Disaster Recovery

[Pad]

I had a major failure a couple of days ago and have spent the last couple of days recovering from it. I've had to reinstall Windows from scratch and go through the lengthy process of downloading all the updates to get it up to SP2 standards. On top of that I've had to reinstall all my software - another very time consuming process. Everything is back to where it was. There is even a silver lining to my cloud. My system is running much faster than it was just before the crash. Startup is about a quarter the time it was, programs are opening much faster - it's like having a new PC.

So now I'm looking for a program that will make an exact backup copy of my system as it is right now, so that if it ever happens again I will be able to restore to a clean working system with all programs set up and installed within a matter of hours rather than days. My intention is to use my C drive exclusively for the operating system and other software operations, and to store all other data on seperate drives.

I know there is a lot of software out there that will do this. However after doing some research I find it hard to make a choice. I'd very much like some help choosing. Particularly from those who have used recovery software sucessfully, or have a working knowledge of different packages.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[gmcbee]

Take a look at Acronis True Image. It's supposed to be able to make a real-time shadow copy of your system disk to a 2nd drive.

[mental]

I use Norton Ghost, it has always worked perfect for me.

[RalfZeller]

Arconis True Image is also my recovery of choice. It is important to make a clean image (=copy ) of your system right after you installed it.
I use following steps:
1.image: pure Windows right out the box
2.image: Winodows with all the drivers
3.image Windows with all the programs I use
4.image all the codecs installed
To make a image only takes about 5 - 10 minutes since the computer has to be rebooted. Same time to reinstall an image. For booting the computer you have to make a special boot-disk or boot-usbdrive, using True Image.
To save your bookmarks-mail-internet settings use Mozbackup.
When make some important chances on my system wich I want to keep, I install the last image, make the chances and save it as a new image.
So whenever my computer acts strange, I restart the computer, connect the usb-driver, boot form it, load the image from the 2. harddisk (or dvd, usb-drive etc but of course not on the system partition!!!), install the image et voila.
This takes about 5 minutes and you have a virgin system!

[scrub]

one more for Ghost. Have been using it for years, not a single complaint. Have read many good things about Arconis True Image, always planned to try it if Ghost ever let me down, but it hasn't.

[iamtherealpoco]

Take a look at Paragon

Paragon Backup & Recovery™, version 10.0.15.12802 (19.01.11 ) (Advanced) Free

It has saved my ass twice!

[ccinny]

I've used both Arconis True Image and Ghost and had good luck. I tend to use Ghost more since that's what we use at work to image computers

We also have used clonezilla with pretty good success

[oni9b]

Try 'Active@Disk' (http://disk-image.com/

I use it to create Disk images for PC's and Servers and it's very good!

[Pad]

OK Guys and Gals. Just a quick update.

I finally went for Acronis True Image. Partly because of the recommendations here, partly because a RL buddy gave it a very strong recommendation, and partly because I've used other software from Acronis in the past and was vey happy with them.

I did give Norton Ghost and Paragon a lot of consideration. I've had problems with a couple of Norton products in the past and I suppose that has left me biased against them. Paragon being free I have to say was very tempting.

As for Acronis True Image, well it is extremely easy to use and also quite fast. It backed up my C drive (about 43Gigs) in just over 20 minutes and compressed it to a .tib file of 27Gigs.

I did find an interesting little bug with Acronis though. Having backed up my system I created a boot disk with True Image in case Windows can't boot. I wanted to test everything while it was still fresh in my mind so I booted up into the Acronis recovery tool using the boot disk. When the recovery tool opened there was something I wasn't sure of so I clicked on the Help icon. Help opened and lordy lordy - the Help was written in French though my version of the proggy is in English.

Now that is not a huge deal. The prog is pretty intuitive and most people would be able to negotiate the recovery tool without the need from the Help section. I decided however that it was report worthy, so I contacted Acronis via their live chat support. I have to say that was a very good experience and the support guys at Acronis were very helpful. The solution in the end was they gave me a link to download an ISO for a boot disk created in the previous build of True Image 2012. That works perfectly and the Help is in English.

So, I'm all backed up and feeling safe. (yeah - I know - famous last words ).

Thanks for all the comments.

[Pad]

Its nice to be able to say something good about a product now and then.

I started having some weird problems with my AV software. It wouldn't update, and wouldn't scan for some reason. After 20 minutes of trying to figure it out I ran Acronis True Image to recover the backup I made when my system was pristine. Twenty minutes later my system was back to 100% with everything working. If I hadn't had the system backup I probably would have spent hours trying to sort out the problem. Excellent result IMO.