ATI vs. other methods

Hi,

I have a question about using ATI vs. another method of backing up and restoring. I bought a Western Digital 120GB USB external hard drive and it came with the Retrospect software package. That package had a different way of restoring an "image". Basically they have you create a backup copy of your entire hard drive. Then, assuming you have to install a new hard drive due to a crash they suggest to have you install the OS from the OS companies disks and install the Retrospect product and any drivers you need and then just restore the backup copy of your old drive.

This seemed to be an OK way to do it, I am assuming that you would get the same results, but what are your thoughts on this vs. using ATI. I have read so many threads about ATI v9 being hit and miss when trying to restore a drive. I would hate to get to the point where I need to restore my image and have a problem trying to get it back.

Thanks,

Kevin

 

Well you are right about ATI being hit and miss, but it depends on whether you have hardware like multiple usb devices, or wireless keyboard/mouse which, in some cases, seem to make ATI barf.

If ATI will work for you, it will be better than Retrospect since ATI doesn't make you go through so many steps to do a Restore.

With ATI, you make your Image backup and put it on your external drive, and also make your bootable Rescue CD. To restore to a new drive, you boot with the CD and choose the Restore feature to restore the Image from the external. Much simpler than Retrospect.

So just try it ... but you MUST do an actual Restore and if it is successful, you're good to go. In the majority of cases it will be successful.

 

I do have a wireless Keyboard and Mouse, which is part of what was scaring me. I not sure how to just try it without blowing away my current hard drive. I don't have an extra hard drive around to try to restore it to. I'm not against going thru a little extra effort using retrospect as long as whatever I do works and works right. Any suggestions on how to try it without overwriting my current drive?

 

This thread has been moved from the Acronis forum as it is a comparison thread.

 

I have an MS Wireless Explorer mouse and sure enough running TI from the TI Emergency Boot Drive (which runs on Linux) does not work with the wireless mouse. I have to switch to my standard Explorer mouse when using the TI Boot Disk.

Retrospect Professional is a very reliable backup system and works well with wireless mice, but the free product that's included with certain drives is a Lite (or Express) version and I can't vouch for it. Retrospect's main drawback is that since it is a file-by-file backup system it takes a much longer time to backup (and restore) than TI.

~pv