Mirroring Backup Software

Hello all byte crunchers,

I would like ask anyone who is so inclined to recommend the best backup software to mirror a c: drive. Both freeware and paid.

spab

 

If you want an image of the entire drive (programs, files, etc) then my choice would be Acronis True Image. I make the rescue CD and run the program from there rather than from within windows when I do a backup and restore.

 

I have seen good things about the Acronis program Plodr suggested. I use XXClone Works great, backs up the programs and OS, and you can't beat the cost: http://www.majorgeeks.com/XXCLONE_d5534.html

I do believe it is a WinXP program, so might not work with Vista.

E

 

I use Acronis True Image Home V11. From within Acrpnis True Image in Windows, the mirroring is actually under Disk Utilities, not Backup and Restore, and you have to be careful that you read all of the options very carefully, but once you have the correct options and tell it to start it will reboot, do the mirror, and then it will tell you to press any key to shut down, then you can just turn it back on and boot back up(assuming your bios didn't reconfigure itself to boot from the backup drive now that it's bootable). Pretty simple once you've done it once or twice. There is a 'full backup' option if you go into backup rather than disk utilities but I don't believe that creates a mirror, I think you would have to run the recovery to get that up and running. And of course, with a mirror, you just switch out the drives and you're good to go. No need to wait to have another drive shipped or run any sort of recovery.

I have never done a mirror from the recovery cd, though, I've always done it from Windows. I may have to try it next time I do a backup and see if it is any easier or faster.

Hope this helps. I spent a very good while looking for a good program to use to do a mirror. I eventually went with Acronis just because it worked(I used the trial), it did what I wanted, and I was completely fed up with looking for other things. It actually didn't do exactly what I wanted(I wanted to boot to a disk to do the mirror rather than have a program mess with anything boot related and I also did not want to have to install another program) but now that plodr seems to suggest that you can do the mirror by booting to the disk I think it may be exactly what I wanted all along and I just didn't know it. Go figure.

Oh, and by the way(and if this is in any way against forum rules, feel free to edit, I don't see why it would be though), I would buy from newegg rather than the Acronis site because:
1. It's cheaper, and
2. At least when I looked, Acronis only offered it for download, but on Newegg you can have the disk shipped to you, which I much prefer.

Hope it helps.