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How do you backup your files?
nosh:
I quit on incremental backups long back. Disk space is cheaper than it has ever been and there are too many ifs and buts involved in incremental backups for me to feel secure about them. I have been using Powerquest's Drive Image (yes, it's ancient but it hasn't let me down once in all the years of frequent use) for my image backup needs. I tend to create images every month more or less and have at least 2 previous images on my HDD at all times.
BTW, is Acronis True Image worth it? I have two main doubts regarding True Image:
1. Are the 'Live Backups' the ones I create with my programs running and accessing the drives being backed up absolutely reliable?
2. Will I be able to restore from DOS without any special boot disks? With Drive Image I can boot using a Win98 boot disk and restore the drives (the images and Drive Image program files can be on removable media or a non-target partition on my HDD).
Last question - how do True Image and Symantec Ghost (which is the descendant of Drive Image) compare? Reliability is obviously my first priority, followed by functionality.
f0dder:
I like the idea of incremental backups rather than "syncing" since you'll have a per-day (or whatever) copy of any file that's been modified... instead of having "important.doc" synced to the version where your cat jumped around on the keyboard. And doing full backups every day with a backlog isn't a possibility if you have massive datasets.
Acronis does it's disk imaging very well, and it's pre-windows-boot environment is really nice (and it works, despite of being linux based ;) ) - supported NForce4 RAID, windows network shares, et cetera. Haven't tried doing a full image creation while windows is running, but it "might just work" :)
I'd choose Acronis over Ghost any day, especially considering the 'symantec' part.
nosh:
Thanks. I share your affection for Symantec too. Not many companies have to make separate clean up tools to take care of the mess their utilities leave behind. They are indeed unique! :-*
Armando:
I tend to create images every month more or less and have at least 2 previous images on my HDD at all times.
-nosh (April 25, 2007, 07:06 AM)
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just to think that I could loose more than a few days of work makes me shiver... I backup Windows once or twice a month with Acronis, but I Sync my docs and make incremental backups once or twice a day... Like f0dder said, doing a full backup everyday if you have lots of data is not even possible. Unless you'd have several terabytes available somewhere. Even then : it would take too long. Not convenient at all.
1. Are the 'Live Backups' the ones I create with my programs running and accessing the drives being backed up absolutely reliable?
-nosh (April 25, 2007, 07:06 AM)
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They were completely reliable for me. I had to restore my system several times — and different Oss — and never had a problem.
2. Will I be able to restore from DOS without any special boot disks? With Drive Image I can boot using a Win98 boot disk and restore the drives (the images and Drive Image program files can be on removable media or a non-target partition on my HDD).
-nosh (April 25, 2007, 07:06 AM)
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Restoring is very easy. Much easier than with other similar software. You might have to create a boot CD with True Image, though. Check it out.
Last question - how do True Image and Symantec Ghost (which is the descendant of Drive Image) compare? Reliability is obviously my first priority, followed by functionality.-nosh (April 25, 2007, 07:06 AM)
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There are many reviews. One is available here on DC. There's another good one by Gizmo. People usually agree to say that True image is top notch. Zaine Ridling disagrees though. He now uses one of Terabyte ( http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/ ) imaging software -- very reliable too. But Acronis always worked perfectly well for me…
gjehle:
raid1 or none :D
(i'm serious)
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