how to backup my system

[Eric]

Hi, I apologize for the newbie questions. I have a laptop with Win XP
and just one big partition. I would like to create an image and save
it on an external drive. For a 25 GB disk occupancy, how big will the
image be?

I would later like to do regular incremental backups, which brings me
to more questions:

1. Can I do incremental backups with Norton Ghost?
2. Would you recommend 10.0 or the 2003 version of Norton Ghost?
3. To do incremental backups, would it be better to first create two
partitions, one for the system and the other for the data?
4. Symantec offers two home products, Ghost and ¨Save and Restore¨.
Which one fits my needs?

Thanks a lot.

 

[Rod Speed]

I apologize for the newbie questions. I have a laptop with Win XP and
just one big partition. I would like to create an image and save it on an
external drive. For a 25 GB disk occupancy, how big will the image be?

Depends on how compressible the data is. Much of a modern OS isnt
very compressible, but most of the stuff you have created yourself is.

It isnt uncommon to be less than half of the space used on the hard drive.

I would later like to do regular incremental backups,
which brings me to more questions:

1. Can I do incremental backups with Norton Ghost?

With 10, not with 2003.

2. Would you recommend 10.0 or the 2003 version of Norton Ghost?

Neither, True Image is much better.

3. To do incremental backups, would it be better to first create
two partitions, one for the system and the other for the data?

No, there is less need for separate partitions with incremental backups.

4. Symantec offers two home products, Ghost and ¨Save and Restore¨.
Which one fits my needs?

True Image is much better than both and cheaper too.

 

[Eric]

Thanks for the reply. When you say ¨there is less need for separate
partitions¨ what do you mean? Less than before? I thought that with a
separate partition for the data I could just do frequent incremental
backup of the data, and backup an image of the system partition less
frequently. Isn´t this correct?

 

[Eric]

ps.
Norton Ghost $69.9
Norton Save and Restore $49.9
Acronis True Image $49.9

 

[Bob Willard]

Hi, I apologize for the newbie questions. I have a laptop with Win XP
and just one big partition. I would like to create an image and save
it on an external drive. For a 25 GB disk occupancy, how big will the
image be?

I would later like to do regular incremental backups, which brings me
to more questions:

1. Can I do incremental backups with Norton Ghost?
2. Would you recommend 10.0 or the 2003 version of Norton Ghost?
3. To do incremental backups, would it be better to first create two
partitions, one for the system and the other for the data?
4. Symantec offers two home products, Ghost and ¨Save and Restore¨.
Which one fits my needs?

Thanks a lot.

Don't count on compression for much. I used to estimate backup space based
on the rather simplistic rule of thumb that code did not compress at all
and that data would compress by half; those rules are outdated for most
home PCs, due to the proliferation of audio/video/still files that do not
compress at all: code still does not compress much, while .JPGs and the like
may even grow slightly using standard compression algorithms.

 

[Rod Speed]

Thanks for the reply. When you say ¨there is less need for
separate partitions¨ what do you mean? Less than before?

Less need with incremental backups instead of full image backups.

With a single partition for everything, doing incremental backups
just writes the new stuff to the new backup file, no real need to
separate to the system from the data partition with incrementals.

Even if you do a quick safety image before doing any
updates in case the update turns your system into a
steaming turd and the system restore cant reverse that.

I thought that with a separate partition for the data I could just
do frequent incremental backup of the data, and backup an
image of the system partition less frequently. Isn´t this correct?

Unfortunately its more complicated than that with default configs.
XP keeps quite a bit of stuff that most want backed up in the
system partition, particularly email and updates.

Norton Ghost $69.9
Norton Save and Restore $49.9
Acronis True Image $49.9

TI can be a lot cheaper than that, use pricewatch etc.

 

[Jeff H]

ps.
Norton Ghost $69.9
Norton Save and Restore $49.9
Acronis True Image $49.9
Eric,

Here's Acronis TrueImage10 Home for $30+S/H:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16832200003

Jeff

P.S. Based on experience, if you don't/can't get ATI 10 to run from Windows,
run it from the bootable Recovery CD. FWIW I've been running ATI since
version 6. Recently I bought two copies of 10 Home for my two machines.
It runs fine from w/i XP on one machine, but will not run w/i XP on the
other.
If I run it from the CD all's well.

 

[Rod Speed]

Here's Acronis TrueImage10 Home for $30+S/H:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16832200003

Jeff

P.S. Based on experience, if you don't/can't get ATI 10 to run from
Windows, run it from the bootable Recovery CD. FWIW I've been
running ATI since version 6. Recently I bought two copies of 10 Home
for my two machines. It runs fine from w/i XP on one machine, but will not run w/i XP on
the other.
If I run it from the CD all's well.

Try a later build from the Acronis web site. Acronis does tend
to release stuff a bit early and fix it with later builds quite quickly.

 

[supizh2]

P.S. Based on experience, if you don't/can't get ATI 10 to run from Windows,
run it from the bootable Recovery CD. FWIW I've been running ATI since
version 6. Recently I bought two copies of 10 Home for my two machines.
It runs fine from w/i XP on one machine, but will not run w/i XP on the
other.
If I run it from the CD all's well.

Hi all,

I had same troubles with Acronis TI. It doesn't recognize my RAID-5
correctly and it doesn't recognize it from recovery CD neither. Trying
to ask Acronis support for help, but they can't say anything clear to
understand. It was about 3 years ago, but it was enough for me until
now! That's why I was looking for an alternative and rest my gaze on
Paragon products. For now I use Paragon Drive Backup 8.5 under Windows
Vista and have no troubles. It is not expensive (less than 50$) like
Acronis TI, but it works with my hardware perfectly!
In any case you may download trial version of Paragon DB here
http://drive-backup.com/
and try it on your hardware.