Decent backup software

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Could someone recommend any decent backup software i keep trying windows7 own backup but it never completes throwing error messages up when trying to backup with a external hard drive and letting windows do its own thing as regarding what to backup copying and pasting to the external drive what i want works ok.

Chris
 
<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Acronis-True-Image-Home-2010/dp/B002NGO1KO/ref=sr_1_3?s=software&ie=UTF8&qid=1306606627&sr=1-3">http://www.amazon.co.uk/Acronis-True-Im ... 627&sr=1-3</a><!-- m -->

I use true image.Does what it says.
 
Great minds think alike :) i've not so long since dowloaded the free trial seem to run ok never know i might splash out 30 quid thanks
 
Personally I partition my hard-drive and make sure everything I wouldn't like to lose if Windows crashes etc... is kept on the non-Windows partition. Then if Windows does decide to break I can do a clean install without worrying about losing important data. Anything that I *really* don't want to lose I use Dropbox to ensure there is a copy that can always be downloaded from the internet. Has worked for me for years and best of all cost = £0.00.
 
Don't know how that helps is your disc fails Dibertz, Dropbox only gives you 2GB storage free plus there's the upload time involved.
 
It's actually surprisingly little that I would completely lose if my hard-drive failed as there are multiple copies of everything floating about on various electronic gizmos. My music, video and photo collection is stored on my iPod and NAS drive, my eBook collection is on my Kindle, my email is all web based. Almost everything else is available to re-download from the internet if I find I need it. The stuff I can't re-download is put into Dropbox and falls well within the 2gb limit. Of course the problem is going to be if by some freak of nature all my electronics fail at once and the internet breaks - then I might be stuffed! :lol:
 
Everyone has their own policy for backing up.

Personally I just back my own data up periodically and if the O/S breaks I have an image of the O/S install that I reload, this is the safest way for cleanse any viral infections (which thankfully I have never had - touch wood) but raze and reload is my method. Admittedly it is a little clunky and relies on you remembering to actually do the backup. Many people keep their data in a folder but then applications like Office save by default to the "Documents and Settings" folder, so you do need to be sure you are catching all the files you want or need from various applications.

I do talk to quite a few customers through work who say they have it covered because they have a "backup solution", in my experience most of them have never simulated a failure and tried a full restore. A backup is only good if it works and for personal use I keep three copies; my laptop is backed up regularly to my desktop machine and vice versa, I also keep an additional copy on an external drive and store this in my drawer in work. This way if the house got burgled or other unthinkable incident happened I have a copy in a different physical location.

It depends on how important the data is to you, for the really important stuff make two copies and keep one somewhere safe. With the stuff that is updated regularly I copy it to a flash drive after any major update and then it gets caught at the next backup.

Acronis is a good home solution if you are not sure what you need to do in terms of what files to take; from what I have read it is well worth the cash to avoid the hassle.
 
Audiolab said:
I do talk to quite a few customers through work who say they have it covered because they have a "backup solution", in my experience most of them have never simulated a failure and tried a full restore. A backup is only good if it works and for personal use I keep three copies; my laptop is backed up regularly to my desktop machine and vice versa, I also keep an additional copy on an external drive and store this in my drawer in work. This way if the house got burgled or other unthinkable incident happened I have a copy in a different physical location.
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Truer words were never spoken! Having worked in IT, we've had customers tell us "everything is backed up", only to find out that the tapes are 3-4 years old, and the data has never been checked.
If you do package backups (images/zips/etc..) do try and restore data at least once a month for personal use, once a week for professional use.

And please, don't think because a test server is new it ain't going to break, and it's ok to migrate before installing a backup system. And just because it's RAID 5, doesn't mean the RAID controller isn't going to eat your data.
(and lose 1 weeks data from 12 naval structural engineers in the process, i.e. 2400 manhours of work), and ruin my weekend trying in vain to recover data.

I backup just esential stuff, spread on 2 x 2TB arrays, and a small 500GB 2,5" which lives in my car.
Most documents are backed up remotely. I don't back up music or movies, as I can't justify the cost of doubling that storage.
 
Tape maintenance used to be the No1 cause of failed backups for out support team but not so many use tapes or autoloaders these days. As you say they often they think they have hardware redundancy through RAID 5 and redundant paths to dual controllers with teamed or clustered servers, but if corruption happens it is copied across the entire complex and you are screwed. We also support DS storage and while that is more resilient and can be rebuilt using scripts it is still not infallible. It is so tempting to skimp on backups and because this is usually the lowest thing in terms of priority for an Enterprise it is often not given the time or resource it needs to ensure it is effective for their needs.

You sound as if you have had the same bitter experience as me, I to have worked through the day and night and several days following that to fix something that should have never been a problem. Some of them are have wised up (usually after being burned) and now realise the data is worth more than the hardware, lost transactions or downtime is money down the drain usually a lot of money. And the hardware companies always have a clause in the maintenance that customer data backup and recovery is the responsibility of the customer.

Anyway so these "movies" that would double the storage......anything interesting :lol:
 
hunnymonster said:
Audiolab said:
Anyway so these "movies" that would double the storage......anything interesting :lol:
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He's Dutch, living in France... what do you think :roll: :lol:

"European Art" films all the way
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Well if either of you is still downloading pr0n, then you're doing it wrong!
If you want links to websites, you can always ask through PM ;)

I've ripped & torrented quite a few decent movies, but it's all replacable :D

Max
 
I was just the space issue that tweaked my interest, hard drive space for storing movies is cheaper than the man size Andrex tissues (in relative terms) so I thought maybe you had something special...maybe in 1080P or 3D :shock:
 
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