Full disc image backup - Ghost vs Acronis?

[MilDoc]

I'm looking for software that allows full disc image backup. I've looked at Norton Ghost and Acronis True Image 2010. Looks to me like Acronis is the better of the two.

Comments? Other products?

[radhak]

You could also research GParted, or you could take my word for having done all that - and I love Acronis products ! Ghost might work well for corporate environments, but Acronis is really worth the money spent, and it's pretty much auto-coast...

[Uncle Cracker]

I'm no backup expert, but I've got the full-version Acronis TrueImage, and I've had no problems with it. Never had to restore from it, though... (whew)

[sd]

There's also Clonezilla.

[cgallery]

Acronis. Not a big fan of Ghost ever since they were purchased by Symantec.

[RAFlorida]

Acronis True Image 2010 is a great program.

Never tried any of the others, because Acronis was all I needed.

[dbhost]

Ghost is fine, I had fits with Acronis used across the network in large scale deployments a few years ago, but not likely what you want to do.

In some of the smaller scale deployments I do for small businesses, I have used Clonezilla and it works fine.

I guess the question is, what is it you are wanting to pull a full disk image of? Windows, Mac OS, Linux, xBSD, Solaris or?

[sparkeyjames]

You could also research GParted, or you could take my word for having done all that - and I love Acronis products ! Ghost might work well for corporate environments, but Acronis is really worth the money spent, and it's pretty much auto-coast...

Gparted is not an imaging program. It is a partitioning program. What you want is dd. If your using linux of course. It can copy partitions or make an image of one to a file. I do not recommend using dd with Microsoft ntfs boot partitions however. A standard ntfs data partition is fine though.

[BobSch]

[QUOTE=dbhost;439090] In some of the smaller scale deployments I do for small businesses, I have used Clonezilla and it works fine.


Will Clonezilla make a bit-by-bit NTFS image? I'd like to change out the hard drive on my laptop without having to re-install everything.

[paritta]

+2 for acronis:

http://disk-imaging-software-review.toptenreviews.com/
http://data-backup-software-review.t...com/index.html

Norton Ghost is far behind it.

[DaveS]

I'm sure this isn't quite what you were looking for, but I just put a couple Seagate Replica devices on several of my relative's PCs and it is the best thing since sliced bread.

The 500GB model is on sale for $99 at buy.com

It does full disk backup as well as continuous incremental backups (much like the Apple time capsule).

The drive comes with the software built in - you just plug it in and it works.

[MilDoc]

It does full disk backup as well as continuous incremental backups (much like the Apple time capsule).

The drive comes with the software built in - you just plug it in and it works.

A "full disc backup" is usually not the same as a disc image.

Went with Acronis. Thanks, guys!

[milanuk]

In some of the smaller scale deployments I do for small businesses, I have used Clonezilla and it works fine.

Will Clonezilla make a bit-by-bit NTFS image? I'd like to change out the hard drive on my laptop without having to re-install everything.

That is essentially what Clonezilla does - either clone directly drive to drive, or drive to an image file that can be compressed and stored somewhere, even over the network.

I certainly hope so, anyway... I'm going to play with it a bit inside Virtualbox over the next week or so... I want to try 'cloning' a system in a sandbox first before going 'live'