Adobe Community: Best software for doing full backups to ext. hard disk to to be used to restore system

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1. John T Smith,

Jun 28, 2012 9:00 AM in reply to lasvideo

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The product I use is at http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/image-for-linux.htm

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Image runs off of a bootable CD via Linux (the Zip you download includes a program to make the bootable CD) and it reads EVERYTHING on the drive, even the hidden registration information, so everything is restored when needed... and you may restore the image to a brand new drive in case of a crash, and not have to re-install anything

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Please note that I own no part of Image, and I don't get a referral fee (that is just a plain web link) but I use the program and it has saved me a LOT of trouble when I had a hard drive die... and I was able to restore everything and not have to re-install or re-activate a single program, from Windows on up

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2. lasvideo,

Jun 28, 2012 10:00 AM in reply to John T Smith

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It looks like Paragon will also do a very nice job of this process as well.

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3. John T Smith,

Jun 28, 2012 10:19 AM in reply to lasvideo

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I am not familiar with Paragon, so don't know if it has an independent process

I like Image because it runs from a self-booting CD so may be used to restore a backup to a brand new drive... which I have done, and for what I consider to be a reasonable price

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4. Peru Bob,

Jun 28, 2012 10:34 AM in reply to John T Smith

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Paragon has the ability to do a "bare metal backup" which is done by booting from a CD (Windows PE) that is created as part of the initial setup.

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5. Bill Gehrke,

Jun 28, 2012 10:40 AM in reply to John T Smith

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I use Paragon (Thanks, Eric) and it does beautiful job of cloning your

OS/Applications drive, therefore it has created an identical image.

Bill Gehrke

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6. lasvideo,

Jun 28, 2012 10:42 AM in reply to Bill Gehrke

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Thanks for the feedback Bill. I did notice a while back that Eric specified it as his choice as well.

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7. Bill Gehrke,

Jun 28, 2012 10:49 AM in reply to lasvideo

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I do not use it primarily as backup, most of my usage has been to test different boot drives in my PPBM test systems

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8. JEShort01,

Jun 29, 2012 5:12 AM in reply to lasvideo

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lasvideo,

My favorites are ShadowProtect to do an "image backup" of boot drive and Beyond Compare for backing up files for all other "data" arrays. ShadowProtect does not seem to have much market share compared with Ghost and Acronis, but I really love it.

What I like about ShadowProtect:

- Extremely fast (complete image backup for 61GB of files on my boot SSD RAID 0 array to a RAID data array takes less than 3 minutes)

- Can do image backups across a LAN; restores from boot CDROM and USB device

- Allows for backups from one controller and restore of OS on a different controller and/or RAID configuration (has HAL tools; Hardware ? Layer I think)

- Can "mount" an image backup as a drive letter and see (and copy) all directories, files, etc. that are contained in the archive

What I like about Beyond Compare:

- Can choose what to backup and what to ignore very easily (for example you can set it to ignore certain files or directory names to ignore and then save how you set things up as a "session")

- Only needs to copy over files that are new or have changed since your last backup

- Makes it very easy to selectively delete files from your backup

Regards,

Jim

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9. Harm Millaard,

Jun 29, 2012 5:18 AM in reply to JEShort01

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I second Jim's advise about Beyond Compare. It is a great application to have in your tool-kit. I'm not familiar with Shadow Protect.

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10. lasvideo,

Jun 29, 2012 6:13 AM in reply to Harm Millaard

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Thanks Jim and Harm! I appreciate your input.

It looks like at this point my needs are to be able to do a full back up of my system / apps drive to a USB3 drive and create a boot disk, to be used in case the C: drive is damaged or crashes.

From what little research Ivd done its seems Paragon will do that for me. As time goes on my backup needs may change and get more varied.

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Best software for doing full backups to ext. hard disk to to be used to restore system

Jun 28, 2012 8:49 AM

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