Free backup software

[SrDriver]

Link below for free backup software for home and non commercial use. Link To Macrium Reflect Supports both 32 and 64 bit versions of XP or Vista. When I installed it, it offered me the opportunity to create a bootable disk. I am using the Vista 64 bit version, it offered me to make a Linux Boot Disk which I did. After doing a complete mirror backup to a USB External Hard Drive which took about 20 minutes, I booted off of the recovery boot CD and it worked as it should. Below is some more info about the software. Link To More Info I have used both Norton Ghost and Acronis and am impressed with this software and ease of use! Being an old geezer, that takes some doing!

 

[javacontour]

Hmmm, I'm looking to replace the IDE boot drive in the kids PC with a SATA drive. This may be the trick, thanks.

 

[MysticGold04]

Nice... do you know by chance if it compresses the image at all or is it a full size image? Reason I ask is to fit the image on CD/DVD and to save space. Looks like a nice utility to have in the toolbox though!

 

[PandaBear]

Only one problem. It doesn't work with Windows 2000.

 

[freeze12]

 Originally Posted By: SrDriver

Link below for free backup software for home and non commercial use. Link To Macrium Reflect Supports both 32 and 64 bit versions of XP or Vista. When I installed it, it offered me the opportunity to create a bootable disk. I am using the Vista 64 bit version, it offered me to make a Linux Boot Disk which I did. After doing a complete mirror backup to a USB External Hard Drive which took about 20 minutes, I booted off of the recovery boot CD and it worked as it should. Below is some more info about the software. Link To More Info I have used both Norton Ghost and Acronis and am impressed with this software and ease of use! Being an old geezer, that takes some doing!

Nice Program..ThankYou!!

 

[CivicFan]

So how do these backup disks work? I wonder if it will work for what I am thinking about doing. I want to create an XP installation with a few programs on my wife's laptop. Then I want to create the image of the installation so that every month I can recreate the initial installation. Right now I reinstall XP from Dell recovery partition and have to go through all the program installations and security updates. It is a major hassle and takes a lot of hours to do so.

 

[SrDriver]

Highly recommend that you pickup an external USB Hard Drive. A 500 Gig on sale will run well under a 100 Bucks. When you install the program, make the CD boot disk as it recommends. I would make a couple of backups. Much faster than trying to backup to DVDs. Their web site has much information about making backups - restoring too. I used all the default settings for the backups to our USB External Hard drives............ One plus too with the program it the external drive can be formatted as FAT32 or NTFS. Our external drives are formatted as NTFS. Looks like it will backup Linux ext3 drives too but both distributions of Linux I am using use the new ext4 format. Backups are a must as it is not a question of if, but when! I backup our home computers about once a week or so and keep the last three backups.

 

[CivicFan]

I just rebuilt wife's laptop - took a few hours to install XP and all the updates plus the drivers for the proprietary Dell devices. Now it's time to figure out how this program works so that if I need this the next time, I don't have to waste so much time.

 

[CivicFan]

OK, how do I create a bootable rescue disc? It only gives me the option of 'PE' disc but after installing PE software, it can't find the files to create the disc with. The online instructions are not very informative...

 

[mstrjon32]

 Originally Posted By: SrDriver

Highly recommend that you pickup an external USB Hard Drive. A 500 Gig on sale will run well under a 100 Bucks.

Bought a Seagate 1.5TB at Costco recently for $109. I remember when a 400MB (!) drive cost $500.

 

[Iain]

 Originally Posted By: SrDriver

Link below for free backup software for home and non commercial use. Link To Macrium Reflect Supports both 32 and 64 bit versions of XP or Vista. When I installed it, it offered me the opportunity to create a bootable disk. I am using the Vista 64 bit version, it offered me to make a Linux Boot Disk which I did. After doing a complete mirror backup to a USB External Hard Drive which took about 20 minutes, I booted off of the recovery boot CD and it worked as it should. Below is some more info about the software. Link To More Info I have used both Norton Ghost and Acronis and am impressed with this software and ease of use! Being an old geezer, that takes some doing!

Been using Windows Vista native system image backup. Quite robust programme, but looking for something to replace Windows bog-standard file backup utility and file cut/paste methodology. What say you lot of Macrum Reflect?