Backup

[Gagaman]

My head teacher asked me to figure out a good backup system for his office-puters.

This is the situation: I have to make a full backup (image) of 2 pc's (both running xp pro). The pc's are connected throught lan and are in the same workgroup.

I was thinking of using Acronis true image 8.0 as backup software. I have never used this before, but when searching around, it looks like a good tool. Is it able to do something like this: create a full image of the puter once a week and a daily backup of the changed files?

For hardware, I'm thinking of a network HD (something like this: Network HD ). The reason why I think about a network HD is that it gives the possibility to backup some other pc's later. ( the whole network counts about 25 pc from which at least 5 pc's have files that should be backuped).

I'm totally new at this, so some advice or alternatives would be appreciated.

[homecomputeraid]

Gagaman,

I use software called Dantz Retrospect for some small jobs. It works pretty well and is reasonably priced. I'm not sure it will do the imaging you want. It's more of a standard backup type software.

I've used Symantec's Ghost for imaging and it works quite well. They have another product called GoBack which I've never used, but sounds like it's capable of backups.

For your harddrive solution, make sure you have enough space for all your data. If you have two 60 Gig drives and you want enough space for the two drives (120 Gig) plus enough for the backup scheme you choose. If you do a Friday Full with Daily Differentials for example, and you want to keep your data for a month, you'd need 480 Gigs of space!

[Gagaman]

thanks :flowers:

going to look in your alternative tomorrow, need some sleep now. Keep you posted ;)

[andsome]

Go Back is similar to System Restore. You can get an awful lot of bother if you use Go Back with System Restore still switched on. I used Go back for ages in W98 until the day that it fouled up, and boy did I have problems getting rid of it.

[scuzzman]

I personally reccomend against the use of GoBack, System Restore, or any similar utilities as they, more commonly than not, end up in corrupt registries and botched DLL's. Nothing compares to a clean backup.

[Gagaman]

Thanks for the comments. :flowers:

Gonna stick with the solution of my first post then. I read a review of Norton ghost 9 and Acronis true image 8.0. Seems that acronis will be better for my purpose.

[nellie2]

I use Acronis... I can't fault it!

[r4may]

I use Norton Ghost; Never had a problem

[D4\/!d]

I use Acronis... I can't fault it!

yeah, me too.

I run it at the end of the week. When I have had to rely on the backup it restored and worked ok every time.

[investigator]

I must admit that I feel really confident with Acronis True Image 8.0 Server for Windows installed on my live server.

A couple of weeks ago I suffered a total crash of the corporate server and fortunately, Acronis True Image 8.0 Server

did its restore work flawlessly.

I would also like to thank all people who work in Acronis, for their professionalism displayed to the fullest during this issue (my support request was handled within a day!!!!)

[Gagaman]

Thanks for all the comments. Acronis it will be... :flowers:

[Redhat]

Another vote for acronis :D