Imaging & Backup

[PSG-Samuel]

Hello,

I just wondered what you guys used for imaging/backup a hard drive. When working on systems I prefer to take a backup should any work I do cause any dataloss.

So suggestions please?

Thanks
Sam

 

[JustInspired]

It's been covered many times. Most recent is this I think: http://www.technibble.com/forums/showthread.php?t=49455

 

[cypress]

Currently at the moment I am using Easeus ToDo Backup. I really like it. Simple and effective.

 

[SAG]

disk2vhd
Acronis
Paragon

The tool depends on what I am doing.

 

[GEGeek]

I didn't see this product mentioned in the aforementioned thread, so I'll mentioned it here because I really like this product. FarStone's Total Recovery Pro.
A couple years back our work stations started coming configured with RAID. Up until then my company was strictly a Norton Ghost supporter.
Well Norton Ghost at that time did not support RAID for the field guys. My company had the corporate edition of Ghost, but was not sharing - I believe it was 600 dollars at the time!
So I needed an Imaging solution that supported RAID and did not cost hundreds of dollars. I've been using FarStone ever since. Must be 4-5 years now. Never had any issues whatsoever.
I actually use it on all my customer's PCs at the hospital and personally.
Hope this helps.

 

[ThanatosOfOne]

We mix it up with the worlds oldest copy of Ghost32, Acronis, Disk2VHD, and recently Macrium reflect.

 

[drjones]

I've been using DriveImageXML without any issues.

A couple things you should be aware of, that bear repeating:

- Thoroughly TEST any software BEFORE you rely on it to protect client data. There's an example here of someone getting "burned" by a bad image they took with DriveImageXML - but they had never used the software before trusting it to a clients data.

- I take the extra step of manually verifying each image I take, on a different PC than I used to take the image with. I store my images on a NAS, when its done, I open it up, browse it & open some .jpg & word/excel files to verify for myself that it's a good image.

- If you're going to go to the trouble of imaging or otherwise backing up client data, IMO, it should go onto some sort of RAID array. We all know HDs can and do fail at any time.