with the Windows 7
backup, so once I'm back in Canada I'll know how good it is at restore.
Yeesh, why do these things always happen when you're gone?!
Click to expand...

Better entertainment value that way ;-)

Seriously, you absolutely need to test the full restore procedure
before you need it.

Arno
 
One advantage of Acronis is the image you can get, then use that to
rebuild the system, with the overhead of all the extra stuff imaged.
PCB would require a reload of the OS and then a restore to just get your
data.
Click to expand...

Does it compress & burn a disk image into a bootable recovery DVD?
 
Man-wai Chang to The Door (33600bps) said:
Does it compress & burn a disk image into a bootable recovery DVD?
Click to expand...

You can do that, but its generally better to use a bootable
recovery CD that uses the image off an external hard drive
instead. Its a lot quicker to produce that sort of image.
 
I looked at USB hard drives at Best Buy the other day- I plan on buying
a 1 TB drive. The backup software all seems similar at least from what
the boxes say.

or would it be better to use third party software like Acronis?

My PC has Vista- the backup software with that is extremely minimal.
Joe
Click to expand...
True Image has worked well for me. It's fast compared to some simple
ones I've tried. I guess the only disadvantage is the backup is in a
proprietary format.
 
On 6/15/2010 3:41 PM, Joe wrote:> I looked at USB hard drives at Best Buythe other day- I plan on buying



True Image has worked well for me. It's fast compared to some simple
ones I've tried. I guess the only disadvantage is the backup is in a
proprietary format.
Click to expand...

As an additional backup, do investigate online systems. Some are
fully automatic, some unlimited space, all take your data offsite. It
also will cope with power surges, fire, theft etc. Some people are
concerned about security, but for most users it is not critical. The
best solution my mind is both local, as you are looking at, and online
backup.

With any backup, it wants to be as automatic as possible, I often get
customers who say - I haven't done a back up for several weeks.

Michael
www.cnwrecovery.com
 
Better entertainment value that way ;-)

Seriously, you absolutely need to test the full restore procedure
before you need it.
Click to expand...

Problem is testing a full restore of the system disk is in itself a
dangerous procedure. Better to do it when you got nothing left to lose.

Yousuf Khan
 
Problem is testing a full restore of the system disk is in itself a
dangerous procedure. Better to do it when you got nothing left to lose.
Click to expand...

The this "full restore" is not a usable backup system.

If you can't test it, you can't be sure it works properly, and you can't
rely on it.

Full system backup and restores can sometimes be useful - as you say,
when you've nothing left to lose it's worth a try. But it is not a
substitute for a proper backup of your data with a system that you know
works because you have tested it.
 
True Image has worked well for me. It's fast compared to some simple
ones I've tried. I guess the only disadvantage is the backup is in a
proprietary format.
Click to expand...


The documentation for the full TI2010 says it has a tool to convert
TI's .tib files to the file format used by Windows 7's backup/restore
tool.
 
The this "full restore" is not a usable backup system.

If you can't test it, you can't be sure it works properly, and you can't
rely on it.
Click to expand...

I use bootitng, a partition and boot manager. I limit my system
partitions to 20-30 gigs. I say partitions because there are >1. I have
my data on volumes in an extended partition. And I leave some free space
for testing.

So, if I want to test restoring an image of the main system partition,
I'll just restore it to free space, make a boot item for it including
the data partitions I want, and boot it up.

Too, I test new software on copies of the main partition to see if it
will harm it.


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Thanks, robots.
 
I use bootitng, a partition and boot manager. I limit my system
partitions to 20-30 gigs. I say partitions because there are >1. I have
my data on volumes in an extended partition. And I leave some free space
for testing.

So, if I want to test restoring an image of the main system partition,
I'll just restore it to free space, make a boot item for it including
the data partitions I want, and boot it up.

Too, I test new software on copies of the main partition to see if it
will harm it.
Click to expand...

If you can test the restore, and /have/ tested it, then it's fine for a
backup.
 
Well, my concern with Acronis is that- I could figure out how to run it to
make backups and create an image- but if my drive crashes and I need to do a
restore- that's when I'm likely to freak out.

Can it restore an image easily to a larger drive of a different brand? Since
the image would contain the boot sector which has info about the old drive-
if I install the image to a new drive, what happens then? Will the new drive
boot up properly?

I wish I had a lot of old computers to just experiment with.

Years ago I did a fair amount of "geek work" but I've forgotten most of it-
and this stuff evolves so quickly I've lost my confidence.

Joe
 
Joe said:
Well, my concern with Acronis is that- I could figure out how to run it
to make backups and create an image- but if my drive crashes and I need
to do a restore- that's when I'm likely to freak out.

Can it restore an image easily to a larger drive of a different brand?
Since the image would contain the boot sector which has info about the
old drive- if I install the image to a new drive, what happens then?
Will the new drive boot up properly?

I wish I had a lot of old computers to just experiment with.

Years ago I did a fair amount of "geek work" but I've forgotten most of
it- and this stuff evolves so quickly I've lost my confidence.

Joe
Click to expand...

Yes, TI works fine. I've backed up from a large HD and restored to
a small HD, and I've backed up from a small HD and restored to a
large HD. And, TI does not care about the HD brand at all.

I can't speak to IDE, since my experience with TI is only with SATA.
 
Problem is testing a full restore of the system disk is in itself a
dangerous procedure. Better to do it when you got nothing left to lose.
Click to expand...

Well, no. But you are right about this being potentially dangerous.
The way to remove the danger is to remove all disks from the
system and do the restore test on a spare disk.

Arno
 
Yousuf Khan wrote
Arno wrote
Click to expand...
Problem is testing a full restore of the system disk is in itself a
dangerous procedure. Better to do it when you got nothing left to lose.
Click to expand...

Its actually better to try it with an extra drive you can use for the test.

Hard drives are now so cheap that it doesnt cost much to go that route.
 
Joe said:
Well, my concern with Acronis is that- I could figure out how to run
it to make backups and create an image- but if my drive crashes and I
need to do a restore- that's when I'm likely to freak out.
Click to expand...
Can it restore an image easily to a larger drive of a different brand?
Click to expand...

Yes, completely effortlessly in fact.
Since the image would contain the boot sector which has info
about the old drive- if I install the image to a new drive, what
happens then? Will the new drive boot up properly?
Yes.

I wish I had a lot of old computers to just experiment with.
Click to expand...

You just need one to experiment with, not a lot.
Years ago I did a fair amount of "geek work" but I've forgotten most of it- and this stuff evolves so quickly I've
lost my confidence.
Click to expand...

Then get another system and experiment with that.
 
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