Backup program?

[SafeCracker]

Looking for suggestions for a good backup program. I'm looking for something to do a full backup of my system and then incremental backups are necessary. Need to be able to burn to dvd...

Thanks,
Dave

[Shane R. Monroe]

Take a look at Nero's BACKITUP ... comes included with Nero Ultra 6.

I like it!

[Spin]

OK because you brought it up.

Today I attempted the backItup and I set it to back only 698Meg
I was hoping to see one disk with this.
It ran and then asked for disk 2,3,4,5 ,6 I hit cancel and looked for a FAQ on nero's web sight.
Thankfully I read this first and ask the question WTF is happening?

I looked at the contents of the last burnt disk and had a folder tried out multiple times.
Obviously something went awry.

Help appreciated
Spin

[Shane R. Monroe]

I'm not completely sure I understand ... but ...

Were you backing up < 700MB of data? if you were doing a HD backup, I would assume you'd need at LEAST 6 CDs, if not more...

I did a 5 CD spanned back up, seemed to work out ok ...

Can you give me more info?

[Spin]

The drive I was attempting to do is showing about 35G only 1 partition.
“This is a work computer I had nothing to do with the creation.”

I ran the BackItUp and chose "create new back up"
Next choose the amount of files from my C drive (whittled it down to about 698M)
It did balk that there was one file that had too long of name so I choose to (skip or ignore cant remember) and it started.
It ran burned and then kept prompting for disks.
The funny thing is that it only burnt on the latter disks a few minutes (maybe 2-4) then just wanted another.
After popping in 5 I just cancelled it.
The disks had only 2 things on them one txt file that had the disk number
and a massively tiered folder that ultimately had nothing inside it.

I did try to find something on the Nero sight but it is sparse on help.

That’s my story sad but true.
Spin

I will try it again soon but have consumed too many disks and must get replacement.

[Bryan 'KidHype' Smith]

I've been happy with Norton Ghost but as far as i can see, it only does whole partitions.

I can tell you this, i have had to restore my pc a couple of times already from a norton ghost backup and talk about a lifesaver in time and energy. It took 30 minutes to restore 32gb's of info. You don't do anything to Windows on the re-image. It acts as if you never put in a new hard drive or repartitioned the machine or did anything to the hard drive. You dont even have to reformat the drive you are going to ghost either. If you have a extra hard drive/partition, you can save the image file to it (which is what i do, i aint burning 8 dvds, another reason why it re-images so fast) and to get it all started you just pop in a floppy and point the software to where the image is at.

Shane thinks Norton Ghost is pointless but I don't know how i ever lived without it. I no longer lose critical files because a hard drive reformat or crash and i am not spending hours reconfiguring everything.

[Shane R. Monroe]

Let me explain to you why its pointless...

First off, an HOUR after your machine is "restored", its out of date. Email, address entries, bookmarks, cache, wands, downloads - you name it; in an hour your computer is no longer "restored".

So, let's say you crash. You've lost EVERYTHING from the last GHOST image to now. How is that useful? I'm not ghosting 4GB once a week. Incremental backups make a lot more sense. So you get Cool Edit back the way you like it ... It takes me < 2 hours to restore my system from scratch.

"No no ... you backup your data, restore the image, then restore your data" ...

Pointless. What have you gained? A few settings on your programs? Your Windows THEME service is shut off the way you like? If you STILL have to backup your data and restore it, your backup isn't protecting you from anything except a half hour of your time. You're getting convenience; not protection.

For a GHOST image to be useful - you'd need an incremental backup to go along with it. That makes no sense to me ... do the incremental backup, reinstall from scratch if there is a problem. You might save yourself an hour during the restore ... but how much time does it cost you each time you Ghost?

NOW ... I'll flip the coin and say ... for FIXED SYSTEMS (say your whitebox, or MAME cab), an image makes TOTAL sense. The worst I'd lose on my whitebox is my Snapstream recording schedule (which would suck, but I can deal with it) as that is the only DYNAMIC content on the hard drive.

[Bryan 'KidHype' Smith]

We've had this discussion before Shane and here is why i disagree:

1 simple point....i hate reinstalling windows and wondering what f-ed up thing might happen (its a rariety but it used to happen once in every 25 installs). I also hate reinstalling and configuring software. I agree, if all you do is run windows, a browser, a e-mail program and Office, DONT GHOST! I have so many programs that i can never remember the settings to that no two installs are alike.

Here is what i did. I did a base install of programs I always use. I tweaked them, i tweaked the system, i got everything i want setup perfectly as a baseline system. Then I decided to see how long the baseline system would stay up. The ghost image i am using is based on a 4 1/2 week uptime. Why in the hell would i re-install windows every time something went bad and hope and pray i can duplicate this exact same setup? Sure I still have to backup data files (oh damn, someone go get me my 128mb keychain, oh the horror). BTW, you should have backups of your data already no matter what. You Ghost your programs, not your data (I highly recommend if you do decide to ghost your patition to move all downloaded files, everything in my documents and all data files off the partition before ghosting) Ghosting is not about saving your desktop right before it crashed (which is dumb, why would you ghost a unstable desktop in the first place), its about getting the perfect baseline setup with all your tweaks and programs in running perfectly BEFORE you start installing and experimenting with your system.

[WorknMan]

The ghost image i am using is based on a 4 1/2 week uptime.

4 1/2 weeks? Geez man, what are you doing to your system ? :) Seriously though, I went for 2 years recently on a Win2k install, and the only reason that ended is cuz I got a new machine, else I could've probably easily gone for 2 more. This with 30+ applications installed.

[Bryan 'KidHype' Smith]

The ghost image i am using is based on a 4 1/2 week uptime.

4 1/2 weeks? Geez man, what are you doing to your system ? :) Seriously though, I went for 2 years recently on a Win2k install, and the only reason that ended is cuz I got a new machine, else I could've probably easily gone for 2 more. This with 30+ applications installed.
I think I have a stick of bad RAM that causes it to crash whenever i run DVD Shrink for a insane amount of time (ripping and encoding 8 DVDs in a row over a 5 hour period will do it every time). Other than that, nothing crashes this thing