How do you backup your files?

[tranglos]

What if... You house burns ? 

-Armando (April 25, 2007, 08:10 PM)

I'm using Backup4All to copy the really critical stuff (encrypted) via FTP to my account on Dreamhost, which runs my website. I wish I could back up more that way, but at 30 kb/s upload rate it's pretty slow going.

[Armando]

What if... You house burns ? 

-Armando (April 25, 2007, 08:10 PM)

I'm using Backup4All to copy the really critical stuff (encrypted) via FTP to my account on Dreamhost, which runs my website. I wish I could back up more that way, but at 30 kb/s upload rate it's pretty slow going.

-tranglos (April 25, 2007, 09:25 PM)

To overcome the "burning" factor, I always have at least 1 HD somewhere else.

[Clive]

I'm using File Hamster to a rack mounted HDD (I remove it and take it with me when the house is unattended) and XX Clone to a HDD in a box which I keep off site and update monthly i.e. do a new clone. I use XX Clone specifically as it will let you clone to a smaller drive (assuming the source drive's contents aren't greater than the drive being used as the clone) this is handy as my back up drives are just ones which have been superseded as I've upgraded the C drive.
I'm pretty much at the novice end of the scale here and so this question may seem a little dumb/naive. Over Easter the MoBo on my PC died on me - was I glad of those back ups as I had to do a clean install with the new MoBo.
So the question is this - is there an easy way to re-install all your programs onto the formatted C drive? I naivley thought it was done from the clone, but it wouldn't work so either I was just wrong in that assumption or I was right, but not doing the process correctly.

[Armando]

Over Easter the MoBo on my PC died on me - was I glad of those back ups as I had to do a clean install with the new MoBo.
So the question is this - is there an easy way to re-install all your programs onto the formatted C drive? I naivley thought it was done from the clone, but it wouldn't work so either I was just wrong in that assumption or I was right, but not doing the process correctly.

-Clive (April 25, 2007, 09:56 PM)

There might be options to achieve what you tried to do, but the only two I know are provided by Acronis True Image ("universal restore"), and Symantec  (I wonder if anybody had experiences regarding Acronis' Universal Restore).

Anyway, apart from these solutions, I think it would be fairly complicated to use your previous Windows Images with a new MoBo (problems with finding and installing the appropriate drivers, hard disk controllers, etc.). But I'm curious about what the experts here would say...

[Carol Haynes]

I made the mistake of upgrading from Acronis TrueImage Home to the Workstation with Universal Restore precisely for this reason.

In my experience Universal Restore is crap and a waste of time. I have not succeeded in restoring an image with universal restore and have it boot up. The best I have achieved is that it gets into a start/reboot cycle before Windows passes control to the user.

I have tried this a number of times with different hardware as I assumed my first image was not ideal (it was an old install of windows and was showing signs of developing problems). I then tried doing the same thing with a new installation with different motherboards (both AMD Athlon64 based but with different mobo chipsets). I had absolutely no success with this even though this is precisely what Universal Restore is supposed to be designed to do.

If you are not using a server with multiple machines to administer centrally then the TrueImage Workstation edition offers nothing over and above the Home Ed. and is not worth the upgrade price - plus with the Workstation version you have to pay an annual fee to download updates.

[Darwin]

I made the mistake of upgrading from Acronis TrueImage Home to the Workstation with Universal Restore precisely for this reason...If you are not using a server with multiple machines to administer centrally then the TrueImage Workstation edition offers nothing over and above the Home Ed. and is not worth the upgrade price - plus with the Workstation version you have to pay an annual fee to download updates.

-Carol Haynes (April 26, 2007, 04:44 AM)

I'm in the same boat - I took advantage of what appeared to be a great deal to upgrade and can't see that it was really worth it (NB I haven't had occasion to actually TRY Universal Restore, but Carol's comments mirror those posted liberally on the Acronis forum). I wish I'd saved the price of the upgrade from Home to Workstation and Universal Restore and applied it to upgrading to Home version 10 Especially as they keep contacting me to extend my subscription for a reasonable price (far less than the cost of an upgrade from Home 9 to 10) but NOTHING ever comes of it. I've had two phone calls with the promise of a sales rep contacting me via e-mail to confirm the quote ($17.95 US for Workstation w/o UR), I reply to the e-mail (which asks only for info about which Acronis products I want the quote for - WTF? didn't I just do that on the phone?) - and then a yawning black hole of nothing punctuated only by my intermittent e-mails back to the rep asking for an update and their promise to get right back to me, which never happens. We're talking about a timescale of months here, not days or even weeks. Months. I gave up playing that game after dealing with the second rep and have ignored the second phone call, though I did blast the poor fellow making the call. Didn't seem to light a fire under anyone in sales at Acronis, though...

The only good thing is that Universal Restore cost me nothing... but it appears that you get what you pay for in this case!

[gjehle]

What if... You house burns ? 

-Armando (April 25, 2007, 08:10 PM)

if my house burns i have lost more important stuff than a handful of data