Windows Backup

[SrDriver]

Have been using the free Aomei Backupper Software on my desktop which is running Windows 8.1.1 and laptop and like what I see including that you can mount the backup as a virtual drive and it does full,incremental, and differential backups. I use an external USB hard drive for backups.

Link To Web Site

When I made the emergency boot CDs for the desktop and laptop it hovered at the 10% for awhile as it was downloading some files I assume from Microsoft. You have the option of making a bootable USB Thumb Drive too.

 

[Rand]

Since finding acronis a few years ago I have yet to look for another solution.

previous to that I tried a few nothing was even close to as useful as acronis true image.

Free is always good though.

 

[Donald]

Can it create an image copy, including all the files that are part of Windows?

 

[Donald]

I use the backup that is part of Win 7. It goes to a eSATA connected RAID 1 external harddrive.

 

[Rick in PA]

I've been using Macrium Reflect for our computers, disk image with incremental images. I've only had to use it a couple of time, but it's nice to be able to reimage the disk instead of trying to rebuild everything.

I'd recommend you get a spare hard drive, swap the spare hard drive into the computer and reimage it just for drill. It's good to work out the bugs before you have an actual emergency, plus you get a spare, imaged, hard drive in the process. As far as bugs go, for example, on my son's Windows 8 laptop I found out I had to go into the BIOs to enable booting off a CD before I could reimage it. And our Windows 7 machine needs to have the disk partitions reimaged in a certain order to work. It's just figuring out what works.

 

[SrDriver]

Originally Posted By: Donald
Can it create an image copy, including all the files that are part of Windows?


Yes that is one of the options. That is normally what I do.

In the past I have used Macrium Reflect free but this program has a lot more features.

For those running Windows 7 it has a backup program to make an image but you can not recover individual files for folders with it.

I like the fact that you can mount the backup as a virtual hard drive too.

 

[Rand]

I had issues with macrum reflect.

pretty minor but I couldnt restore a 500gb hdd image (14gb data)
to a 320gb hdd without buying the premium version
IIRC(this was few years ago)

and some other more minor issues.