I should know the answers to this - but alas - I am used to manually backing stuff up. The only automatic backups I do I have written myself on linux systems using shell scripts on cron jobs .

Are there any "full system backup" software packages that can run either on scheduled times, or be prompted manually, that can back up all data on a Windows XP machine and copy it to an external HDD (guaranteed to have more capacity than the PC's HDD)?

Budget... under £100 for external drive and the software.

Ultimately what we're looking for is something that could make replacing a buggered PC (hdd fail, motherboard fail, human slip of the finger) relatively painless.

Mcafee security suite comes with a backup utility, as does Norton and quite a few others.

If its for home then a lot of the external hdd's come with basic software. As a tech I like Ghost as it works (99% of the time) and is quick. also consider Acronis. If you have Seagate drives they have a utility that will do an image (and its free(~Acronis I think?)) So there are lots of options.

The PC for which this applies is used in a home environment. All of my small business files are stored on a linux samba fileshare and they are backed up every morning at 02:00 and then copied to a remote location in the USA

Thanks for suggestions so far - I quite like the look of Norton Ghost - can it be installed without the anti-virus stuff? I never got on with Norton's anti virus "solutions"...

Cheers

Ed

OK, bit wordy, but may be of use (I wrote this for another forum)

Acronis TrueImage 'Tutorial'

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Backing up your system with Acronis TrueImage

Note - I use version 11.0.8101 of TrueImage (despite there being newer versions - I've tried and not liked them).

This is an ongoing project so bear with me - and also read up on the manuals yourselves. I take no responsibility whatsoever.

If you want immunity from viral / malaware attacks, and want to be able to restore your operating system (complete with ALL settings, passwords, logins) in minutes read on.

TrueImage is an imaging program i.e. it makes an image file of the complete contents of any partition (alternatively selected files / folders if desired). This image file of a partition can be created on another partition / USB drive / DVD (from a partition it can then be copied to a USB drive or DVD). The image file is usually compressed to reduce the file size - options are No Compression / Medium / High / Maximum. The High Compression options usually results in an image file half the size of the occupied space on the partition.

I say usually because so many people store music, pictures and movies and movie clips in My Documents on Drive C. These files compress very little at all.

So, essentially, we are taking a snapshot of the system at a particular time. Later we can restore our system to this snapshot - and everyone of our settings, desktop layout, passwords, network settings, EVERYTHING will be as it was when we took that snapshot.

To create an image file TrueImage will lock certain files and then produce the image file whilst within the Windows Graphical User Interface (you can to some extent carry on working within a program but depending on the backup settings your speed and interactions may be severely impacted - in any case it is safer to leave well alone until the image operation is complete). To Restore your system from a previously produced image file TrueImage will ask you to select an image file, then it will reboot and then go into it's own version of DOS (in which if needed you can use a mouse and select different images) and without any interaction will reinstall the image back onto Drive C (most people's default). In the process it overwrites EVERYTHING on Drive C i.e. if you have a virus / malaware this will be wiped out.

TrueImage also will create boot-up CD / DVDs for you (which uses the aforementioned 'DOS' interface) for 'worst-case' scenarios i.e. when you can't get to the Windows GUI. In this case you set your BIOS to boot from CD, boot up and then select which image file you wish to restore from.

But - To get the maximum out of TrueImage we need (really) to do certain things.

Clean out your system - use CrapCleaner or similar.

Partition your system. A partiton size of 20GB for C will easily suffice for any flavour of Windows. Partition Magic (Now Norton Partition Magic is admirable for this).

Move your personal pictures, movies, music, movie clips to another partition. Even move My Documents folder to another partition. These can easily be backed up onto an external USB drive or burned to a DVD. TuneUp Utilities will allow you to move 'Special Folders'. (My Documents folder, and others if desired, can be imaged under different settings in TrueImage. DOC, TXT files and their ilk do compress very well).

Then Defrag your system.

Why do the above ?

Doing so will drastically reduce (in most cases) the occupied space on Drive C. Therefore your Acronis backup image files will be created much more quickly and this will also enable you to store more of them AND restore them more quickly.

