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

[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*