Thinkpads Forum

Anyone using anything like Retrospect to routinely backup their machines? Esp. something with incremental backups.....

stephenaron wrote:Anyone using anything like Retrospect to routinely backup their machines? Esp. something with incremental backups.....

I use Acronis Trueimage since long long time - pretty nice tool with a preboot environment to create and restore your data in case Windows messed up (oh my goodness ). I used to create full backups but it's also possible to use incremental or differential backups as well... check it out (www.acronis.com)

Brgds, Torsten.

funny you should ask as I've evaluated about a dozen backup apps over the last week in a quest to find the 'best' for my needs.

one preference I have is for a backup app that will allow me to restore a particular file from a particular date (an app which stores multiple versions of the same file). Apple is introducing this feature in 10.5.

here are my personal findings:

Retrospect Professional 7.5 - solid and stable but too difficult to use
BounceBack - poor reviews, expensive
Backup MyPC 2006 - haven't tried
Iomega Backup & Backup Pro - free to download, good interface, no integrity verification, poor incremental implementation
Retrospect Express HD 2.0 - 75mb of processes running, supposedly creates incremental backups but size of backup folder tripled when adding only 22kb files!
StompSoft PC Backup & Novastor Novabackup (these are the same application) - poor incremental implementation
Genie-Soft - this looks cool but the reviews were mixed
NTI Shadow - this sounds like a great app.. definitely worth a look. i like that it also does native file backups instead of placing all documents, pictures, etc. into one huge file
Rescue & Recovery 3.1 - yep, this works as well, but it requires you to make an image of your entire hdd, and then do incremental backups. it's also crashed on me a few times
Acronis True Image 10 - favorite so far. very fast, great incremental backups, great interface, check out the free trial

let us know what you find. I'm still tempted to try NTI Shadow because I'd like to store files in their native format and I really don't need compression because I have plenty of disk space. the 2.0 version was terrible but 3.0 seems solid from what I've read.

I decided to live dangerously and use the Rescue and Recovery software that promises to deal with the service partition and all that. So, I used ThinkVantage update to update it to the most current version. What a wild ride! First, it told me that all previous backups could be thrown away--incompatible. Then, ThinkVantage Update got into a pissing contest with the Rescue and Recovery installer. The installer stopped and sait it could not continue as long as ThinkVantage Update was running, but since it had been launched by ThinkVantage Update there was no way to stop ThinkVantage Update. At some point I just terminated the whole thing with Task Manager, rebooted, and it cheerfully told me that the previous installation attempt had failed and would I like to try to fix that? I said yes and there was more entertainment in store. I found that while the RR installer was running the service partition magically showed up as drive Z in Windows Explorer. I could go and poke around it. It did not go away until I rebooted. After rebooting, I was told that the Client Security app needed to be updated (again). OK, so I did that but then all the security profiles were incompatible and needed to be upgraded. There was a stern warning not to let it do what it wanted to do on pain of losing all my security info. OK, another reboot. Had to enter my "master" password several time, re-enter the lost password security responses, then got prompted for the password for the SecureDrive encrypted volume. None of my passwords would work. I finally realized that the password had been generated by Client Security but since my profile was out of date that wasn't going to work. So I rebooted again and this time it told me that it was upgrading the security profile and it automatically mounted the SecureDrive. Whew.
Then to make a backup. Having learned my lesson with the previous version of RR, I did *not* allow it to use the laptop's hard drive to store the backup (if you ever want to see 30% of your hard disk suddenly disappear, let it do what it wants...), but instead to use a USB hard drive. Which it then offered to set up as a boot device. OK, I said, and it did that. Then it warned not to turn off the computer while it was doing a backup... and appeared to go dead for 5 minutes... 10 minutes... still at 0% warning not to turn anything off... I went to run an errand and when I came back it said "all done" and a big chunk of the USB hard drive had been taken up by a whole mess of files, including a directory full of data files. So I guess it's good, and from now on it should be able to take incremental backups. The USB hard disk is in a tiny, lightweight metal case that fits nicely in my bag, and it looks like, unlike with the previous version of RR, the directories are accessible so I can back *it* up to my big home hard drive (the backup itself is protected by the master security password for the laptop). So, in theory I should be able to do a full restore on the road and also have a backup of the backup at home in case I need to replace the computer if it gets stolen or mangled. Just in case, though, I have my old set of factory reset CDs and a couple of Windows backups of the entire system.

claudeo wrote:[...]I used ThinkVantage update to update it to the most current version. What a wild ride! First, it told me that all previous backups could be thrown away--incompatible. [...]

