Blogs Attack of the Clones

For Windows, I use Acronis as well, but for my Linux partitions, then DD works every time.

 

I use Clonezilla. I copy my Steam folder to a seperate drive, and also permanently keep my music folder on that same drive.

Restore, drag the Steam folder to where it will be, run installer, done. Also, simply drag my entire music folder into WMP once I have it booted for the first time, and wait for it to add to library. Done.

Although, to be fair, the only reason I do this is for the sake of my SSD. If I was on a traditional HDD for my boot device, I wouldn't bother. Updating the programs from your month, 2 month, 3 month or older clone is about as time consuming as installing them in the first place.

And making an updated clone is pointless, because you just end up formatting the old fashioned way everytime anyway, and then cloning it never to be used.

 

I have a 500GB external HDD with all my personal files backed up onto it ( including IE and Opera bookmarks ) and a piece of paper with a list programs I use/ need. Should anything really bad happen, it only takes an afternoon to reinstall the OS + update it & re-download the programs ( everything I use is freeware or I have a disc ). Very low tech but highly effective....

 

Another +1 for Acronis and how damn fine it is. I've also got it set to create a vmware VM from the image. The whole shebang is saved to my NAS and if needed I can even boot into my Win7 image from my MBP even over the NAS (Slow as hell, but it works)

 

Anyone here choosing to use a 3rd party over Windows 7's built-in backup solution?

 

This guy needs to learn a few things about open source tbqh

 

only problem I find with ninite is that it isnt always bang up to date and can install older versions of software sometimes

 

Kept True Image 10 for the Vista PC but on Win 7-64, I just reinstalled as there are still few enough updates pre-SP1 for it to be bearable (just). Newer versions than v11 haven't had good word of mouth before this review, so I'll stick with optical discs and now USB backups for data.

Final step is an external, that would round off the backup routine, three physical backups is enough if kept in different places.

 

All I do is good old Copy and Paste to my external HDD. The reason why I do this is I know that if I have to restore my data one day that it will actually work.

 

I've also used this freeware program to clone a HDD data to an SSD. http://www.todo-backup.com/

 

It's a good idea to do this, i've got sooo many games and movies on my pc if this dies I won't be a happy bunny. Also a reinstall will take forever to get it to the state that it is at now.

 

You didn't look very far did you?

PING (Partimage Is Not Ghost) http://ping.windowsdream.com is an excellent, quick and very reliable system. Network or local backups, saves BIOS settings, will work from any media, doesn't need installing and is lightning fast.

But I suppose if your afraid of the command line then your going to pay for the nice pictures.

 

I do prefer using a paid for branded clone app partly due to you are likely to get better support and help should you run into problems.

I will more than happily dispute that fact, as a sysadmin with over 75 servers all of them are Windows and I can tell you they are reliable, they do not fall over, and we have a mix of 2000, 2003, 2003R2, 2008, 2008R2.

We also have several IBM AS/400 machines and they are pretty reliable.

 

Can't believe nobody has mentioned windows disk image saving tool. Works, and it's free.

 

You don't need to reboot them after updates (because the application data is assumed to be inviolable on the harddisks), the partitions don't suffer from NTFS fragmentation, the OS isn't just a desktop OS with server 'bolt-ons', the OS supports non-native file systems, etc.

Have to endure using Windows XP networked (over the internet) to Windows 2008 at work - and it's a bad joke.

Love Windows on the desktop, but as a server it is too flawed... Visa-versa for Linux...

 

Really if Clonezilla was updated, with a decent UI, it would be a viable alternative to Macrum Reflect, Paragon and Acronis (especially since it is free and OSS). It is especially flexible about partition filesystems and the backup target (which can be CIFS shares and over FTP). Just now it feels very clunky since mostly it's just chaining together GNU command shell applications (like dd).

 

Driveimage started from a DOS-3,5" Disk.
...bit oldschool maybe?

 

HDClone Standard/Pro every time. HDC is way more useful, in particular with large systems

 

hardware changes are usually what prompts my reinstalls now, rather than simply them getting bloated/corrupted//messy/etc.

 

To be honest, really the only reasons I use Clonezilla are because I wanted something that was free, and before I even knew I wanted a cloning utility, I came across an article on OC3D which talked about cloning a HDD to a SSD, and it had all the instructions I could need.

Just kind of fell on to my lap really.