I have a few systems set up where bandwidth is not suitable for dynamic offsite backups but fine for what I need to do otherwise. Others have said in previous posts here that Acronis is a very worthwhile application for creating image discs of hard discs. Question: Anyone ever use the imaging in Nero to create the same thing? I ask because I already have Nero as it came with some drives I bought. If Acronis has benefits which Nero can't provide, I would love to hear the pros and cons from anyone who knows. Thanks in advance.
Seems they are so entirely different that no comparison is warranted. Doesn't Nero simply burn copies of the files you select to optic media? Acronis accounts for every bit of data from every sector, including OS and hidden files.
Everything you wanted to know about data backups, and more... http://www.backupzilla.com/ Free, Linux based bit-level disk backup/restore/clone: http://clonezilla.org/
Things may have changed, but a few years back I sampled several free imaging and cloning programs. They either had functional limitations or were very slow. If one is running W7, one should check around customer reviews and forums about how well Acronis is working. Sometimes with new versions and OSs it takes a while to iron out all of the bugs. Acronis v11 works perfectly on XP, however, and is relatively fast... cloning at about 3 GB/min of data. (Imaging to external media is slower, of course.)
That was my first thought too when I read this too but I checked out the Nero site and it looks like they have a backup product that is different from their burning software: http://www.nero.com/enu/backitup-and-burn-introduction.html "Back up data to hard drive, CD, DVD, Blu-ray Disc, FTP, memory card, and online storage" My only question to the OP is if it lets you perform a full image backup while the OS is running and files are locked like Acronis does. I still use Acronis exclusively myself.
I ran the Nero BackItUp this morning. Problem is I only get a 34.2mb file burned to cd from each drive. Of the two drives, one was 98Gb of data and the other is about 14Gb of OS/ Program Files. Seemed so odd I had to ask. I did not know those free ones were out there. I'm about to check them out. Thanks to everyone who contributed. OP
I have a hdd with 17 gb of OS & program files. How small of an ISO file (in gb) should I expect to be able to get this down to? Thanks!
Really depends on your data but as a point of reference when I do an Acronis full image backup on my laptop with 89GB(of 106GB) used the image file is 55GB however I do have a fair amount of compressed data (zip'd) on my machine. I would estimate with maximum compression you could get it down to anywhere between 5 and 8GB
@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.
That's great info. I think I turned 18gb into about 12gb without knowing how to compress it. 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. But if it just has to be RAID with mirroring and shadowing I'll go that route if it can be done on this box. Thanks!