I also install what I class as 'non-essential' programs onto Drive F in a Program Files folder thereby reducing my image file sizes further (I do keep a core of 'Essential' programs on Drive C e.g. Acronis, Avast!, Office 2003, ACDSee, Clipcache, Notetab, TuneUp Utilities, Winrar, Winamp, K-Lite Codecs, and quite a few more). With tweaking my XP and removing much rubbish my occupied space is 3.2GB and the backup file sizes are 1.4GB. My Windows 7 (Lite) image file size is 1.5GB. Imaging both these systems takes around 5 minutes. Restoration (including reboot times) takes around 8 minutes.

And, no, don't ask what to remove - much is trial and error and also involves mucho reading up and would take far far too long to type out.

Note - Whichever of Acronis and Ghost (another imaging program) you use it will only restore what you created. So, if you created an image using a faulty XP installation then when you restore that is exactly what you will have back again.

Installation

When you install True Image it asks if you wish to create a bootable disc which will allow you via the True Image version of DOS in which you can use mouse to access image files you have created (you can always create them later also - they occupy about 50MB). I think you can create bootable discs with image file on but I always just create an image on another partition which I then later burn to DVD.

Setting up Acronis

Acronis Options > Tools >Options > Default Backup Options

Here are mine

1st I always choose full backup for reasons previously mentioned (you'll encounter this on I think the 3rd page of versions 11 when you actually begin to create a backup. Do not tick the Sector by Sector approach at the bottom).

If you set the Backup Options 1st - before creating a backup - then mostly the backup process is just a case of clicking 'Next' on each page (ensuring Drive C is ticked on Partitions / Drives page).

Archive protection - none

Source Files Exclusion - none

Pre Post Commands - none

Compression level - High

Backup Performance - High (progress bars and timers do not truly indicate backup progress with this option but it gets the backup over with more quickly - and I touch nothing whilst backing up even though you could carry on working supposedly, basically I go make a coffee).

HDD and Network - both on Max

Archive splitting - Automatic (unneeded in my case cos my file size is only around 1.4GB, but still left at Automatic).

File Level security settings - Preserve selected

Media components - Nothing selected as I burn several backups to DVD using Nero. You could select this option, however, if you wanted a bootable recovery disk with an image on it. The 'Media Components' should only occupy some 50MB going off the size of the Bootup disk you are suggested to create when you 1st install Acronis.

Additional Settings - both ticked. Essential you have 'Validate' ticked else you could end up trying to restore from a corrupt backup i.e. no chance. In over 3 yrs of use and countless backups I've never had a validation check fail but as it only takes 2 mins or so on my system I leave Validation on at alll times.

Error Handling - nothing selected.

BTW - if the image file will not fit on one DVD you can span discs (much as when using Winzip / WinRAR with floppies in the old days).

Restoring individual files / folders with Acronis

Need to extract some older files / folders from a previous image file - use the Operations > Mount Image. Select an image file and Acronis will 'mount' it as a virtual drive that can be seen in My Computer. From this mounted image you can then copy files / folders over to wherever you desire. When done just unmount the drive Operations >Unmount Image.

Installing a new operating system ?

One of the very 1st things I do after installation is to install Acronis TrueImage.

Then I backup in stages using Acronis i.e. 1st backup your 'basic' XP (for example) as just freshly installed, then install some more software, tweak XP etc and then create another backup and so on and on.

So, for a given day I may have 6 FULL (not incremental) backups so I can easily revert if I've messed up somewhere along the line.

Just name the images e.g. 1May 09.tib 1Mayb 09.tib 1May9c.tib to differentiate between them and also add 'comments' to indicate to yourself what changes you made.

After a few days if all is well with your system then you know the last backup is really the only one needed - burn this to a DVD (as well as having it on the hard drive) but keep the other backups just in case.

As time goes on you will accumulate more backup images - in that case you can delete some of the older ones from the hard drive.

As a bye the bye I usually keep around 10 older images on a USB hard drive and also (monthly) burn several images to DVD.

Additional Notes

An incremental backup DOES just backup the changes - it then creates another TIB (backup) file that is pretty small (the more incremental backups then there will be more small TIB files). However to recreate the image you need this AND the original backup file(s) - which is why I never do incremental, just full.

