RollbackRX, RestoreIT, Acronis True Image, FD-ISR?

OK, I want a backup solution that would protect my PC should disaster strike. Say I got a BSOD or Windows got corrupted. I want to be able to boot back up into good state without having to resintall Windows, reinstall any of the programs I have installed, or reinstall the data from those programs.

I want to be able to restore everything from emails, address books, user profiles in XP, Outlook Express Accounts, IE settings, desktop, everything. It would also be nice to be able to selectively restore only parts of these backups. Say, if my MS Access database with all my customers got messed up, but nothing else, it would be nice to be able to restroe only this part o fthe backup. This last piece is strictly optional (convenient, but not mandatory).

Other considerations:

1. Easy to use. The average Joe should be comfy using this program.
2. Not to taxing on system resources (my PC is 3 years old and aging fast)
3. Fast...I don't want backups to take up too much time

I have heard about programs such as RollBack RX, Acronis True Image, Restore IT, FD-ISR, etc. Some of thses may be overkill and or too complicated.

So if someone could make a reccomendation I would appreciate it. Also, if someone could explain the differences in these programs that might also be helpful.

Thanks in advance.

 

What a collection of demands. What is your interpretation of FAST ?

 

Hi Ejr,

I'm looking for the same thing. From my perspective Acronis TI 10 is not the answer, as it failed to restore properly to a new hdd. Currently I'm waiting for 'StorageCraft' ShadowProtect version 3 to release. I'll purchase this one & dump Acronis, perhaps ebay!

Take Care
Rico

 

I guess the fast part is not so important as I can always schedule backups for the night time. But to quantify, I was hoping that a backup could be made in 2-5 minutes. Of course, if we are saving that backup to recordable media, that could understandably take longer.

Which reminds me, it would me nice if the backup were able to be stored to a bootable a CD or DVD.

 

definatly rollbackrx pro

i will be going back to it when they release their next version which is vista compatable, until now.. im using acronis home which is vista ready but not as good as rollbackrx

 

I have been leaning towards Rollback Pro model myself. It looks very user friendly.

My only concern is what to do for a complete disaster? Not just a problem booting up in Windows, but a problem with the hardware itself. Without a bootable CD or DVD, you are hosed in that scenario, correct?

 

RollbackRx and FDISR are Immediate System Recovery softwares, in case of a harddisk crash both are useless.

Acronis True Image is an Image Backup software and will be able to restore your entire harddisk(s) after a crash.

Image Backup and Immediate System Recovery aren't the same.
If I ever have to choose between ATI and FDISR, I ditch FDISR, but I hope I never have to make that choice.

 

Agreed. In fact, the time factor really is not important to me the more I think about it. And the more I think about it, I need to be able to make a bootbale CD in case of a hard drive crash.

So based on everything I have read, I think either ATI or RestoreIT provide the solution that I am looking for.

SO....Has anyone compared Acronis True Image and Farstone RestoreIT? Are both reliable? User friendly for an average Joe? What are the differences?

 

rollbackrx is the quickest snapshot creator, uses no space, and it takes only a reboot to restore, no time waiting.

however, if harddrive crashes, blows up ... obviously the software is useless.

however, everything else... its super safe and fast, ive tried most of them and its definatly my favourite.

and to be honest, if my harddrive blew up, id just re-install on a new harddrive using my windows CD anyway.

 

Acronis True Image has a Rescue CD, that contains everything for backup and restoration.

The absolute minimum on my computer is the Acronis Rescue CD and the images stored on my external harddisk to restore my two internal harddisks.
I tested this more than once, even with zeroed harddisks.
But I prefer to restore my computer via Windows, I'm too lazy to put my Rescue CD in my CD/DVD-drive.

 

RollbackRx has also another advantage, it works for more than one partition, while FDISR works only for ONE partition.

 

Rollback also has up to the minute restore capeabilities, and while FDISR takes at least 3-5 GB for the first Snapshot, Rollbacks initial install snapshot is only 108MB and as little as 0.00995kb for the next, considering changes of course, but the smallest snapshot I've incurred on Rollback is 18MB. Another Plus to Rolback is on Default settings it will Defragment snapshots at a certain interval,and Delete unwanted snapshots automatically once they reach 7 days, thus keeping the used space minimal

 

Hi EJR

This should meet all your criteria:

http://carbonite.com/

Take Care
Rico

 

Chheck out this link describing new features in new version of RollBackrx due March 15. Looks like it will be able to do hard drive disaster recovery (bare metal recovery). Looks very interesting now as a full backup program.
http://www.horizondatasys.com/forums/forum_posts.asp?TID=76&PN=1

 

the new version does look interesting.
how big will the images be i wonder.
it will have to come with a rescue cd or cd image you can burn to a disc
im looking for a solution as well.
if i build a new pc i will probably buy a second hard drive and put the images on that drive.
if i used windows xp i could use ghost 2003 in dos mode to create a image but if i got vista i would have to get some new software.

lodore

 

I keep FDISR anyway. I never liked the baseline snapshot of RollbackRx and all snapshots depend on it, while FDISR-snapshots are independent.
I don't like incremental backups either, which are also dependent.

There isn't really much choice in ISR-softwares, its FDISR or RollbackRx and the rest are clones or as good as unknown.

BTW has RollbackRx a backup feature already (something like FDISR) or is it still in development ?

 

Um it does use space quite alot - just not as much as FD.

I like RB but I would not consider it super safe - I have had lots of problems with corrupt snapshots - caused most recently by KIS interaction - Nov/Dec 06.

Imaging RB is a pain at the moment. THe new version should correct some of the weaknesses - stored snapshots. So it should be possible to use a base image and then snapshots.

kinda like FD.


At the moment Safe is more important than quick - so I have 3 machines with FD - 1 with RB and 2 spare copies of RB.

 

Hi all,

Starfish, did you tried to restore again the same snapshot because i think sometimes (rarely) that the restoration process is buggy and not the snapshot

MaB

 

As stated in earlier post on similar theme...best and complete reliable combo is rollback rx/Eazfix pro together with paragon stand alone disk drive backup rescue cd,then you can also if you want add ATI,but there you can´t capture(at least more complicated) RBrx snapshots,with paragon you can provided you use it with "raw imaging"...The new v of RBrx I hav´nt checked...this concerns earlier releases...

 

My concern is RollbackRX itself. Is it reliable or not ? I still have the impression that it still can not be trusted.
Most of the time, I hear that the new version will fix the actual problems.
How many versions will RollbackRx need to be as reliable as FDISR. This seems to be a neverending story since I bought FDISR.

In theory Image Backup should never be a problem, because it takes an image of your harddisk, no matter what is installed on your harddisk and it has to put that image back the way it was during the restoration.
Anything else is unacceptable and means there is something wrong with the Image Backup Software.

 

I don´t entirely trust it...Proof for that is when I suffered from a power failure RBrx got corrupted...By restoring Paragon image I got the whole package back...That´s the thing I talk about...(Considering to test HD Clone Pro in this regard as well,will see...)