Disc Imaging for backup purposes

Quote from dc101:

@mgookin

I have been using Acronis 9 with XP for a long time without any problems. Have not used Nero for backup though.

Your iso will be smaller than 17 GB with Acronis for you can use 3 different compression setting, although most likely, it won't compress 17 GB enough to fit on a single DVD. The good news is that Acronis is smart enough to skip swap file and other large system files that are simply recreated automatically by Windows if not there. That way, you may end up with much smaller total size to begin with.

In any case, I'd recommend getting an extra hdd - either external or internal and backup the whole thing there.

The main plus with Acronis is that it allows you to create bootable CD with Acronis on it, so when your machine is not even bootable, you can use that CD to boot, run Acronis of the cd without Windows, and restore the whole thing from your backup drive. I also used the same procedure when I got a brand new drive to replace the old one where my OS was - totally seamless process without reinstall. Not to mention, you can image your kids machines, so when they get a virus while downloading and installing crap of the net, you can restore their machines in no time.
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Now that's awesome. Acronis here I come.

Which Acronis program are you doing this with? I went to their site and it's a little confusing as to which application does what.

What's sad is Microsoft could and should have this ability, but I guess they want us to keep buying computers. Microsoft hides the system restore files from us so we can't save a shell, do a remote backup with them, etc.
 
Quote from mgookin:

How does Acronis treat system volume files and the like? The software I used will not back up locked files/ files in use. This tells me I'm not getting the "shell" which I'm looking for. I'm expecting that if I experience failure, I take an off the shelf hdd and write the iso to it and I'm up and running with my OS, drivers, other software, etc. all at once with minimal rebuilding. Is this a realistic expectation with Acronis? I have no problem paying for something which will accomplish the objective.
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If you do a full image backup (as opposed to backing up select files/directories) then everything is backed up - even files that are locked/in-use like your Outlook PST file.

In case of needing to do a full restore - you would boot the Acronis CD and point it to the Acronis backup file (which is a proprietary format, not ISO) and then tell it where you want to restore the image to and then it will do the rest.

I'm using Acronis True Image Workstation 9.1, looks like there is a more recent version out now, I think you would want to use Acronis True Image Home 2010.
 
Quote from mgookin:

"... I'm expecting that if I experience failure, I take an off the shelf hdd and write the iso to it and I'm up and running with my OS, drivers, other software, etc. all at once with minimal rebuilding. Is this a realistic expectation with Acronis?
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Not quite.

If your HDD fails and you replace it... then

1. Boot from Acronis recovery CD
2. "Restore Image" by selecting a file (from external HDD) which is your previously created image. Acronis uncompresses that file and restores everything onto the HDD, bit by bit


If you have used Acronis to make a "clone", all you have to do is plug it in and boot.
 
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