Affordable Backup Solution

[chelax]

I'm just starting out and need something affordable that can take an image of a customers PC and save it to a portable hard drive or network share.

Technicians licenses seem hella expensive. Is there anything that can be run on the clients machine to copy the files across?

 

[BlackLabTechs]

There's some free ones out there like Veeam Free Endpoint edition that works pretty well. Beyond that, it all depends on what options you are looking for. Scheduling, auto run missed schedules, central management, compression, ;exclusions, etc.

Here's some others to check out: (not sure if they all offer free edition but keep in mind you get what you pay for)
Aoemi Backupper
Macrium Reflect
EaseUs ToDo Backup

 

[TAPtech]

PartedMagic!

 

[Altster]

I'm just starting out and need something affordable that can take an image of a customers PC and save it to a portable hard drive or network share.

Technicians licenses seem hella expensive. Is there anything that can be run on the clients machine to copy the files across?

One phrase you should get familiar with - "Open Source Software." You will be surprised at what you find in in Open Source community.

 

[Markverhyden]

I'm just starting out and need something affordable that can take an image of a customers PC and save it to a portable hard drive or network share.

Technicians licenses seem hella expensive. Is there anything that can be run on the clients machine to copy the files across?

Clonezilla is awesome. And OSS as well.

But the important thing is, what ever you go with, to make a bunch of practice runs on your own equipment to test the process and procedure. That's part of the risk management process of running a business.

 

[NOLA IT Pro]

http://clonezilla.org/

You can run it from a cd or an USB drive.

It has a bit of a learning curve, but once you master it, you may not need a paid option.

Keep in mind the limitations below.

• The destination partition must be equal or larger than the source one.
• Differential/incremental backup is not implemented yet.
• Online imaging/cloning is not implemented yet. The partition to be imaged or cloned has to be unmounted.
• Due to the image format limitation, the image can not be explored or mounted. You can _NOT_ recovery single file from the image. However, you still have workaround to make it, read this.
• Recovery Clonezilla live with multiple CDs or DVDs is not implemented yet. Now all the files have to be in one CD or DVD if you choose to create the recovery iso file.

Some good videos on how to use Clonezilla.

http://clonezilla.org/clonezilla-usage/clonezilla-live-videos.php

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

Typically we'll use the Seagate or Western Digital version of True Image...
They're both free, frequently updated, and work well....allowing backup, and of course...cloning of the drives.

 

[chelax]

Hi thanks for the replies. I have used Clonezilla in the past, its kinda like a CLI version of Norton Ghost. Because it's using the command line, I feel it increases the possibility of making a mistake by choosing the wrong destination drive .

Parted magic looks very interesting, I assume it is all done through a gui. Being able to boot it from USB or CD looks sweet. I don't suppose you can view the content of an image?

I agree open source software is great, though for comparisons sake is anyone having success with a paid solution?

 

[cypress]

I like Easeus ToDo Backup and AOMEI.

 

[acscva]

I have done a ton of testing of different backup software programs over the last couple months. I chose easeus todo backup and bought their 2 year tech license and must say it has a lot of great features and is fast.

 

[NJW]

I have used Clonezilla in the past, its kinda like a CLI version of Norton Ghost. Because it's using the command line ...

You should look at the current versions of Clonezilla Live. While you can use a CLI for automation, there are very few options that require manually typing anything, even in 'Advanced' mode.

 

[fencepost]

With Parted Magic you'd likely just be using Clonezilla within it anyway. I'm a big fan of open source software, but frankly for this I think I'd rather just have something like TrueImage that I can also boot from a CD (not sure about USB).

 

[Thedog]

Easeus ToDo Backup as many people have said but also Drive Image XML have a private/home version.

 

[acscva]

Curious if anyone has found a way to monitor backup jobs with EaseUS Todo Backup with Maxfocus? I bought the tech license and getting 20+ emails per day for backup jobs is getting a bit tough and would prefer to track in my dashboard.

 

[OaksLabs]

Curious if anyone has found a way to monitor backup jobs with EaseUS Todo Backup with Maxfocus? I bought the tech license and getting 20+ emails per day for backup jobs is getting a bit tough and would prefer to track in my dashboard.

I think that you can configure ToDo to send you e-mails on failure only. As far as integration with Maxfocus, I don't know if it's supported (but I'd suspect it's not...).

 

[BlackLabTechs]

I think that you can configure ToDo to send you e-mails on failure only. As far as integration with Maxfocus, I don't know if it's supported (but I'd suspect it's not...).

Yes - You can configure failure only but then there's the problem of the scheduling, service, etc. getting corrupted and never running. You think it's great because you haven't received any emails about failure when in fact it's not running at all.

 

[OaksLabs]

Yes - You can configure failure only but then there's the problem of the scheduling, service, etc. getting corrupted and never running. You think it's great because you haven't received any emails about failure when in fact it's not running at all.

Very good point.

 

[acscva]

Yeah I am having issues with it sending email on one of my clients and not sure if their internet provider comcast changed something or their watchguard firewall as it was working until this past friday and stopped.

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

I think that you can configure ToDo to send you e-mails on failure only. As far as integration with Maxfocus, I don't know if it's supported (but I'd suspect it's not...).

It's easy to "forget" or "miss" backup jobs that quietly go on....but you never know they stalled or got jammed up with something.
We always have ours to send for successful, failure, and end if supported...end of week report.

 

[brandonkick]

Another vote for clonezilla, play around with some "test" drives that
have "test" data on them until your comfortable.

I use it and have had really good experiences.