[DUG] Disk Image backups

[John Bird]

Apart from disk imaging, how do others manage their systems in event of a HD
crash?.....reinstalling Windows is not too bad, its finding and reinstalling
all the other programs that takes forever.

Drive Snapshot:

At the time I got it 2 years ago it had a number of features reviewers liked
over others:

-can do backups while working (says hooks into the I/O subsytem to get files
at the state they were at the beginning of the backup...still I don't tend
to push my luck on that one!
-can mount the backup image and browse using Windows explorer.
-can boot system from boot floppy (FREEDOS) with NTFS driver and command
line reinstall C partition....haven't actually had to do this fortunately.
-can reinstall other partitions eg D from Windows
-image files split into cd size chunks of 650MB
-fast .... 12 GB disk data to external USB disk in around 5 minutes.
-was about the cheapest good one

Norton Ghost did require reboot to DOS to do backups and restores...

More lately best reviews are for Acronis....simplest to use, but I notice
they advertise saying:

"Based on the exclusive Acronis Drive Snapshot disk imaging technology,
Acronis True Image CWS allows you to create an online system disk backup
without reboot to keep the system productive. The product provides the
fastest bare-metal restore dramatically reducing downtime and your IT
costs."

So I am wondering if they purchased Drive Snapshot?? Anyway Snapshot is
still available but looks to be same version as 2 years ago - I still use
it, its fast and simple.

Another good backup idea are to zip up critical files being worked on and
email them to your gmail account.  Offsite without getting out of your
chair...


John


-----Original Message-----
From: Alister Christie [mailto:alister at SalesPartner.co.nz] 
Sent: Wednesday, 18 January 2006 4:36 p.m.
To: johnkbird at paradise.net.nz; NZ Borland Developers Group - Delphi List
Subject: Re: [DUG] Windows troubleshooting



John Bird wrote:
> I use DriveSnapshot for backups (disk image to exernal disk)...I 
> wonder if anyone reckons its better to do that before or after doing a 
> surface scan with CHKDSK etc?

Is this DriveSnapshot from http://www.drivesnapshot.com ?  It looks to 
be quite good, I'll try it out tomorrow.  Previously I've been using 
Ghost 2003, which is fairly good but requres you to boot into dos.

What backup systems are other prople using?


Alister Christie