Looking for suggestions for a good free hard drive backup program.

[Grail]

Hi all,

Just trying to get all my ducks in a row. I was wondering if anyone could point me in the right direction. I was combing through my back issues of CPU magazine where I know they did a piece on this, but can't find it right now. I downloaded Cobian Backup. Should I roll with that? I also have one copy of Norton Ghost that came with my Samsung 64 GB 830 I just received. I used to use Acronis, but wasn't wild about a few aspects of it.

Specifically what I want to do is clone my C drive with the OS. Especially now that my Intel 975XBX2 mobo utility and software driver disk isn't working any longer. I am not so concerned about scheduled backups and such. I prefer to do that by hand.

Thanks much for any input.

-Grail

[Bollwerk]

Might not be a popular choice, but I actually use the backup feature of Windows itself from the retail DVD. I boot from the DVD and make a backup of my OS drive every so often. It has even saved my bacon once when my OS drive died within a week of buying it. I just restored to the replacement and saved myself hours of installation and OS/driver updates,
I'm sure there are better options, but this works for me.

[Ughmahedhurtz]

Might not be a popular choice, but I actually use the backup feature of Windows itself from the retail DVD. I boot from the DVD and make a backup of my OS drive every so often. It has even saved my bacon once when my OS drive died within a week of buying it. I just restored to the replacement and saved myself hours of installation and OS/driver updates,
I'm sure there are better options, but this works for me.
^^^^ This. It's been tested to hell and back and I have yet to have a restore fail on me. Norton Ghost is a better "complete" option, IMO, but it ain't free and isn't as easy to use.

[Lax]

I have used many backup options, including Ghost, Acronis TrueImage and at least half a dozen others...

Free, easy to use, open source, and actually a pretty good backup tool, recommended by good old Lax: http://clonezilla.org/

You're welcome :)

[pinotnoir]

http://www.macrium.com/reflectfree.aspx

You can try Macrium Reflect free.

[Svpernova09]

I have used many backup options, including Ghost, Acronis TrueImage and at least half a dozen others...

Free, easy to use, open source, and actually a pretty good backup tool, recommended by good old Lax: http://clonezilla.org/

You're welcome :)

Clonezilla is good stuff

[Toonarmy]

I dual boot with Linux and just use ntfsclone. If you're comfortable with a second OS it is free and easy.

Toonarmy


Sent from my iPhone

[Grail]

Bollwerk and Ughmahedhurtz,

Thanks for the tip, is that Windows 7? And it sounds like if I am reading what you said correctly, it doesn’t just make periodic backups but can do a disc image of the OS drive? (Is it able to do sector by sector?) A copy of the OS drive is what I am most interested in. Oh, and maybe a copy of my dedicated WarCraft drive ;) So that would be great for two Windows 7 machines. I still need to figure something out for the two (or 3) XP machines. Those aren’t all mine, but I take care of a couple of computers for family as well.

Lax and Supernova,

Thanks for the advice, I was reading good things about clonezilla, but then someone said, if you didn’t already know about it maybe you shouldn’t be using it… (?) that kinda scared me off. I still haven’t learned to do things like compile, but somehow I don’t think that will be necessary. In other words, do I need to know Linux or something, or should I check it out with medium tech ability?

Pinotnoir,

I will research Macrium today. Thanks to you.

To all, I appreciate the responses. I was thinking what I might like to do for the XP machines is load a program like Acronis ( I have two copies) and or the free one from Paragon and create a clone of my C drive and then uninstall the software. I was using Acronis 2009 and it honestly started to feel like bloatware. That said, and I studied over 90 pages of the manual, I loved the idea of the insurance it provides. I just need to find the right program or solution.

Right now, I am not truly so concerned with periodic backups whether they be what Acronis termed incremental or differential, I just want the ability to clone the OS drive and have that peace of mind.

I also like the idea of not having a program that changes the way my computer behaves at Startup, at least to the naked eye. I don’t want to have to navigate through screens just to get to the select user screen. I had trouble with that with Acronis.

I appreciate any further input, my brain almost fried yesterday going over the possibilities. It seems like every program requires three days of study just to be able to use it.

-Grail

p.s.- Toonarmy, I think you posted just as I was writing this reply. Thanks for the suggestion. I will write it down and look into it, but I think as much as I have always wanted to do a dual boot, I can't take that on right now. But will keep ntfsclone for future reference. *waves*

[Ughmahedhurtz]

Bollwerk and Ughmahedhurtz,

Thanks for the tip, is that Windows 7? And it sounds like if I am reading what you said correctly, it doesn’t just make periodic backups but can do a disc image of the OS drive? (Is it able to do sector by sector?) A copy of the OS drive is what I am most interested in. Oh, and maybe a copy of my dedicated WarCraft drive ;) So that would be great for two Windows 7 machines. I still need to figure something out for the two (or 3) XP machines. Those aren’t all mine, but I take care of a couple of computers for family as well.
Yes, it can create a system image directly to DVD. It is not sector-by-sector but that is actually a good thing. It means you won't end up with an unusable backup if you have to upgrade hard drives.

[Grail]

Thanks Ughmahedhurtz!

That will take care of my Windows 7 machines then. And that is half the battle!

-Grail

[Ughmahedhurtz]

OK, I just got to looking at this and I may have been wrong. Let me look into it a bit.

[edit] OK, so it appears that you will need DVD+RW media to backup to DVD's as the backup utility doesn't know how to format DVD+/-R. Easy enough.

[Grail]

Thanks Ughmahedhurtz,

You Rock! I didn't mean to stipulate I wanted to back up to dvds though. Perhaps when I said I wanted to know if it could do a disk image to disc I should have said hard disk. If that is where i was vague, my apologies.

-Grail

[Ughmahedhurtz]

Oh, in that case you're golden. :)