I have heard of that fact. The R&R solution is/was a little bit too bloody for my taste and purpose. as I said I've become very familiar with TrueImage. Once I messed up with the Recovery Partition of my T60 I decided to go for this software. I installed TrueImage 9 and at the same time the Startup Recovery Tools as well. Now I press F11 for that preboot environment of Trueimage. It is based on a derivate of Unix/Linux but the usability is very good. Even the network support or the capability of handling external USB harddisks is awesome. Restore of partitions works very reliably. For me it's one of the best the market spun out.

Brgds, Torsten.

After many years of server-based tape backups, I have come to grips with dealing with backups locally on my ThinkPad. What I wanted was something that was very quick, with incremental support, and left the files directly usable on the external USB hard disk (ie the backup media).

What I ended up choosing, based on features and usability, is SyncBack SE. It very rapidly does an incremental copy of your directory structure to an external disk or to a network directory, amd provides the flexibility to back up only the files you need. And at only $25, you can't beat the price.

What it does not do is back up the boot environment. If my disk dies, I will need to reinstall Windows, but I can accept that as I would probably need to do that anyway. The critical item -- for me -- is ensuring that my data is safe.[/url]

Thanks for all the replies. I too am more interested in only backing up the data. I will try some of the recommendations.

If you are using XP professional why not use the backup facility that comes with it. I've used it for years and find it very effective, it does incrementals and it's free.

steveg47 wrote:If you are using XP professional why not use the backup facility that comes with it. I've used it for years and find it very effective, it does incrementals and it's free.

For me, having the backups directly accessible (instead of having to always do a restore) is important, that's why I wanted a sync utility instead.

steveg47 wrote:If you are using XP professional why not use the backup facility that comes with it. I've used it for years and find it very effective, it does incrementals and it's free.

In case your XP crashes - what you gonna do? The backup files made by the XP backup tool are useless until you get (another) XP system up and running...
I'm keeping you honest: I don't have the time to go that way. On my workstation restoring the half-filled 10GB XP Partition takes me 10 Minutes of my time. In the bottom line and in my eyes it is the most convenient course for myself.

Brgds, Torsten

tomh009 wrote:
What I ended up choosing, based on features and usability, is SyncBack SE. It very rapidly does an incremental copy of your directory structure to an external disk or to a network directory, amd provides the flexibility to back up only the files you need. And at only $25, you can't beat the price.

this is a very nice app but it does not allow me to keep several versions of an old file which I like to do in case the current one becomes corrupted and I want to restore the last known good version of a file.

I'm now planning to try NTI Shadow v. 3

EDIT: I tried NTI Shadow v. 3.5 and it was a mess. incorrect date stamps, no previous versions of files saved, no file copy verification. I've requested a $29 refund.

I use StompSoft Backup MyPC version 6. It works well for me. It is reasonably fast, compresses the backup, verifies the backup, allows restore of the entire hard drive, select partitions, System State, and individual folders or files. It is quite flexible.

The only real drawback is that to use it on a drive that does not have Windows already on it, you need a Windows install CD. You could however, Restore Factory Contents using the Product Recovery Discs, then restore your backup.

I have also used cloning software, and it certainly has it's place. The only problem with cloning is that you don't have backups of older files or programs that you may have retired.

hoya wrote:

tomh009 wrote:
What I ended up choosing, based on features and usability, is SyncBack SE. It very rapidly does an incremental copy of your directory structure to an external disk or to a network directory, amd provides the flexibility to back up only the files you need. And at only $25, you can't beat the price.

this is a very nice app but it does not allow me to keep several versions of an old file which I like to do in case the current one becomes corrupted and I want to restore the last known good version of a file.

