Resolved Have some questions on partioning a backup drive

Have fun! Macrium seemed alright, they're both free, hard to beat that!

 

So the price is right?

 

Linux is probably the only thing that could beat that.

May want to consider "pay by trial" some companies offer, could be something offered that you may happen to be interested in, never know...

 

I've heard so much about Acronis that I'm thinking if one of these doesn't do it, I'll give that a go.

 

They do have a 15 day trial I believe.

 

If I don't take to either of these I'll take a look at it. Depends on how much they want for it.

 

$40 after the discount.

 

Well like it's said: you get what you pay for. If you have the money to spare, it's a good use for it. If not the free version will do fine for you.

 

Sounds reasonable, and since my needs aren't great - just looking for basic backups, I expect the freebie will suffice.
Can the free ver do an uncompressed backup?
What I shooting for is this...I want to be able to have a complete backup and in the event of a disaster just copy it to the other drive, but since I'm dealing w/ a lot of music and photog I don't want the files compressed.

 

With Comodo and Acronis you can choose the compression level including none.

I ran a test with Acronis using a music folder of 6.48Mb at normal compresion: 4.27Mb at maximum: 1Mb

Unless you do it from CMD with a boot disk, if you can copy you can restore.

With Acronis you can make a rescue disk to boot from, and also when activated, you have the option to load Acronis software at boot time before loading Windows. So if you have a backup of your system and Windows won't load you can run Acronis at boot and restore your system.

I don't think free software comes with those kind of features, but you would normaly be able to load your "spare" system to do a restore.

 

Hold the line here.
You just told me about all this stuff Acronis can do, and then you tell me it probably isn't this way w/ the free ver?
Now that's harsh!

 

Sorry, just telling you about what you would get for your money if you decided to buy it.

Comodo is quite good for a free app, it does a lot. online manual. you can do a simple copy too, copies all the files you choose "as is ". You can set how many backups to keep.

Macrium is a straight forward partition backup software and you can create a rescue disk.

Planetary is a files and folders type; you can select multiple destination to create backups or rotate destination each time you backup. Time stamp feature, you can set how many backups to keep. Uses .zip format, encrypt or no compression. Schedule; daily, weekly, monthly. You can also edit the backups you already created.

 

Since I'm not familiar w/ backup programs/features, based on what I've described, which do you think would be best suited for what I want to do?

 

I'd say Comodo. But it's free try them out and see which you prefer. You can run them in turn and compare.

 

Time is the issue. Not much available right now, so don't want to learn and relearn different software.
I have an enclosure sitting here waiting for me to get to that also. We're at that intense time in school and then Christmas. I'll breath again in two wks when finals are over.

 

Go with Comodo it's the most powerful.

 

Comodo is better than the free Acronis?
That's a shock!

 

If by "free Acronis" you do mean the disk utility that comes with a Seagate Baracuda drive (which you must have for it to work); Oh yes, way more advance, as far as back-up is concerned, but it does not do partitioning work, so don't toss that utility either, as it could still come in handy.

Another nifty free utility is Sequoia disk viewer, which let you see the entire content of a partition in proportional size "cushions "; making it easy to spot large space consuming files and finding their exact location.

Btw: I clicked on your photography link, interesting. You have a pic of a lovely couple that gave me a good flash back to Hawai'i and time spent with best friend Soleil who uncannily resembles to the young man in the pic.

 

I was thinking there was another free ver online that was more advanced. Are they one in the same?

Was the couple in the collection titled "Smiles "? If so that's my son and daughter. He's the same guy in "Count DB's Hair Creations ". He does hair and I liked the shot of him w/ the wild expression, so I whited him out to resemble a vampire.

 

There is a 30 day trial, but I don't remember if it's full featured.
Using Comodo or Acronis's interface is fairly similar and straight forward, they both use a wizard to guide you through or you can navigate around by yourself when you get more confident.
Tip: always use a schedule even if manual or ounce; this way you can use, edit, duplicate and rename the task again and not have to start over creating a new one.

Ya, that's the one, lovely kids, I did think it was a couple.

btw: since you are pressed for time your welcome to call me on Skype and I can run you through live.