Poll on Backup software

Hazel123 · Jul 6, 2022

cereberus said:
You should always backy fat32 and C drive as a minimum aa fat32 comtains boot files. I recommend you backup all partitions. If you have data partitions you can ba k those up separately if you prefer.

Thanks, that's what I needed to know

Hazel123 · Jul 6, 2022

Badger said:
As far as HD failures go, I've only experienced 2 and both were Seagate drives. Because of that, I've only been purchasing Western Digital drives for the last 10 or so years without issue. Only had one SSD failure which was recent with a Crucial SSD. In the years around 2005 Acronis backup used to be rock solid with their window's product. However, some years back the product let me down bigtime during a verified restore and since I've sworn off it. Regarding freeware backup utils. I've used Clonezilla for years up until about a year ago and it's always been fast and reliable.

It was a crucial ssd that failed on me recently. Formerly used in a laptop (not used that much) then in an external case. Have also had a Samsung SSD fail very quickly too. Only ever had one HDD fail - a very old one.

kado897 · Jul 6, 2022

Hazel123 said:
Thanks, that's what I needed to know

Macrium has a link on the left hand side which can be used to select all partition Windows needs to run.

Hazel123 · Jul 6, 2022

Yeah but the EaseUS licence is free for a lifetime :)

kado897 · Jul 6, 2022

Hazel123 said:
Yeah but the EaseUS licence is free for a lifetime :)

The Free version of MR is sufficient for most needs.

Badger · Jul 6, 2022

Hazel123 said:
It was a crucial ssd that failed on me recently. Formerly used in a laptop (not used that much) then in an external case. Have also had a Samsung SSD fail very quickly too. Only ever had one HDD fail - a very old one.

Yes, I've been reading similar stories so no more Crucial SSD's for me.

Dch48 · Jul 6, 2022

I always used the free version of AOMEI and it always worked for both backing up and restoring. The latest free version has removed the ability to mount the image and retrieve things from it manually. For that reason alone I went to EaseUS Todo which can still mount the image and it works even better than AOMEI did.

Bree · Jul 6, 2022

Dch48 said:
I always used the free version of AOMEI and it always worked for both backing up and restoring. The latest free version has removed the ability to mount the image and retrieve things from it manually. For that reason alone I went to EaseUS Todo....

Reflect Free can mount images too. Free also includes viBoot, which can boot a Macrium image as a Hyper-V or VirtualBox VM.

SIW2 · Jul 6, 2022

Easeus image contents can be viewed in windows explorer the last time I looked. ddeexec Similar to the way windows can see inside zip files

they also have a separate thing in case you dont have easeus installed and want to have look.

The free edition does the basics. However, the subscription idea for the paid versions is not a good direction. They also do lifetime license for each paid edition instead.

SIW2 · Jul 6, 2022

Pro giveaway of aomei is not hard to find.

Looks like O&O giveaway of diskimagev16 is no longer running.

Goldengirl52 · Jul 7, 2022

Ghot said:
I've used Norton Ghost 2003, Acronis and Macrium.
I've tested a few others.

IMO, Norton Ghost 2003 was the best, but it won't run on anything past Windows XP.
Then comes Macrium, which if it has ANY faults, it's just that it's getting too complex.

For my money, backup software should have three things only.
1. Can make full backups.
2. Can restore full backups, even if Windows won't boot.
3. Can make bootable Rescue Media.

I agree, I don't think "more" is better with anything in life :wink:

kado897 · Jul 7, 2022

Goldengirl52 said:
I agree, I don't think "more" is better with anything in life

The other thing you need is good support when things go wrong.

TraderGary · Jul 7, 2022

Ghot said:
I've used Norton Ghost 2003, Acronis and Macrium.
I've tested a few others.

IMO, Norton Ghost 2003 was the best, but it won't run on anything past Windows XP.
Then comes Macrium, which if it has ANY faults, it's just that it's getting too complex.

For my money, backup software should have three things only.
1. Can make full backups.
2. Can restore full backups, even if Windows won't boot.
3. Can make bootable Rescue Media.

In addition to your list, I absolutely need the ability to restore a single file and ofttimes my choice of a previous version of a file. That's why one of my backups is Microsoft File History. Another backup I couldn't be without is Microsoft OneDrive, an always current real-time mirror of all my data.

Coram Daes · Jul 8, 2022

While old stuff was good, you really need to up your game since we get new file systems. What works with NTFS may not work with ZFS. That is of course an entire discussion, if a backup software takes the clusters, then it shouldn't matter, but if it doesn't or have other compatibility issues with newer ways of storing data, one just need to be aware.

cereberus · Jul 8, 2022

Coram Daes said:
While old stuff was good, you really need to up your game since we get new file systems. What works with NTFS may not work with ZFS. That is of course an entire discussion, if a backup software takes the clusters, then it shouldn't matter, but if it doesn't or have other compatibility issues with newer ways of storing data, one just need to be aware.

Who cares about that now? You can be sure major players will either adapt or die.

Goldengirl52 · Jul 8, 2022

cereberus said:
Who cares about that now? You can be sure major players will either adapt or die.

True

HMJ · Aug 28, 2022

I cannot understand why or why a great and powerful and extremely rich company like Microsoft cannot serve its users with a comprehensive engineered Backup/restore system for images as well as on the fly file-backups with versioning. It must be some damn-right dishonest conflict of interest scenario, because there is enough engineering excellence in MSFT.

kado897 · Aug 28, 2022

HMJ said:
I cannot understand why or why a great and powerful and extremely rich company like Microsoft cannot serve its users with a comprehensive engineered Backup/restore system for images as well as on the fly file-backups with versioning. It must be some damn-right dishonest conflict of interest scenario, because there is enough engineering excellence in MSFT.

Well they had a go with W7 but it wasn't very well thought out and not very reliable.

TeckyMike · Aug 28, 2022

Why would the company offer something that could reduce their sales?

BrianInEngland · Aug 28, 2022

HMJ said:
I cannot understand why or why a great and powerful and extremely rich company like Microsoft cannot serve its users with a comprehensive engineered Backup/restore system for images as well as on the fly file-backups with versioning. It must be some damn-right dishonest conflict of interest scenario, because there is enough engineering excellence in MSFT.

Because the EU and UK competition authorities would cry 'foul' and block it from being included due to it being anti-competitive beahviour