That's correct. Your requirements are different from mine.

meshua wrote:

steveg47 wrote:If you are using XP professional why not use the backup facility that comes with it. I've used it for years and find it very effective, it does incrementals and it's free.

In case your XP crashes - what you gonna do? The backup files made by the XP backup tool are useless until you get (another) XP system up and running...
I'm keeping you honest: I don't have the time to go that way. On my workstation restoring the half-filled 10GB XP Partition takes me 10 Minutes of my time. In the bottom line and in my eyes it is the most convenient course for myself.

Brgds, Torsten

Rather then "keeping me honest" perhaps you should read stephenaron's second post. He is only interested in backing up his data. In his specific situation, which I was addressing, the xp included backup software will be all that he needs.

I use a two software solution, one for the static data and another for everything else.

R&R does a great job and the recovery partition is just perfect (you'll know it only when you need it). No need to carry backup CD's. Save backups to external device for that day when the disk dies.

All the static data (photos, music, books, etc) is in a directory excluded from R&R. It would be a waste of space to back it up locally. For that I use SyncBack SE to copy it to/from an external device and also to a backup server on the internet.

PS. It is sad to read all this horror stories about R&R... The installation instructions and configuration manual may be long but they tell all you need to know, step by step, before you install it.

I am another fan of Acronis TrueImage. Having the ability to access a recovery partition at boot up is essential.

If WinXP refuses to boot up, and you need to quickly grab a file from your my documents folder you can access your files via the Acronis recovery partition.

In addition, you have access to USB external hard disks in this partition, which is extremely handy.

The program is very cheap as well, and costs nothing to trial.

Here's another vote for Acronis. Very handy and easy to use.
I have a 250GB external USB disk attached to my homePC and Acronis backs up my Thinkpad over wifi to a folder on that drive. Full backup once a month and incremental every 4 days.

I only backup data as well. I've used Sychronize It! for a few years now and use it several times a day actually.

http://www.grigsoft.com/

I use it to sync my main 'work' folder across to three separate USB hard drives. It'll do backup and sync, although I only the sync function.

Some time ago I purchased a 200 GB Maxtor OneTouch II USB External Hard Drive. It came with a program called Retrospect Express HD, or something like that. I used this program regularly for full system backups. When the faulty PC Doctor 5 installer messed with my registry, I tried to use the Retrospect Express program to perform a full system backup. It didn't work. (I followed all the instructions - maybe I needed to do something in the bios regarding the HPA - who knows - I couldn't get it to work.) After some googling, I seemed to discover that the version of this program that shipped with the drive never worked for anyone and that neither Maxtor nor Restrospect support or want to have anything to do with it. So I used this external drive just to backup all of my data folders and I used the IBM factory recovery CDs and manually restored my entire system - a very timely process (installing programs, rebooting, XP updates, rebooting, etc.)!

What should I do with this external drive? Just use it for file/folder backups? Does anyone recommend any particular software that I could purchase and install/put on this drive to make full system backups that actually work? If I do that, will I lose the backed up folders I currently have on the drive? I would appreciate any advice.

t41user wrote:Some time ago I purchased a 200 GB Maxtor OneTouch II USB External Hard Drive. It came with a program called Retrospect Express HD, or something like that. I used this program regularly for full system backups. When the faulty PC Doctor 5 installer messed with my registry, I tried to use the Retrospect Express program to perform a full system backup. It didn't work. (I followed all the instructions - maybe I needed to do something in the bios regarding the HPA - who knows - I couldn't get it to work.) After some googling, I seemed to discover that the version of this program that shipped with the drive never worked for anyone and that neither Maxtor nor Restrospect support or want to have anything to do with it.

I believe your experience is not unusual. Backup software that comes with external HDs (and lesser so CD/DVD writers) is a 'static in time' proposition, you do not get lifetime upgrades, nor for that matter much, if any, support.