So I've searched, and everything I have found says Acronis for complete image backups, which is what I want to do on my dad's office computer since the last repair guy he took it to axed the RAID array I had installed, and of course the hard drive shit the bed a few months later. And Pop is not very good with doing backups, so I need something that's fairly idiotproof.

So has the general consensus changed? Still Acronis?

11/10/2011 8:48:37 PM

Acronis is good for system images; so is ghost or a variety of other software.

I've recently moved away from the system image model. I keep an initial image from the day I purchased it for a dead hard drive; but I keep all my files on a NAS or central repository. Then I use crashplan to mirror that to my dads house. The only reason I like it is that it's free. Of the pay file backups I'm a huge fan of backblaze.

11/10/2011 8:56:36 PM

for incremental data, ntbackup.exe

11/10/2011 9:00:30 PM

fwiw, i try to stay away from RAID on consumer type machines...had more bad luck than good.

if you want images, acronis is the tits.

for raw files, i like cobian.

11/10/2011 10:10:59 PM

Unless you need offsite backup, I just recommend the built-in Windows 7 backups to an external drive. Restoring from those images couldn't be easier.

11/10/2011 10:55:01 PM

I don't have that option...we run XP on all of our machines as much out of necessity as anything...the GPS software we run is about 7 years old and won't install under 7. It's an 800 dollar upgrade to do so, and we can't justify the expense, given our current state of bidness.

11/11/2011 12:34:47 AM

I've found the built in windows back up to be mildly terrible.

Is there anything time-machine esque for windows? That does incremental backups in the bg every hour, and lets you cherry pick files/versions to restsore?

11/11/2011 12:55:40 AM

Quote :

"if you want images, acronis is the tits. for raw files, i like cobian."

11/11/2011 9:11:12 AM

just do start->run->ntbackup
you'll be impressed how full featured it is (and scriptable/integrated) for $free

11/11/2011 11:37:46 AM

if you use acronis and back up to an external drive, FORMAT THE DRIVE TO NTFS. unless you are fan of worthless "corrupted images", do yourself a favour and use NTFS.

11/11/2011 1:10:03 PM

Write a shell script and backup the images to S3 or just use dropbox and copy the image files to the dropbox folder when the backup is done.

11/11/2011 1:27:11 PM

Quote :

"Is there anything time-machine esque for windows? That does incremental backups in t bg every hour, and lets you cherry pick files/ versions to restsore?"

99% that is a feature of the filesystem in use that timemachine taps into. Most likely a direct copy from suns zfs snnapshot feature. Either way its not available in ntfs.

11/12/2011 7:28:53 AM

It won't do system images but for file backup, I haven't been able to find anything that is as easy to use and foolproof as the free version of Crashplan. It can back up to external drives, other computers, friends' computers that are off-site. I was surprised with everything it could do and I now use that to back up all of my family's stuff.

11/12/2011 9:52:19 AM