On Sun, 19 Apr 2009 18:13:29 -0400, George <george@nospam.invalid>
wrote:
>I like the Acronis TI products for that.
Why do you like it? Much as I value everyone's opinions, they're
kinda useless without the attendent testimonials.
I tried Acronis image backup about 2 years ago and had the same
problem I had with every other image backup program that backs up
while Windoze is running. Files that change during the backup appear
on the image as corrupted garbage. What inspired my recent search for
the one true backup solution was having two important hard disk drives
fail after a relatively short running period (2 years).
In one case, I had run a DVD backup using Farstone DriveClone 5.1:
<http://www.farstone.com>
back in Dec 2008. I just noticed that this product isn't offered on
their web site any more (it was last week). When I restored from the
backup, I received a boot error which indicated that the registry was
corrupted. No problem as I was able to restore it from backups I made
using ERUNT. However, there were a variety of other file corruptions
that pointed to other open programs and files were also corrupted.
Support was totally useless and could only answer my questions with
more questions. To add to the confusion, the machine would not boot
the XP CD or recovery console. Both resulted in a blue screen and a
stop 0x0000007B error. The failed SATA drive was a Samsung, while the
replacement was a Western Dismal. After much Googling (and 4 days of
worrying), I discovered that I had to disable AHCI IDE emulation to
get the Western Digital drive to work.
A week later, another drive died (Maxtor 80GB SATA). For this
adventure, I used DriveClone Express 6.0. This one did NOT run from
Windoze but booted from a CD or USB flash drive. No open file
corruption. It worked much better until I had to backup a failing
hard disk. Drive Clone Express 6.0 would proceed until it hit a CRC
error, and quit with an Error 0x17. My email to support (no phone
support) asking for a list of errors and how to bypass a CRC error
were answered with "run chkdsk /f /r". In addition, their built in
chkdsk feature returned "invalid argument" if I checked the /F box.
Nothing like customer debugged software. I quickly switched back to
Norton Ghost 2003 (floppy disk boot) but the drive died in the middle
of the backup. By pure luck, all was not lost. The customer had a 2
month old backup on his SimpleTech backup drive using Arcsoft
TotalMedia Backup. I reinstalled Windoze XP, updated, restored from
the backup, and then spent the next 3 days untangling the mess. It
was great for restoring the user files, but useless for system files.
Fortunately, the really important files all came back. I also had to
do it twice because I mis-spelled the user name. Yet another backup
program that runs from Windoze that doesn't work quite right.
I note that Acronis True Image:
<http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/products/trueimage/>
offers:
Live Backups
Keep working right through your backup for maximum convenience.
which in my never humble opinion, is an invitation to a repeat
performance of my aforementioned backup horror stories.
So, now you have what I consider to be typical problems with backup
software. Back in about 2002, I tried using Acronis backup at a local
ISP. I forgot the exact details but I have correspondence log
somewhere that details a long and disgusting horror story. $500 and
many hours wasted trying to make that mess work.
I'll probably try Acronis True Image 2009 and try to break it. I have
a few drives with CRC error floating around the office. At least I
know some of the impending problems. However, it will have to wait. I
have to deliver the restored machines and I'm out of diskspace on my
assortment of USB drives because I've been furiously backing up
everything in sight. I'm also headed for a colonoscopy on Weds, which
is a good excuse for a few days off.
--
Jeff Liebermann
jeffl@cruzio.com
150 Felker St #D
http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060
http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558