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Pre-review discussion of Backup Software

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mouser:
Next week will be Drive Imaging Tools

It will be part 1 of a 2 (or even 3) week series on backing up:
    1) Drive Imaging
    2) Incremental Backup of Documents
    3) A guide to good backup processes including 1+2 and extra info.

#2 is probably going to be the tricky one as there are so many tools for doing this..

Drive imaging (#1) is easier since there are very few of these tools (true image, drive image, and maybe 3 or 4 others).

Please help out by providing info as discussed in the other thread.

For those unclear, a Drive Imaging tool makes a complete compressed copy of your hd so that it can be restored later.
The current state of the art seems to be TrueImage and DriveImage/Ghost (now the same thing).

Minimal requirements to be considered for this award:
1) images an entire hd, including multiple partitions
2) can run while windows is still running
3) lets you explore/search/retrieve from images

so if you know of other programs that qualify, please post! (this is thing that would benefit me the most, so i don't miss a program)
and otherwise you can list your views on best/worst, and just as important if not more so, what features in a drive imaging tool you think are most important.

JeffK:
When I researched this issue I came across and eventually purchased Paragon Software's Drive Backup and also their Partition Manager.  While I don't use these programs regularly I have found them to be reliable.  Around the time I purchased them they were offering good discountsd and I suspect that they would be amenable to a request.

http://www.paragon-gmbh.com/

Acronis software is another possibility.

Jeff

nudone:
i'm just going to throw in the fact that i'm still using powerquest's drive image 2002 again, as it allows me to restore a full system drive/partition backup without having to put a boot CD in.

can this be an issue to consider whilst reviewing the other drive image software, please?

i'll stop using the 2002 version as soon as anyone can tell me of a more up to date program that doesn't require a boot CD to fully work.

here's me hoping...

JeffK:
Do you mean that you don't have to put a boot CD in even if the original system drive will not boot normally?  Or do you mean that you are avoiding putting a CD in to do a full or partial restore of a partition or a disk copntaining several partitions?

Regards,

Jeff

nudone:
er, no, not quite.

i wouldn't moan about the boot CD thing but i tend to make a lot of system backups - from the main system partition onto another drive partition.

although this isn't a daily process i still find it annoying having to rely on a boot CD to restore the system image; mainly because of the length of time it takes to boot from the CD. using drive image 2002 i can just open the program up in windows and select the image i want to restore and then let the program take over from there (rebooting the system and replacing the system partition).

that's all i want it to do. but, the current crop of drive image programs don't seem to allow for this. the programs i've tried require that you reboot using a boot CD - WHY?

on the occasion i have thoroughly destroyed my operating system and can't even boot into it then i will use a boot CD with drive image on it to carry out the recovery process.

i only keep moaning about all this as it seems we are going backwards - why has a boot CD got to be used when an older piece of software managed to do it without.

please shut me up if anyone knows of a program that will work like drive image 2002 but has the ability to do on the fly or incremental backups (the 2002 version won't).

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