Backup - Drive Image - Cloning

[Chuck Engels]

I have used Acronis True Image successfully for a few years now and have had very good results.
With Windows 7 64 bit Acronis has some major issues that I just can't work around, and frankly don't have the time for.
Their customer support is terrible these days and I need a solution now.

I have looked at a few other solutions and nothing seems to do what Acronis could do in Windows XP, that is to clone a drive so you had an exact copy on a separate hard drive. If the drive installed in my computer crashed all I had to do was remove the bad drive and install the clone, back up and running in minutes.

Software like Paragon and NovaBackup are great backup tools but require you to install a separate drive and then restore the image to the drive, taking hours to accomplish.

Is there anything that will create an exact duplicate of my drive as well as do incremental backups in between clonings that really works as good as Acronis did?

Thanks in advance for any help and suggestions

[Peru]

I thought I cloned my W7 64 bit boot drive with Paragon. I'll have to check which version of Paragon I used when I am at that computer.

You could, if you had to, just make the image and restore to an empty new drive to make your clone.

[Chuck Engels]

Thanks Peru, Paragon Tech Support told me that their software does not create a bootable drive, just the drive image. It takes hours to restore the image to a hard drive and It cannot be restored to an external drive. You must first intall a new drive, then install Windows 7 and the Paragon software as well, then you can use the software to overwrite the drive with the disc image, at least that's the way I understand what they told me. That is way too much work and I need to be up and running in minutes, not hours or days.

[Chuck Engels]

This looks promising, has good reviews and it's free...
http://www.todo-backup.com/products/hom ... ftware.htm

Q: Can I backup the whole disk?

A: Yes. EaseUS Todo Backup can backup the whole disk as an image file or clone the disk to another hard drive.

Anyone familiar with this software?

[Peru]

Thanks Peru, Paragon Tech Support told me that their software does not create a bootable drive, just the drive image. It takes hours to restore the image to a hard drive and It cannot be restored to an external drive. You must first intall a new drive, then install Windows 7 and the Paragon software as well, then you can use the software to overwrite the drive with the disc image, at least that's the way I understand what they told me. That is way too much work and I need to be up and running in minutes, not hours or days.

I have Paragon Backup & Recovery 10 Suite.

It does, in fact have the ability to clone a drive. It's called "Copy Hard Disk" which I have successfully used and tested for my editing rig running W7 Pro 64 bit.

[Chuck Engels]

I don't know why they told me it wouldn't, cost them a sale.
Guess the tech support guy didn't know what he was talking about.
I sent them a comment when I uninstalled and told them why, they haven't gotten back to me to say anything different.
The product I was trying out was Paragon Drive Backup 10 Workstation.

[John 'twosheds' McDonald]

I'm in the same position as Chuck so following this thread with interest.

[George Tyndall]

I have Paragon Backup & Recovery 10 Suite.

It does, in fact have the ability to clone a drive. It's called "Copy Hard Disk" which I have successfully used and tested for my editing rig running W7 Pro 64 bit.

Peru, when you have time, please describe in more detail the procedure for cloning your C drive and then, in the event of a failure of the C drive, using the clone to boot your machine.

Are you cloning onto a drive that is designed for internal use but that you have temporarily placed into an external case? Or, are you cloning onto a second internal drive that you can choose to boot from when necessary?

[Peru]

Peru, when you have time, please describe in more detail the procedure for cloning your C drive and then, in the event of a failure of the C drive, using the clone to boot your machine.

I am at work now and the W7 machine is home. I'll look at it when I go home. As I recall, I think I just clicked on "Backup" and there was a tab to "Copy Hard Disk". I used the procedure described in the answer to the second question later in this post.

If I need to use the clone, all I have to do is power down the computer and physically swap the boot drives.

I only cloned the C drive. I run two drives in raid 0 for my media and project files, two in raid 0 for media cache and page file, one drive for exports, and one drive for backups. I only keep media for the project on which I am currently working on in this computer.

I have the media also stored on an external hard drive and an off site (my business) external backup drive (Actually, I have two backup externals which I rotate, so that there is always a backup drive off site), so if my media raid fails, all I need to do is set up a new raid 0 and reload the media from one of the backups, and the project files from the internal backup. I occasionally copy the project files to a DVD+RW for an off site backup during editing and place the final project file on my external media drives.

Are you cloning onto a drive that is designed for internal use but that you have temporarily placed into an external case?
No. I did get one of those devices that connects via USB to which you can connect either a SATA or IDE drive (It also has a power supply for the connected drive so that it doesn't need USB power.), but have not had time yet to see if it will work.

Or, are you cloning onto a second internal drive that you can choose to boot from when necessary?
I temporarily connected a new drive internally and cloned to it. Then I removed it to store it in my archives.

[George Tyndall]

I temporarily connected a new drive internally and cloned to it. Then I removed it to store it in my archives.

Different but related question: Once you've created that clone, can you install it in any similar machine, or will it function only with the specific machine that you used to create the clone?

Also, once manufacturers begin, in the future, to ship machines with Win8 pre-installed, would it be possible to replace the new machine's C drive with the cloned HDD that you made with Win7 64-bit and still see everything running well?

[Gerlinde]

Why not use Win 7 for your purpose? It does everything you need. You can make a system image and incremental backups. I have used it successfully as I replaced the hard drive of my notebook with a bigger one. Here is a guide on how to do it.

[George Tyndall]

Why not use Win 7 for your purpose? It does everything you need. You can make a system image and incremental backups. I have used it successfully as I replaced the hard drive of my notebook with a bigger one. Here is a guide on how to do it.

I seem to recall Bob writing that Win7 is "painfully slow" for that purpose. Was that also your experience?

[Peru]

Different but related question: Once you've created that clone, can you install it in any similar machine, or will it function only with the specific machine that you used to create the clone?

It will only boot in a machine of identical hardware. You can connect it to another machine to open the files.

Also, once manufacturers begin, in the future, to ship machines with Win8 pre-installed, would it be possible to replace the new machine's C drive with the cloned HDD that you made with Win7 64-bit and still see everything running well?
See the above answer.

[Chuck Engels]

I started using Win 7 but I really need to be able to create an exact duplicate of my drive to another drive. That way if the drive crashes I only have to replace one drive with the other. I can't find a way for Win 7 to do that.

[Gerlinde]

Chuck, did you see my post? Here is the link again: http://www.pagestart.com/win7bckuprstrnhd072610.html