Backup software for PC

[pavel123]

Hi,
Can somebody please suggest a reliable third party backup software for PC (Win 7). My own experience goes back to Win 95 on Me; after that I try to avoid using Win utilities...
Thank you.

[Doug Nelson]

I like Genie Backup Manager Pro. It has every feature I've heard of, including disaster recovery, and it's backup file format is just renamed zip files. You can open them with any zip program even if you don't have the backup software installed.

[mistermonday]

Pavel, you did not mention if you are looking to backup files & data & settings, or backup your entire Windows Operating System as well.
Doug, unless something has changed, the Genie Manager Pro manual stated up front that GM was not intended to recover from a complete system failure and that Windows OS needed to be installed before GM could restore all the preferences and settings.
If you are looking for something that will restore the OS from a fatal crash, I suggest checking out either Norton Ghost or Acronis True Image 2011.
Regards, Murray

[Doug Nelson]

GM Pro has full disaster recovery, OS and all. It makes bootable DVDs, I've done it.

[mistermonday]

Hi Doug, OK, I found the info at a 3rd party review site. The Disaster Recovery will restore a Windows OS but it does so differently from Image technology. It is slower but works and in the end there is not much difference.
Tks & regards, Murray

[pavel123]

Thank you. I am only interested in backing up data, reinstalling OS in not a problem...

[mistermonday]

Pavel, can you describe your backup requirements / strategy. Depending on your needs, S/W suggested would be different as would be the S/W cost. There are many freeware programs available, there are often free backup s/w included when you buy backup drives, like Western Digital My Book series, and then there are very sophisticated backup programs. The last category tend to compress and encapsulate backups in proprietary file formats. This makes browsing and restoration more complicated.
After a lot of experimention including some unfortunate experiences I settled on a different scheme than most people. I segregate my OS from all of my data files, images, docs, etc either on a partitioned drive and/or multiple physical drives. I image my OS which takes about 10 mins. All other drives and partions are backed up to backup drives using a free utility that creates "one-way" mirrored / synchronized backups.
The imaging means if my OS encounters a fatal crash or infection, I can be back up 100% in 15 minutes instead of days. The mirroring backup is quite fast as it only backs up files that have been added or changed and it removes files deleted on my source drives.
Regards, Murray

[DannyRaphael]

As of 1/19/2011: 25% off on the $49.95 price of Genie Backup Manager Home, as well as all the other products offered here: http://www.genie9.com/

The discount code is on the home page.

[pavel123]

Danny, Murray, thank you.
I have i5 Win 7 system with two hard drives, one is used for OS/software/data second strictly for back-up. In addition I have a second computer on the network, I use one of the hard drives for secondary backup. Not the most efficient setup, in the future I will put in a third hard drive for data, at that point I may as well get a network hard drive that come with it's own backup software. So far all I've done was good old copy/paste exercise that gets a bit award with close to 500Gb of data. I don't think I ever had fatal OS crush, with stable OS like XP or Win 7 IMHO this is a low probability event, but this depends on software. I prefer to wipe hard drive clean and top reinstall OS and software every half a year or so, this is a bit involved, but otherwise registry gets too big and slows down computer considerably.

[mistermonday]

Pavel, I have never had a s/w related crash but hard drives are mechanical and they can only spin so many rotations before they fail. If you are not worried about systen restoration, there are a large numebr of backup programs. I suggest you take a look at a program called SyncBack found here http://2brightsparks.com/ They have 3 versions, one of which is 100% free and will likely serve your needs. No encapsulation, no encryption, but it has lots of options to do plain backup, mirror or synchronized backup. It can be set to run automatically or manually.
But there are lots of other sophisticated products like the one Doug has recommended.
Regards, Murray
Regards, Murray

[pavel123]

Thank you, Murray

[mhartman]

If you want to go free and easy, you can do what I do. I use "Paragon Backup & Recovery 2010 Free Advanced" to make a complete image of my Win7 system drive on a backup drive. I do this on a weekly basis, but you could certainly do it more often. Basically, I just start the backup wizard before I leave on Friday afternoons. It is a pretty easy and complete system, but it probably isn't the best for hourly/daily, file-by-file backups because it is aimed more at whole drive backups.

Mike

[pavel123]

Thanks,Mike.

[Kraellin]

paragon is supposed to be pretty good, especially their top of the line stuff. cobian is another you shld look at. also, RAID configurations, such as i have in my system currently, can make backups a bloody breeze, even if a harddrive fails completely. i'm currently using RAID5 with a spare drive not currently in use but sitting waiting for one of the others to fail so that it kicks in. quite handy Ghost from norton used to be pretty good, but havent tried it lately. but the one i'm actually now leaning towards on my next machine is VMWare. with this puppy you can put your entire system in a virtual machine and transport it to just about anywhere. if your entire system fails and you have to rebuild, you put your original o/s on a new machine and then call up your vm module and put it on the new machine and voila, you have your entire system back running as a client on the new machine. it has a lot of other possibilities, too. i have a brother-in-law who is into this big time and does it for a living and he's got me thinking in a whole new direction about o/s'es and backup and computer modules and infinite machines within one machine and... oh, go study this yourself. it's pretty slick

[DanTaylor]

Originally Posted by pavel123

Hi,
Can somebody please suggest a reliable third party backup software for PC (Win 7). My own experience goes back to Win 95 on Me; after that I try to avoid using Win utilities...
Thank you.

I'd suggest Handy Backup, it's a reliable Windows 7 backup software for PC.