Thinkpads Forum

I have an external USB HD and I woulld like to regular back up.
I have used R&R to back up both C and D drives.

I have all of my important file in the D drive, but R&R did not allow me to only back up D drive.

Is there a software out there at a reasonable price / free, that will back up a partition into an external drive? More specifically once a back up is made it will for changes in the from the last back up and delete/add files accordingly?

When I did R&R it must have taken almost 5 hours so I was hoping for something more efficient / quick.

Thanks in advance

RnR will not allow exclusion of the C drive. It took 5 hours?? What version of RnR are you running, how much new information do you add/change between backups, and how often do you back up? RnR should only be making incremental backups after the initial base so unless you're adding large amounts of data or altering a large number of your files the backup time should be reasonable.
Are you backing up to Local and USB?

croooowe,

Thanks for the quick response. I will see how long it takes to do an incremental from the base that was made. I was not sure if R&R does incremental or not. But if it can do it efficiently that will be nice.

I have combined amount of about 80GB in my HD so may be that was the reason it took so long to do the first back up.

Thanks.

I did a backup (about 20 GB) with R&R ver. 3 awhile back and it took over 5 hours also. Furthermore I did not see it do a verify of the backup.

See thread: http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=17683

I use StompSoft BackUp MyPC version 6. It backs up in half of the time, with a verify. I can do base, incremental and differential backups. I can choose which partitions, directories, files, etc. to backup or restore. It will back up to CD's DVD's, internal hard drive, external hard drive, or network drive. I am well pleased with the program. One caveat, generally you need a Windows Install CD to restore to a new hard drive. If you have the IBM Product Recovery Discs, you would have to use these first, install BackUp MyPC, then restore your backup.

With RnR you can exclude files, folders, and partitions EXCEPT the OS partition as it IS, in the end, a system backup program provided to allow users to recover their system. You can however exclude non OS specific files in the OS partition if you want to minimize the backup size there. And of course you can backup to all the same places with RnR and rescue individual files, folders, or partitions. It does not however, do a verify.

Thanks again,

I am not concerned about the OS partition, which I could restore that partition in about 3 hours with all the essential softwares that need the most.

I am more concerned about other files that I create on a daily basis, which I store in another partition to that of the OS. Since I plan to do back up at least twice a week I would like it to be efficient, in that it would compare all the files and if it was added in my HD it will back it up and if it was deleted it would just delete it as well.

I will look into the stomp soft.

If anyone else has any suggestions I would appreciate it.

Thanks

If you are just backing up data you can just drag and drop to any drive available, external network, ultrabay. Nothing fancy is needed.

I have been looking at http://www.mirra.com/product/why_mirra_ ... erent.htmlthis product.
Seeagate owns it, so it can't be too bad. I especially like the mirroring, and online free sharing.
A bit pricey, but I guess it depends on the value of your data. Hopefully there are discounts somewhere.

You might want to consider Acronis True Image. I originally got it to clone a system to a larger drive, but now I use it primarily as back up software. Creating and restoring images of partitions is relatively quick and painless. Even cloning a drive with the hidden partition is not now a major deal (see this thread, for example, http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=20766 ).

Should you need to recover an individual file, TI allows you to mount a partition image as a "virtual disk" and you can select and copy files from the "virtual disk" to the real one. In addition, should you ever have to restore the OS partition, you won't have to reinstall any software.

Correct me if I am wrong - as I have not used cloning software like Acronis True Image. Doesn't cloning software require a second hard drive to use? In other words, you can't span a cloned image over several CD's or DVD's?

GomJabbar wrote:Correct me if I am wrong - as I have not used cloning software like Acronis True Image. Doesn't cloning software require a second hard drive to use? In other words, you can't span a cloned image over several CD's or DVD's?

You are correct. If you have the ultrabay hdrive adapter from ibm it came with software very similar to Acronis called Ezgig. Reliable software.
The latest version of Acronis is very buggy, but does work very well as an os imaging program so you don't have to reinstall and tweak.

The Backupmypc you use is much, much better for Data only than Acronis, because it is not sector based. Therefore it is much faster and has controllable file sizes.

Cloning a drive and creating an "image" of a drive or a partition on a drive are two different things. "Cloning" is a direct disk-to-disk process which creates an exact copy of one hard drive on another hard drive.

Using Acronis TI one can create an image of a drive or partition in virtually any location available. You can create an image on a hard disk, a network drive or virtually any removable media (CD-R/RW, DVD-RW, DVD+R/RW, Iomega Zip or Iomega Jaz for examples). Clearly, a image of an entire hard drive will take more than one CD.

The images can be used to restore the software and data to the same or a new hard drive, essentially accomplishing the same thing as a "clone" of the drive. (And yes, I've done it in this fashion)

The latest version of Acronis is very buggy

I can't speak directly to the quote as I've had no reason to upgrade from the version I'm using. However, recent threads in various places on this forum indicate that assertions that the latest version are "buggy" may be outdated.

Thank everyone for suggestions.

I found this software called "Ice mirror"

http://www.ice-graphics.com/ICEMirror/IndexE.html

It works pretty well for what I want to do. It basically compares "master" to "mirror" and changes the mirror according to any changes that has taken place.

This was what I was looking for. It is good and simple enough for me to back up my D drive to external HD.

I use the built-in Windows backup in XP on my work machine. It's ... okay ... only okay.

I have Norton Ghost for my own, it's not free as you ask, but it does what I want, when I want it to, and doesn't fall down or disappoint me.

Also it does the "partition backup to an external drive" trick, from Windows or from a boot disc.