back up software program recommendation?

[shaveice]

hi. my friend is looking for a software program that will allow him to get his C drive backed up to a secondary/separate drive so that in the event of a meltdown, he can boot from this secondary drive and not lose anything.

his C drive contains only about 300 MB of data so it's tiny.

i know ghost is a frequently mentioned program but the user reviews at amazon were quite poor. i'm sure there's something much better available so if you have a recommedation, i'm all ears.

thanks!

[adrian]

If its 300mb, then just copy and past it onto a CD and burn it.

But I'd prefer ghosting, because you can just stick the CD into the drive and reimage the whole shebang right there. Although, I myself never tried to recover from a backup, but I guess I'll try next week.

And if he has WinXP, in accessories > system tools, there's a backup wizard. Try that.

[helen]

Is this secondary drive a seperate hard disk or is it just the one hard drive partitioned into several drive letters?

Also what operating system are you using?

[lurkah]

hi. my friend is looking for a software program that will allow him to get his C drive backed up to a secondary/separate drive so that in the event of a meltdown, he can boot from this secondary drive and not lose anything.

his C drive contains only about 300 MB of data so it's tiny.
The size of his C drive sounds like it must be Windows 98 or earlier. I'd use Ghost and clone his C drive's image to the separate secondary drive (be sure to back up any data on the secondary drive first as Ghosting to that drive will erase all of its contents). Once that's done, he can once again use the secondary drive for data storage. Should a meltdown occur later, all he'd need to do is remove the blown C drive and install the secondary drive in its place while resetting the secondary drive's jumper to the Master position.

[shaveice]

hi. no, my friend's pc runs on xp pro. he only has a little data cuz it's just word stuff, excel, outlook, etc. he doesn't collect images, mp3s, video clips, etc.

when i said his data amounts to about 300 MB, that's what i meant. his drive can probably hold something like 100 gigs but he's just using a small fraction of it.

burn to a cd? nope, cuz he wants his c drive to be backed up every time something new is added. at the very least, he'd like his data backed up once a day. it's mostly financial info and financial accounts and emails. infomation that's very important for him. he's had a few meltdowns and is sick of having to go through a long, manual process of restoring all his info.

yup, he has (actually, will have as his friend will be installing it soon) a second, separate hard drive.

if by ghosting you mean using the program norton ghost v. 10
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B000BAT2TE/sr=1-1/qid=1137111147/ref=pd_bbs_1/102-5808946-4636169?%5Fencoding=UTF8&v=glance
then as mentioned initially, i'm not too keen on doing that cuz the user reviews basically says it sucks. i'd guess there must be a program that costs more but is also better. to my friend, the money's worth it if it works well and is solid as a rock.

thanks for the tip on the back up wizard. i'll look into that.

thanks again for all the ideas. :)

[lurkah]

hi. no, my friend's pc runs on xp pro. he only has a little data cuz it's just word stuff, excel, outlook, etc. he doesn't collect images, mp3s, video clips, etc.

when i said his data amounts to about 300 MB, that's what i meant. his drive can probably hold something like 100 gigs but he's just using a small fraction of it.
Ah, okay. I misunderstood. When you said that he wanted his C drive backed up, I thought you meant that he wanted to back up everything on the C drive, including the Windows operating system.

In that case, Windows XP Pro has a built-in backup utility (XP Home users need to install the utility manually (http://windows.about.com/od/shortcutsquickieshowto/l/aa020203a.htm)) that your friend can read about here (http://windows.about.com/od/filesfoldersdisks/l/aa010624a.htm) to learn about the different types of backups (normal, incremental, or differential) he might want to use. He'll be able to pick and choose the data folders that he wants backed up.

[Konaguy]

I use CD Burner XP http://www.cdburnerxp.se/ and burn all my critical files
to DVD+R. The latter software is highly reliable and i haven't burnt a coaster yet.

[Miulang]

My latest computer came loaded with a package called Recover Pro from Phoenix Technologies. It automatically backs up my files according to a schedule I create. Right now I have it set to automatically back up everything once a day, but I could have it save things more often or only do it manually whenever I can remember. If my drive blew up, it would allow me to restore to the last restore point or to the factory default or any increment in between. So far, I haven't had to test whether it works, though! ;)

Miulang

[shaveice]

in case it may help someone else, here are some replies i got from another message board:

Easy to use, reliable:

http://www.handybackup.com/

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Why pay $30 for a program when Syncback is excellent and is FREE! http://www.2brightsparks.com/downloads.html

Ghost is not a data back up program, it's more for Operating System backing up and restoring. I used to use the predecessor to Ghost, Drive Image, and have now switched to Acronis--faster and no error messages.

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If you are wanting disk imaging software I highly recommend Trueimage.

..............................

Freebyte Backup

It is free - It's outstanding and can do anything you might want to do designing your backup procedure. Try it!
You can find it at freebyte.com