4 ms·

What's the closest thing to a simple, reliable and complete backup system for Windows?

by 1wd 12y ago

thaumaturgy 12y ago
Acronis TrueImage. But, it's not totally reliable. We've recently seen it have trouble removing old backups from attached drives, so the drive fills up and then TrueImage stops running with little or no notice. It does this significantly less often than EaseUs ToDo Backup though. You can trade completeness for reliability by going with Backblaze or Carbonite or CrashPlan or SpiderOak for online backups. All of those offer a really good overall backup system, you just don't get a bare-metal restore and if you store files in an unusual location on your drive or use unknown file types, the backup service might not grab them.
tempestn 12y ago
A combination of Crashplan, configured to backup all file types in any directory where you have irreplaceable files (generally your user folder should suffice), and a full disk imaging program. I use Macrium Reflect, as it's free and for me has been more reliable than Acronis. Run Crashplan continuously and image weekly or so. Even monthly would probably be fine, since Crashplan's incremental backups save you from any data loss. More frequent is just more convenient for restoration.
- thaumaturgy 12y ago
  Your answer's better than mine, I kinda half-assed it. I don't know if Macrium made it into our last round of backup software evals, and we're overdue for another one anyway (and not terribly happy with Acronis). Anything about it you don't like?
  - tempestn 12y ago
    Only that it doesn't support Acronis-style incremental images. So imaging takes more time and space. It also (last I checked) doesn't provide a way to automatically delete old images (but that's easy enough to script). It does do full images very quickly and reliability though, which is worth it for me. I tried for a long time to like Acronis. Even submitted several bug reports. But I had no end of problems, and even aside from the annoyance and wasted time, I don't want to trust a program with such quality control issues with my backups.

What's the closest thing to a simple, reliable and complete backup system for Windows?

by 1wd 12y ago

What's the closest thing to a simple, reliable and complete backup system for Windows?

Acronis TrueImage. But, it's not totally reliable. We've recently seen it have trouble removing old backups from attached drives, so the drive fills up and then TrueImage stops running with little or no notice. It does this significantly less often than EaseUs ToDo Backup though. You can trade completeness for reliability by going with Backblaze or Carbonite or CrashPlan or SpiderOak for online backups. All of those offer a really good overall backup system, you just don't get a bare-metal restore and if you store files in an unusual location on your drive or use unknown file types, the backup service might not grab them.

tempestn 12y ago

A combination of Crashplan, configured to backup all file types in any directory where you have irreplaceable files (generally your user folder should suffice), and a full disk imaging program. I use Macrium Reflect, as it's free and for me has been more reliable than Acronis. Run Crashplan continuously and image weekly or so. Even monthly would probably be fine, since Crashplan's incremental backups save you from any data loss. More frequent is just more convenient for restoration.

thaumaturgy 12y ago
Your answer's better than mine, I kinda half-assed it. I don't know if Macrium made it into our last round of backup software evals, and we're overdue for another one anyway (and not terribly happy with Acronis). Anything about it you don't like?
- tempestn 12y ago
  Only that it doesn't support Acronis-style incremental images. So imaging takes more time and space. It also (last I checked) doesn't provide a way to automatically delete old images (but that's easy enough to script). It does do full images very quickly and reliability though, which is worth it for me. I tried for a long time to like Acronis. Even submitted several bug reports. But I had no end of problems, and even aside from the annoyance and wasted time, I don't want to trust a program with such quality control issues with my backups.