Backup program

[Guest Daniel Royer]

Can somebody point me to a good simple backup program (to an external

HD), free if possible. But if it's necessary to pay ...

 

Daniel

--

_________________________________

Daniel Royer

University of Geneva

daniel at royer dot ch

[Guest John McGaw]

Re: Backup program

 

Daniel Royer wrote:

> Can somebody point me to a good simple backup program (to an external

> HD), free if possible. But if it's necessary to pay ...

>

> Daniel

 

There are a load of them out there but I find that Cobian Backup works well

for me. http://www.cobian.se

 

John McGaw

http://johnmcgaw.com

[Guest JS]

Re: Backup program

 

Norton Ghost

(has a 30 day trial but you can not create a Bootable Restore CD AFAK)

http://www.symantec.com/norton/products/overview.jsp?pcid=br&pvid=ghost14

 

True Image (has a 15 day trial version available,

Trail version can create Restore CD, but I have not verified this yet)

http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/products/trueimage/

 

JS

http://www.pagestart.com

 

 

"Daniel Royer" <daniel@royer.ch> wrote in message

news:%235$zEZrCJHA.3348@TK2MSFTNGP04.phx.gbl...

> Can somebody point me to a good simple backup program (to an external HD),

> free if possible. But if it's necessary to pay ...

>

> Daniel

> --

> _________________________________

> Daniel Royer

> University of Geneva

> daniel at royer dot ch

[Guest dev328]

Re: Backup program

 

What about the back-up utility in XP under System Tools? Doesn

t that work well to back up to an external HD?

 

"John McGaw" wrote:

> Daniel Royer wrote:

> > Can somebody point me to a good simple backup program (to an external

> > HD), free if possible. But if it's necessary to pay ...

> >

> > Daniel

>

> There are a load of them out there but I find that Cobian Backup works well

> for me. http://www.cobian.se

>

> John McGaw

> http://johnmcgaw.com

>

[Guest Stephen Harris]

Re: Backup program

 

Daniel Royer wrote:

> Can somebody point me to a good simple backup program (to an external

> HD), free if possible. But if it's necessary to pay ...

>

> Daniel

 

Well, as long as the second drive is as large as the first,

why not clone all of drive one to drive two? The software

for that is usually free from the manufacturer of drive one.

Drive one is set as master and drive two as slave with jumpers.

The jumper settings are on the back of the hard drives or you

can download a user guide from the drive manufacturer. If

drive one dies or gets infected with a rootkit, then you can

switch the jumper settings and make drive two Master and drive

one the Slave. Boot from drive two which has become the Master

and then clone drive two back to drive one. That will fix

most malware problems, everything is overwritten including the

MBR (make sure you clone the MBR too, if given a choice).

 

So I'd get the User Guide from both manufacturers plus their

cloning software (which is part of the free formatting software),

and put it in a folder called C:\Drives, which will get copied

back and forth between the drives. I think the User Guide is

helpful for jumper settings, because it avoids having to take

out the old hard drive in order to find out the different jumper

settings (not using cable select). You can do it with tweezers.

 

Getting the drivers and already installed applications is

the hard part of a systemic clone restore. You can use XP

backup which comes with WinXP Pro, or if you have WinXP Home,

I think it can be installed from the ValueAdd foler on the cd.

It is easier then to make small backups of your email and

..html bookmarks or favorites. I use Firefox just because it

has a utility called Moz Backup which works great for Firefox,

and Thunderbird email which is about equal to Outlook Express.

But you can customize the size of File Edit, View, etc. menu

and the dropdown menulist, by making it larger and bolder if

anyone using the computer is visually impaired. You can find

out what kind of hard drive you have (the manufacturer) by

looking in Device Manager, then copy and paste into a Google

search. You can also look in the Bios when the computer boots

up to find out what the drive is named. For incremental backups

a lot of people use Acronis True Image, which is $50, so maybe

that can wait and be your Christmas present to WallE Junior.

[Guest GregNga]

RE: Backup program

 

I have Acronis I think it is an excellent tool. It is worth paying for.

 

"Daniel Royer" wrote:

> Can somebody point me to a good simple backup program (to an external

> HD), free if possible. But if it's necessary to pay ...

>

> Daniel

> --

> _________________________________

> Daniel Royer

> University of Geneva

> daniel at royer dot ch

>

[Guest Daniel Royer]

Re: Backup program

 

Daniel Royer wrote:

> Can somebody point me to a good simple backup program (to an external

> HD), free if possible. But if it's necessary to pay ...

>

> Daniel

thanks for all the suggestions. I've tried them all (almost). The

problem seems to lie within my external HD, as, with each backup program

I get the same message: "write delayed failed", and there is only

gibberish on the HD.

 

Daniel