DerbyBorn said:
Thanks - which do you really recommend? I am keen to save my settings
(Network, E Mail, etc) as well as other stuff.
I'm currently using Macrium Reflect Free. It's much easier to setup a
WinPE bootable rescue CD than with Easeus. I had to figure out how to
use WAIK (Windows Automated Installation Kit) to modify the boot image
and wrote up a post to put into their forums since it is hardly an easy
procedure and Easeus doesn't make it easy even for their payware whereas
Macrium does. Before I was using Easeus Todo Workstation. This is
payware but I got it free through TrialPay (just be sure to unsuscribe
to any trial before you start getting charged and pick one that doesn't
need your credit card to start the trial). Its features do still need
some tweaking. I got burned when I deleted a backup job (the
*definition* of a backup) but also had all the backup image files
deleted. I lost all my backups because I wanted to delete a job and
create a new one (that continued to use the old backups). Twas a gotcha
that blew away my past backups. Oh, they replied that's what a job
delete would do but it wasn't obvious to a user that hadn't first asked
them about it and it wasn't mentioned in their documentation. Before
that I was using Easeus ToDo (freeware) but wanted the incremental
backup schedule available in the payware version. Before that I used
Acronis TrueImage but it was an old version that eventually exhibited
problems on old hardware with SATA on an old mobo (verifies would fail)
but Easeus and Macrium don't have a problem with timing. A newer mobo
with better SATA controllers would probably still work okay with that
3-version old copy of Acronis. There is a free Acronis TrueImage you
can get from Seagate but it's crippled to permit only full image backups
(no incrementals or differentials, and no scheduling). On my aunt's
WinXP x64 host, I couldn't get Acronis or Easeus to be wholly reliable
but Macrium has worked so far.
The above are imaging backup/restore programs. Some may include file
(logical) backups, too, but I'd have to go back to check. That wasn't
my interest since I can mount a backup image like a drive to find files
from there to restore.
I don't rely on manually instigated image backups except when I'm about
to commit surgery on my OS that I may need to escape out of. That's why
Easeus ToDo Workstation was nice because you could save snapshots. They
ran in a few minutes and let me restore the prior state of my host
unlike the hour it takes for an image backup, and the same for restoring
from a snapshot rather than from an image. Alas, if snapshotting was
enabled then it interferred with image restores. I had to disable
snapshotting so I could then do an image restore. You have to allocate
a reserve file (in a really oddly named folder whose name you don't get
to choose in the root of the OS partition) to hold the snapshots which
means 10-20 GB (whatever size you allocated) gets constantly eaten on
your hard disk.
One feature that I liked about Acronis TrueImage was that you could hide
the partition (drive) where the backup files were stored. While this
doesn't preclude highly advanced malware that accesses hard disks
through raw methods rather than through the file system, it thwarts a
lot of malware that, for example, simply goes hunting around all local
drives to rename files, set them as hidden, and encrypt them to ransom
them until you pay the hijacker to let you decrypt them. It simply
doesn't assign a drive letter to the partition with the backup files
(plus it uses a partition type that is relatively unknown that it puts
in the partition table that most utilities won't understand). That
partition is normally accessible only by TrueImage. It doesn't even
bother to mount the partition as a volume (drive) to access the files
there. That eliminates the opportunity for vulnerability during the
backups because the backup store remains hidden.
Easeus doesn't protect the backup location. So I had to use a batch
file with commands to remove the drive designator from the partition for
the backup files after the backup completed and assign a drive letter
before the backup began. This was possible because backup jobs in
Easeus let you define pre- and post-backup commands, so I had Easeus run
my batch files to assign a drive letter (pre-command) and remove it
(post-command). That still meant, however, during the backup that the
partition had a drive letter and could be seen in Windows Explorer as
well as by any malware, so there was a window of opportunity (or
vulnerability) when the backup location was visible. Macrium Reflect
also has no feature to hide the backup location so I'll have to do the
same with it as I did with Easeus; however, the free version doesn't let
me define pre- and post-commands for a backup job so I'll have to use
those within a batch file that starts the Macrium backup job and use
that enveloping batch file as the scheduled task in Task Scheduler. I
like the backup location to be hidden when not in use and would prefer
it always be hidden even during the backup but I can't have everything
in freebies.
For now, I'm using Macrium Reflect Free but that only does full image
backups (no incrementals or differentials). It can be scheduled to
perform image backups at regular intervals. With Easeus, I'd schedule a
weekly full image backup on Mondary at 3AM and incrementals the other
days at 3AM. Since Macrium (free) only does full images, it'll only be
scheduled on Mondays at 3AM. Making a WinPE rescue CD is easy with
Macrium (very tough to get right with Easeus). I have a payware version
of Easeus (ToDo Workstation) versus the freebie one (ToDo) but still
chose to move to Macrium Reflect Free; however, my experience is short
with Macrium (only a few weeks) so my opinion could change. Right now
I'm targeting freebies for backup/restore and not looking at payware.
Macrium Reflect Free
Easeus Todo Backup Home (free), Workstation (payware)
There are many other free and payware solutions but the above are the
ones that I choose for my needs and wants. If I would pay the money,
I'd probably trial the latest version of Acronis TrueImage to see if it
fixed its verify problem for the SATA drives on my old mobo (whose SATA
RAID controller was an early version).
