Win7 backup software recommendations?

[Jeff Keyzer]

Does anyone have any recommendations for a *good* backup tool for Windows 7?

I was spoiled by Time Machine on OS X for years, and now I can't find
anything like it for the PC.

Right now I am using Acronis True Image Home, which on paper should
fulfill my requirements but in practice is unreliable and
hard/impossible to configure the way I want it.

My requirements are:

- Backs up a full disk image, so I can easily recover my entire system
in the event of a HD crash. (This is critical, Time Machine has saved my
butt several times now.)
- Allows me to restore individual files from that disk image as necessary.
- Makes efficient use of disk space. (Win 7's idea of making a system
image + a file backup consumes 2x the necessary disk space. I don't
have enough 2TB disks lying around to waste them.)
- Manages disk space by deleting old backups and doesn't fail silently
if the drive fills up (Acronis has a nasty habit of doing this.)
- Does not back up online, to the cloud, etc. If I have a crash, I want
my data here and I want it now.

Does such a tool exist?

- Jeff

[Matthew McCabe]

Back in the day when I was doing Windows admin work, we used this for
our department: http://www.retrospect.com/ I haven't used it in years
and cannot attest to the latest version...but you may want to check it
out.

-Matt

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[Ben Combee]

On Tue, Mar 1, 2011 at 3:18 AM, Jeff Keyzer <je...@mightyohm.com> wrote:

> Does anyone have any recommendations for a *good* backup tool for Windows 7?
>
> I was spoiled by Time Machine on OS X for years, and now I can't find
> anything like it for the PC.

Have you tried Genie Timeline? The website is
http://www.genie9.com/Free_products/free_timeline.aspx and it looks
very similar to Time Machine. I've not given it a test myself, but it
seems very capable.

[Nathan Toups]

Time Machine isn't actually a full system image backup tool (though it
does capture all the critical files for a speedy recovery).

I would recommend an "image" based solution separate from from your
incremental backups.
Use something like CloneZilla for the image backup and then something
like cobian for incremental.

If you don't mind using commercial software, crashplan sans the cloud
backup does a great job of local backups. They are encrypted, granted,
but it is super efficient, easy to recover files, and has great
built-in email notification.

--
Nathan Toups | rojoroboto.com | 512.981.7656

[Jon Kelly]

Crashplan sounds pretty cool, but their site appears to be down?

[David Mitchell]

LOL. Hope they have a crash plan.

[Nathan Toups]

haha, working for me right now, and earlier today when I was setting
it up for a client.
(don't worry, I don't get paid by them at all).

--
Nathan Toups | rojoroboto.com | 512.981.7656

[EBo]

Some friends back at the U. used ghost, but he did not like it much and
it had lots of problems. YMMV

Thinking a little out of the box there might be other options (like a
tool that uses rsync) that runs on multiple systems.

One of the things I did back in the day was periodically dump the
bootable partition of all the machines in the network and then keep the
main file store separate. The couple of times that a disk went out I
was able to format a new disk via a disk dock/external drive, mirror the
boot partition and then copy over the user data. On the Beowulf cluster
I only had to keep 5 copies of the root partitions (because all the
nodes were the same). The windows XP machine was handled the same way.

Back at the U. my buddy did something similar to this, but all the lab
computers (~50) had the same disk image except the two servers, so the
above was easily manageable. These were all Win* machines.

EBo --

[Jon Kelly]

Bad timing I guess :D It looks like it's back now.

[Jeff Keyzer]

Ben,

I don't think the free version does full disk image backups.  The paid version might, but the website isn't really clear on how their "Disaster Recovery" feature works.

Jeff

On Tue, Mar 1, 2011 at 10:32 AM, Ben Combee <ben.c...@gmail.com> wrote:

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[Jeff Keyzer]

Matt,

I think this is more for people who are backing up several machines to a central backup server.  They do have a single machine license for around $100 bucks, which is a bit more than I want to spend.  It claims to do both incremental and full recovery style backups, so maybe Retrospect is a possibility if I can't find a cheaper option.

(Also, annoying that their website doesn't go right to the product but to Roxio's site.  Grr.)

Jeff

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Jeff Keyzer
je...@mightyohm.com

[Jeff Keyzer]

EBo,

I think Ghost and ATI are both programs that were ok at one time, but have been bloated/ruined by greedy companies.  (See also: Quickbooks.)

I'm really not into doing separate image/file backups unless I really, really have to.  And while I use rsync on Linux for backups, I really want something with a proper GUI for Windows.  Is that too much to ask?  :-)

Oh, and continuous protection would be nice, too.  And not the "continuous protection until it fails silently and stops working" style that Acronis has.  (Augh!)

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Jeff Keyzer
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[Jeff Keyzer]

Nathan,

The beauty of time machine it enables a complete system restore AND file recovery from the same files on the backup drive, so I don't need a 2 TB backup drive to backup 1TB worth of files.

I guess full system recovery ability is really what I need, more than an "image" backup.

I'll check out CloneZilla though, based on your recommendation.

Thanks.

Jeff

--
Jeff Keyzer
je...@mightyohm.com

[EBo]

I understand not wanting to do separate backups. As for rsync GUI on
windows:

http://www.aboutmyip.com/AboutMyXApp/DeltaCopy.jsp
http://www.rsync.net/resources/howto/windows_rsync.html
http://dailycupoftech.com/windows-backup-with-rsync-and-freenas/
http://www.gaztronics.net/rsync.php

and some interesting rsync pages I stumbled upon:
http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~bcpierce/unison/
http://www.rsync.net/resources/howto/windows_backup_agent.html

I might have grabbed a little to much cruff off the net, but this might
give you a couple of interfaces if you like rsync but want a GUI or want
rsync with cygwin...

re: continuous protection...
The only way I know to do that is to configure it to work silently but
give error output. If there is any error output send a email to...

Hope that helps

EBo --

[Matt Goodman]

As a minimalist Linux guy, I just keep everything in my Dropbox :P  I also shell out another 3 bucks a month for the "packrat" setting which keeps the version history of literally everything!  They are not making money on me!
--Matthew Goodman

=====================
Check Out My Website: http://craneium.net
Find me on LinkedIn: http://tinyurl.com/d6wlch

[Jeff Keyzer]

EBo,

Thanks for the links! Have you ever tried any of these? Which one is
your favorite?

Jeff Keyzer
MightyOhm Engineering
je...@mightyohm.com

[EBo]

Jeff,

The only one I did use for a time was so many years ago (3 or 4) that I
do not remember which one it was. I do remember however that all I had
to do to synchronize the LiDAR preprocessing (which I did on a small
Beowulf cluster) and the GIS processing (done in a Windos XP machine
because I was *required* to generate ESRI TIN's) was to set up the
configuration and punch something on a GUI. For a lot of the stuff I
developed scripts though to automate a bunch of the processing.

/rant-on

I had to set up this monstrosity because there are no open description
of ESRI TIN file format even though everyone knows that they use
Delaunay triangulation, and I can show that the first algorithm to
compute the triangulation was formulated via a geometric solution of
Voronoi diagrams first in 1644 by René Descartes in his Principles of
Philosophy...

/rant-off

Anyway, I was able to slept TB sized datasets back and forth on a semi
regular basis... Hope this helps, and sorry I do not have the machines
handy to check.

EBo --

On Wed, 02 Mar 2011 11:49:04 -0600, Jeff Keyzer wrote:
> EBo,
>

> Thanks for the links! Have you ever tried any of these? Which one
> is your favorite?
>