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What is best backup software to clone HDD?

J

jasonparks

Junior Member
Forgive me if this is posted somewhere else, but I searched the forums and couldn't find anything. A lot of people seem to recommend Acronis. However, I've read a lot of negative review too (from users not professional reviewers). Thanks.
 
depends on what you want.

For pure copy and free you can use Copy/Wipe, but that will only do pure 1:1 clone.

Acronis Easy Migrate 7.0 is a good option if you just want to clone to a larger drive cuz it can increase the partition size.

However if you have multiple partitions then Easy Migrate won't let you manually manipulate the various partitions and you should use the full suite True instead.

I was always a Ghost user until Ghost 2003 complete pooched me over recently.

Going with what the 'majority' of what power users use themselves, yes it can be slightly like being a lemming, BUT it also ensures that if you have a question or problem with the product, you are most likely to find reasonable help....so...I'd have to say pick Acronis.
 
I personally like Acronis and have had great results but there are others available for free.
 
I like Ghost 2003 myself .. works excellent as compared
to some of the recent Symantec offerings. But some folks
swear by Acronis TruImage which is a good program. It
all depends on what you have or can borrow / cheaply
acquire and which user interface is easier or more intuitive
for you to use. I prefer Ghost because it runs in DOS Mode
and that is the Only program running when it makes or
restores an Image or when it does a Clone to a new Drive.
 
Acronis also runs off of a live CD so it is the only thing running as well. Acronis is so much easier to sue than ghost. No more spending weeks creating boot disks so you can write your image to a network share. Acronis can also write to external/internal hard drives.
 
Originally posted by: yinan
Acronis also runs off of a live CD so it is the only thing running as well. Acronis is so much easier to sue than ghost. No more spending weeks creating boot disks so you can write your image to a network share. Acronis can also write to external/internal hard drives.
Click to expand...

Really? 😛

Anyway, I've ony used Acronis, and have found it nice and fast.
 
Originally posted by: mc866
I personally like Acronis and have had great results but there are others available for free.
Click to expand...
Acronis is what I've been using for the past few years. Very good imo.

 
Acronis True Image v11 is great, I've been using it for awhile now to create images of my 4 computers and all my families computers. Very easy to use, there are descriptions for everything you use and the help file is very consise and easy to read if you want to know more about all the features.

You can create an acronis secure zone on your hard drive as well, it is basically a protected partion on your hard drive where you can save images and no windows programs can acccess it so it won't become corrupt. Once you create an acronis secure zone you can also enable the disaster boot recovery, which lets you load the image in acronis secure zone before windows boots.

You'll see an option before windows loads that says press F11 to boot Acronis or something like that. All you have to do is press that and bam, it will load the image up from your acronis secure zone. I enabled this on all my families computers that way if their windows installation ever becomes completed corrupted, all they have to do is press F11 after turning on their computer to reinstall the image.


One thing I don't like though, is after you create an image you can't open the image again and burn it to DVD. To burn an image to DVD, you have to create an image and burn it directly to DVD, there is no option to first save an image on your hard drive or removable USB drive, then later burn it to DVD. I looked all over the place in the options, and could find nothing to do this. I even mounted an image to see if more options would show up and nothing. I guess you could always just create an image and tell it to break the image up into 4.7GB pieces, so you could later burn each piece to a DVD, but there needs to be an option where you can open an old image and have Acronis burn it to DVD for you. What's amazing to me is they have all these other complex features included, but miss a simple one like this....go figure.
 
Actually, if you just want basic clone-restore (with a few additional functions) without fail, I have recently tried the freeware Drive Image XML... and love it so much I finally dropped my old reliable ghost 2003. The best part: it uses windows' built in VSS to do the snapshotting of the OS drive, so it itself is small and simple, no need for bloat, and VSS works flawlessly.
 
Originally posted by: jaqie
Actually, if you just want basic clone-restore (with a few additional functions) without fail, I have recently tried the freeware Drive Image XML... and love it so much I finally dropped my old reliable ghost 2003. The best part: it uses windows' built in VSS to do the snapshotting of the OS drive, so it itself is small and simple, no need for bloat, and VSS works flawlessly.
Click to expand...

I'm trying to backup a fresh install of WINXP. I've been using Partition Magic for a decade and copying an install of the OS to somewhere on the HD or second HD and using it to recover later. I'm just tiring of PM and HD's are getting bigger which causes problems for PM. Ghost was a pain back in 2000 and I wasn't happy with it. I realized it improved later.

How do you back up with this? Can you burn the image to DVD? I'm trying to figure out how to recover with it.

 
drive image xml is easy. and free.
it doesn't hold your hand on making bootable media restores, you can build a bartpe bootdisk with xml plugin though.
i didn't, i just restore from a second running pc😛 its images can be slightly larger. i think it doesn't know to skip the page/hibernation files. disable those i guess before image. pretty sure ghost/acronis did that automatically.

its no biggie though, just make an image using xml to another partition or whatever. if its clean windows+office it shouldn't be more than about 3gb, easy burn to dvd or whatever.
 
I've been using Acronis' True Image and Disk Director for years, ever since Powerquest stopped making good versions of Partition Magic & Drive Image.

TI + DD on a bootable CD lets me backup, install multiple OSs on different hidden primary partions, and manually switch bettern them as needed without running flaky boot loaders.

I'd stay away from Acronis' boot selector for OSs though, it repeatedly corrupted files in the first OS on my A8N-E / socket 939 gaming system. V-com System Commander is a bit quirky but is much safer to use.
 
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