Software for backing up my laptop

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nate

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#28548 3-Dec-2008 23:11

Before I get burned by my laptop being stolen or damaged, what's the best software for backing up all the data on my hard-drive. I've got a USB hard-drive to back up to, and I really need to set this up shortly.

Am I better backing up or ghosting? What do you recommend?

zocster

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#181915 4-Dec-2008 05:50

Ghosting is cool for reinstating your settings/files/fav etc to the new laptop however I prefer backing things up as reinstating those things is part of the learning curve of the new laptop.

My 2c

sbiddle

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#181917 4-Dec-2008 06:44

I've always been a fan of Acronis True Image.

freitasm

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#181922 4-Dec-2008 07:34

Mozy Backup for on-line backup. I have my laptop backup on-line (and on my Windows Home Server). Mozy Pro works on servers too - including Exchange and SQL backup on-line. I use this as well in two of my servers.

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#181924 4-Dec-2008 07:46

I use Corbian Backup for customers all the time. Its fast, reliable and easy to setup - oh and its free..

gehenna

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#181940 4-Dec-2008 09:17

sbiddle: I've always been a fan of Acronis True Image.

+1 for Acronis True Image, latest version is 2009. It's simply fantastic. Lost my system drive on my HTPC the other day, had created a backup the night before luckily....was back up and running in half an hour from booting the Acronis recovery CD, to complete restoration of the drive and partitions from the image stored on an external drive. I recommend it to all.

And for Mac I use SuperDuper! which is also the bees knees.

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#181944 4-Dec-2008 09:41

DriveImage XML is a pretty good free alternative too.

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nate

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#184859 17-Dec-2008 20:31

freitasm:
Mozy Backup for on-line backup. I have my laptop backup on-line (and on my Windows Home Server). Mozy Pro works on servers too - including Exchange and SQL backup on-line. I use this as well in two of my servers.

My laptop just died a week ago (luckily it was the motherboard, the hard-drive is fine) so I'm finally getting onto this now.

The problem I see with the Mozy Backup is with 80Gb of data, can I assume the first sync will be 80Gb (which is huge!)?

ITECH

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#184871 17-Dec-2008 21:43

I may be an old(ish) geek - or not - but I just use an Xcopy Script that I run every day before closing down the laptop at work.

Why? Because I back up data and settings only, it is quick and reliable. Also because I wrote it, I know exactly what is backed up and have the theory that if a rebuild is necessary (or a new laptop, or restoring to an alternate PC), I can pick just what is necessary.

I back up menus, quick start, desktop, data, some application settings, some required programs & files. For example, I save Lotus data directory and the *.ini file. In case of a rebuild, I would reinstall lotus from source then restore data.

Be interesting to see how many others do this. I have used various backup software solutions before but (IMHO) find they save 'too much' and the effort in filtering what to restore outweighs the benefits. Of course, I do not run a server and these comments don't apply to servers. I generally do a full save after rebuilding a laptop and installing applications though, but then use my Xcopy saves after that.

ZollyMonsta

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#184873 17-Dec-2008 21:50

If your laptop has a Maxtor or Seagate hard disk, you can download the latest version of Discwizard from the Seagate Website.
It's basically a cut down version of Acronis True Image which will allow you to make an image of your Hard Disk to CD or DVD.

Frustrating really, I discovered this only about a week ago.. after going and buying Acronis :)

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#184874 17-Dec-2008 21:53

xcopy.. a very old geek. try robocopy
I have written many scripts that use robocopy... and i use it in my limited backup routine at home.

That Cobian Backup looks friggn sweet!

Fred

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#184876 17-Dec-2008 21:53

nate:
freitasm:
Mozy Backup for on-line backup. I have my laptop backup on-line (and on my Windows Home Server). Mozy Pro works on servers too - including Exchange and SQL backup on-line. I use this as well in two of my servers.

My laptop just died a week ago (luckily it was the motherboard, the hard-drive is fine) so I'm finally getting onto this now.

The problem I see with the Mozy Backup is with 80Gb of data, can I assume the first sync will be 80Gb (which is huge!)?

It will compress the data before uploading - I would work on a 60% upload if you are heavy on photos and music or even more if you have lots of "text" (documents, spreadsheets, source code, etc).

Yes, it will have upload things... I currently have about 60GB up there with Mozy from my laptop, plus three different servers.

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#184886 17-Dec-2008 23:16

I'm a fan of the ShadowProtect range.
They have a "desktop" version which would do the job nicely for your laptop.

It runs in the background and you can schedule automatic backups right down to every 15 mins.
It does a full system backup so if you need to restore you boot off the supplied CD, tell it which backup to restore and you can be back up and running in about 1/2 hour!

Opinions are my own and not the views of my employer.

trig42

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#185902 24-Dec-2008 08:45

I like ShadowProtect - especially for servers. We supply it with SBS servers we install - it runs a full backup nightly, and incrementals during the day. It just means we can perform a 'Bare Metal' recovery of a customer's server onto any (capable) PC within about an hour of the server dying. Luckily have only had to do this once, but it weent off without a hitch, and their business was back up and running in an hour.

SP for workstations is a similarly good product - allows bare-metal recovery with a minimum of fuss.
Acronis have a bare-metal solution - Universal Restore - but that is on top of your licence for TrueImage, making SP cheaper.

For clients who just want their data backed up, I use Syncback (free), and setup profiles for Documents, Emails, Address Books and any other folders (eg MYOB) they consider important. It is then just a desktop shortcut to run the backups to external HDDs/Pen Drives, or set a schedule. Very fast as it only copies over files that have changed since the last backup. Easy to use and setup and has some quite good advanced features. The paid version allows copying of locked or open files (eg Outlook PSTs). The free version requires Outlook to be shutdown, but you can tell it to force Outlook to close before running.

paul151

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#186069 25-Dec-2008 13:49

nate: Before I get burned by my laptop being stolen or damaged, what's the best software for backing up all the data on my hard-drive. I've got a USB hard-drive to back up to, and I really need to set this up shortly.

Am I better backing up or ghosting? What do you recommend?

I really like Windows Home Server.

With this I back up six pc's on our home network (laptop included) and can opt to do a partial or complete restore of any machine at any time.

My server is set to hold the last 3 months worth of monthly, weekly and daily backups which suits my needs fine.

Let me know if you want to know more or need help with setup etc if you opt to head down this path.

Cheers,

Paul