From the manual

To make a sector-by-sector backup, check the Create an image using the sector-by-sector approach parameter. By default the program copies only the hard disk sectors that contain data. However, sometimes it might be useful to make a full sector-by-sector backup. For example, you have deleted some files by mistake and want to make a disk image before trying to undelete them, because sometimes un-deleting may create problems in the file system. Please note that this mode increases processing time and usually results in a larger image file because it copies used and unused hard disk sectors.

My Acronis backup files are stored in F:\Acronis Backups and also on an external USB drive + every now and again I will burn them to a DVD (stored elsewhere in the house in case of fire).

I stress - at some time soon you must test out at least one backup, be it on DVD, hard drive, USB hard drive

a/ to see it works

b/ to check that whilst in 'Acronis DOS' you can access your hard drive / USB /Firewire device.

Imaging Drive C - store the image on another partition, otherwise (unless you use the 'Secure Space' option in Acronis which, I think creates an untouchable area on C) you would be trying later to incestuously image the drive which already has an image i.e. the backup would end up being a lot larger.

Use Acronis to 'test' different Windows versions - XP, Vista, 7 etc.

Do a clean install of the operating system you want to try (once you've backed up your usual operating system via Acronis) i.e. overwrite everything on Drive C (I can do this easily as I've repartitioned C to be 20GB and basically just keep operating system and not much else on it).

Once you've installed the operating system then install Acronis and then image (backup) your C partition.

Then if you want to go back to your usual system just do a Restore using your very 1st backup image and it will overwrite absolutely everything on Drive C and put back on your usual operating system together with all settings, all passwords - everything as it was.

Want to switch to new system again - do a restore and select the image file created of the new operating system.

Examples - my XP image files are stored in F:\Acronis Backups and are date labelled e.g May9 09.tib, May9b 09.tib, May6 09.tib. My Windows 7 image files are in the same folder but labelled 7May9 09.tib, 7May8 09.tib etc etc.

To avoid messing up my XP settings for the programs I've installed onto F:\Program Files I install any programs under Windows 7 to e.g. F:\Program Files\7 Nero. For Photoshop it would be 7 Photoshop etc etc. So, in my Windows 7 system it 'sees' Nero as being installed in F:\Program Files\7 Nero. In my XP system it 'sees' Nero as being installed in F:\Program Files\Nero.

Basically I can switch from XP to Windows 7 in under 10 minutes (Yes, I know I could multiboot). Be advised - upon restoring the Windows 7 OS from an Acronis backup it will complain of an 'unexpected shutdown'. This is because the computer did not actually shut down. Just select 'Start Windows normally'.

Acronis TrueImage 1108101 works fine with all tested versions of Windows 7 (b7077, b7100 RC1, lite version of RC1).

It also offers other features which I've not touched.

The programs only drawback is that it does not produce hardware independent images i.e. if you change your computer then the images will most likely not be usable as so much hardware will have changed.

Edited 23 May, 200917 yr by anonymouse
fergot

Why not just use the one that comes in XP Pro or if you want to be clever use R-Synch for windows?

.point pagefile.sys at a different drive letter before you begin the backup as per anonymouse's excellent instructions - when you restore, it'll get re-created anyway even if the original drive letter isn't available. Also turn off hibernation before you backup - that will save backing up a huge chunk of data that isn't needed (from a backup POV).

Yup, have pagefile.sys on another drive (one that is rarely accessed - and only small).

Hibernation is disabled on my system also.

But, Acronis lets you exclude these if you insist on keeping them on Drive C (and then the operating system will recreate them at boot up).

I used to use Ghost 2003 for years - but it doesn't like SATA drives. Also Acronis allows 'live' backups (i.e. imaging of C whilst in Windows GUI) and if you begin the restore operation from within Windows (i.e. you've selected the image to be used), save for clicking a few buttons it then goes into Acronis-DOS and does all the rest for you without any further interaction.

I tinker a lot with my systems, deleting flab, testing new programs, uninstalling them, cleaning up registry and on and on...

In the days before Ghost and now Acronis it would sometimes take days to get my system up and running to my liking.

Now I'm only 10 mins away max from reverting to a well-running backup.

Edited 18 May, 200917 yr by anonymouse
fergot