Backup Strategy

[Rico]

Hi Guys,

For backing up & restore of hdd's one can choose between image type like Acronis TI, & traditional bit by bit like Dantz Retrospect. What are the advantages of strategy of the other. Both stategies will do 'diaster recovery' (I'll assume hdd failure counts & both will put the OS on a new drive), so what makes one strategy more attractive?

Thanks
Rico

[Mark Klomp]

You better use Retrospect Pro if you want to restore files individually.
Many people find Retrospect Pro hard, and it certainly is. But it's really powerful once you can handle it.

[Peter2150]

Retrospect was terribly slow. Also the disaster recovery procedure is a disaster. With a good imaging program, you can restore the system if there is a hard drive failure, and also mount the image and recover files from it.

I use Shadow Protect and it images 18.5gb in 5 minutes, and also does a restore in 5 minutes. In fact my "verify" procedure is to recover 2 or 3 files from the image, and if successful, I then restore the image. That way I know it will work when I need it.

Pete

[ErikAlbert]

-{ Quote: "You better use Retrospect Pro if you want to restore files individually.
Many people find Retrospect Pro hard, and it certainly is. But it's really powerful once you can handle it." }-
Acronis True Image also recovers files individually and probably much easier than Retrospect.
You only have to mount the image in ATI and all files of that image are available to be restored individually.

[incursari]

Do not forget Paragon drive Backup, it does a good job too for disaster recovery with a good compression and speed during backup and restore.

[incursari]

For a lightweight and simple UI, Bing and Image For Window which is very reliable does a good job too.

[Howard Kaikow]

-{ Quote: "Hi Guys,

For backing up & restore of hdd's one can choose between image type like Acronis TI, & traditional bit by bit like Dantz Retrospect. What are the advantages of strategy of the other. Both stategies will do 'diaster recovery' (I'll assume hdd failure counts & both will put the OS on a new drive), so what makes one strategy more attractive?

Thanks
Rico" }-

Retrospect is not "bit by bit", rather it is a file based backup.
Until a bit over a year ago, I used Retrospect, but I switched to Acronis True Image 9 and Ghost 10, both image based backups. I have not used Ghost since 3 Nov 2006, indeed, I uninstalled Ghost on 19 Feb 2007.

I can no longer justify using file based backups, especially as they are way too slow.
You can do whatever you need to do using image based backups, especially if the program allows drives with the image to be mounted. I would not using a program that did not allow such mounting.

Note that when I first started using image based backups, I wrote some programs that can verify the content of the backup. For example:

GetFileTypeDistribution (http://www.standards.com./index.html?GetFileTypeDistribution)
CompareDrives (http://www.standards.com./index.html?CompareDrives)

I would consider Acronis True Image and Shadow Protect.

[incursari]

Paragon Drive Backup and BING/Image for Windows you also can restore individual files from the backup image.
With Paragon you can use Volume Explorer to restore individual files. And Bing/Image for Windows you can use their free add-ons TBIView to restore individual files.