What are your [PC/Windows] backup solutions?

[The Stig]

After dealing with a few clients in the past few weeks with regards to backups/data recovery I too came to realise that I might need to someday, although I rarely encounter threatening issues as I am very careful, I'm beginning to feel paranoid. Now at work it's fine because all the users work off a network drive (and we religiously tell them to do so and anything that you do should be via the network drive) which is fine as the biggest file is typically 10mb based on the work they do.

But at some occurences you get the user who shoves the work on his/her desktop (My Documents is mapped to a network drive). And then if something goes horribly wrong we can usually retrieve the file as we just take out the hard drive and retrieve the data.

Anyway, on to this, my situation has always been 1 laptop ONLY and a couple of external hard drives. My backup solution itself is just basically copying all my data (music/work/pics/the usuals) over every now and then. Not incredibly useful but it works for me as rarely anything changes, except FFXI.

However I'm now beginning to wonder that in the event of a disaster (software/Windows wise) and I can't get into Windows no matter what and as a result a reinstall/reformat of Windows would normally be much quicker than trying to solve the problem (I get the bad luck cases it seems when I fix clients machines, most of the fixes prove too tedious and it was better to backup data and reinstall).

tl;dr version

Is there a backup solution/software (I honestly haven't really used any, but only to use it to place an image on a PC, not create one. The other team does the backup solutions and they're too retarded to speak or answer me nicely...) that will allow me to take a "snap shot" of my laptop's state, then in the event of shit hitting the fan, I can easily recover some data (i.e. my POL folder...) , reinstall windows then load up an image from an external source and turn it back the way it was with all my programs/settings/data? I really dislike the idea of if it does happen to me, I have to reinstall all my apps again and such ....

And no, System Restore is not what I am looking for =p

Thanks in advance, kindly share your ideas/thoughts.

NOTE: I don't use RAID or stuff like that because of my restrictions and I'm always moving from place to place. So "buying more hard drives and RAIDing them together with my laptop" stuff won't work for me. I'm wanting a simple, manual solution as described above.

[Cephius]

The two biggest software options out there are Acronis Drive Image and Norton Ghost. I've used both, and I lean towards Acronis, but both get the job done. They do exactly what you describe - take a "snapshot" of your drive. Programs, settings, registry, everything from A-Z. If you restore one, you're basically putting the machine as it was the moment you created the image. You need a fairly large backup destination, as images range from 60-90% of the total size of the drive.

Both programs are pretty straight forward, you can set up schedule for when it runs, set compression level, and where the backup is stored. The retail packages come with CDs that you can boot off of and restore images without loading the OS should your drive become corrupted.

If you can't or don't want to do imaging, there are programs such as SyncBack that you can setup to only backup certain folders or files on a schedule you set. Program runs, copies any files you've created or modified since last run and keeps a backup archive on a separate drive. There's pretty much no compression outside of zip files, so unless you only have a few directories you want to back up, I'd just go with one of the imaging programs.

[SephYuyX]

Norton Ghost is the only thing ive ever used, and it works just fine. Saves a lot of trouble at the work place as you dont even need to install an OS to boot up the image, can all be done via dos, or whatever they call in in XP/Vista.

I dont like using images for my personal PC though. I have a minimum of 2 HDDs for each PC, one with the OS and things that get installed, and the other for all of my actual data; pictures, music, movies, etc. That Data HDD is what I keep backed up, and I just use a seperate HDD on a different PC. If my PC crashes and I need to reinstall (has only ever happened like twice), I like to completly start from the ground up, and just reinstall everything, and then just plop my data HDD in.

From a professional stand point, ghosts are wonderful, but from a personal point, I hate them. To take a good ghost you need to do it right when you have your PC fully operational, and no sooner/later, and if you do reload that ghost, your still going to lose some settings youve set after making a ghost image, and youll still need to tweak a few things. You must not take a ghost back up regularly, Im not sure why people suggest that, but youre just taking a bad ghost, and then reapplying that same bad ghost again.

A fresh ghost copy a few hours/days after a complete reinstall will not only outperform a day to day, week to week, month to month, w/e ghost copy, as that copy will have all the problems it did at that time, including any left over viruses or programs that are making the PC suck, etc.


In short..

Just keep a seperate data HDD, and when/if you do need to reinstall the OS, just format the HDD and start over, ghosting may be a lot easier, but a complete start ovr is the best.

[The Stig]

Ceph: I shall look into that. I have just brought a 1.5TB hard drive that was on offer and my hard disk is only 120gb on my laptop. I planned to keep a cycle/rotation of 2-3 images at anyone time and delete the oldest one as I go along.

However, in the event of a .... HARDWARE failure where my laptop is pretty much fucked (to the point of just throwing it in the trash) what happens to the images I create? Assuming I just want to retrieve the data off it rather than the registry/system settings (since in this case I'd just go and replace the hardware, which means the image won't really work with the new hardware unless it's 100% identical...) (and i.e, my POL folder....) it should be fine ... right?

Seph: Yeh my new hard drive is going to be my data drive too, OR I will just a smaller, seperate drive for it. because I'm not stationary in a location, I find it annoying to plug everything in as small as it is, I just get annoyed overtime, but I might just start to do that....

[Bardicrune]

Acronis True Image is what my company uses. I've used both Norton Ghost and Acronis. Acronis gets my vote. Very simple to use with a USB connected HDD.

[Cephius]

However, in the event of a .... HARDWARE failure where my laptop is pretty much fucked (to the point of just throwing it in the trash) what happens to the images I create? Assuming I just want to retrieve the data off it rather than the registry/system settings (since in this case I'd just go and replace the hardware, which means the image won't really work with the new hardware unless it's 100% identical...) (and i.e, my POL folder....) it should be fine ... right?

If you have a complete hardware failure things get a bit more sticky. I know Norton has options so you can "browse" your images, and pull data off them if needed, but I've never used this feature. I don't think Acronis comes with that option, but I've never had a use for it. (I've always been able to extract data off a HDD with a SATA/IDE to USB cable) In that case though, you could still load an image on a good hard drive. It will give you problems, since the image was taken with the hardware that was loaded on the other computer, and you might get hit with Windows De-activation bullcrap. But it should work long enough for you to extract your data, especially if you load the image on a secondary hard drive and browse it from an already-established OS.

[Mayareira]

For some reason, Norton Ghost failed to restore my drive a while ago. That was when I started looking for an alternative and Acronis worked great.

[The Stig]

Ceph: yeh back a while ago before I was more mobile, I used a SATA/IDE-USB cable to pull data off it (works like a treat). However I'm unfamiliar with laptop hard drives and their usage with SATA/IDE-USB cables. I would think that the same cable or a similar cable should exist, but I haven't looked yet. However, the partial reason I haven't looked is because it seems the laptops are extremely anal to get into....

I will look up Acronis and go ahead and buy a license (or however it comes). Haven't looked exactly yet, busy replying to this post and some other QQ e-mails about spam ... ¬_¬

[Isiolia]

Laptop SATA drives used the same connections that desktop ones do. IDE ones use an interface similar to a desktop IDE connection, except that it's smaller and includes power.

[The Stig]

Ok I am staring at the Acronis website now.

I feel retarded, there's like 100 different products.




Which is the exact one I want...? I'm staring at "Acronis® True Image Home 2009" which seems to be the one I want, but yet it seems there's other software on the website that does the same thing...?

Isiolia: I see, I will look into that as well.