Since some of the software has been updated, you can just vote without considering the version. For example, if you want to vote ATIH2011, you just vote ATIH2010. Thank you all.
Without any question of doubt for me Acronis True Image Home 2010 - so many features it's excellent, stable, reliable and is completely Win 7 compatible.
It depends if you want local backup or online backup. For local backup, I recommend Norton Ghost v14 or v15, it's wonderful and many people use it. For online backup, I recommend Dropbox. It's the best online backup tools currently, it will store your file history and you can recover it even you have deleted it. However, Live Mesh and Skydrive are also good alternatives.
I have actually heard Dropbox before, but I can't find where to register it on its website now. Can you show me the way?
Thanks for your link. I got one. But it only have 2.25GB for free. Maybe I should take a look of Acronis.
You can get up to 10GB if you invite your friend to register. For me, I use the combination of Norton Ghost (For local) and Dropbox for those I often operate. Very convinent. Good luck!
Thanks again. I think 2.25GB might be enough if I use Dropbox for the files I am currently working on. And it looks so convinent more than what I thought. I will try more of its features. Best wishes!
+1 Norton Ghost v15 or Symantec Backup Exec System Recovery 2010 (basically the same thing but with hardware-independent restore)
Yes, Symantec Backup Exec System Recovery 2010 (Desktop version) and Norton Ghost are exactly twin brothers. Norton Ghost can also be hardware-independent(if I understand your meaning correctly) by its recovery disk like Symantec Backup Exec. One difference is you can download trailware of Symantec Backup Exec System Recovery 2010 from the official website, while you can only get Norton Ghost from elsewhere (If you don't plan to buy). Otherwise, they have no differences. Both are excellent.
With Acronis True Image Home 2010 (and pretty much all Aconis backup products) you can easily:- Mount an image in either read or read write USB CD or DVD boot into recovery mode which can incorporate Acronis Disk Director too. Full or incremental backup with FTP options and in the latest version there is constant backup as well as "trial mode" in which you can install or do anything to the PC and then simply revert back to before you started messing. Recover to dissimilar hardware is another killer feature.... I haven't found **all** of these features with any other backup software.... but for me being able to boot from a USB flash drive and perform a recovery from an archive stored anywhere is a real winner.
Yes i also have used acronis since it first came out i used to use ghost basicly because you could use scripts and make up recovery cd's for customers when worked in computer shop. But with acronis OEM version you could image hard drive it would make hidden partition and reaseal machine so when user first booted they needed to just add there serial number similar to sysprep and that was as far back as XP when it first came out.
my personal fav is macrium reflect paid. i have lic's to just about everything out there including acronis, shadow protect (my second choice), ghost, image for windows, etc etc i ALWAYS end up back with macrium after everything else simply because its simple and just plain works. they also offer it as a free version if you dont need the pe disc or the incrementals. as i said i own almost every backup program out including shadow protect which is one of the most expensive out there and i have reflect installed on my systems for what thats worth. for me acronis has gotten ridiculously bloated and has made a mess on some of my customers pc's including a couple of mine.
Windows 7 inbuilt backup and restore of system image does the job quite well for me for c: and system reserved. One problem: sys. reserved by default is 100 MB and making image backup often fails if free size here is less than 40MB. Simple solution: use any third party partition manager (Easeus, etc) and increase it to >100MB. I have mine set at 400MB and no problems since then.
I use to USED acronis long time ago (seagate and western digital free version btw.), then many years later i wanted to backup up, downloaded acronis 2010 trial (was damn slow to backup and TOO many useless features....). To me, i also tried Ghost trial, and was amazed how many extra services/process were running.... Backup also took 2x slower compared to Macrium....... Just like armada, i currently use Macrium reflect paid for their WIN PE 2.0 recovery CD and incremental backups. If you don't mind Linux based recovery disc and lack of incremental backups, go for Macrium free .... Or just use Windows built in backup.... Macrium now also supports new >512 byte sector hard disk... such as W.D. new Green hard drives that have "EARS" at the last part of their model no. and SSDs.... Well if you want a proper explanation i suggest you google: "Western Digital's Advanced Format" and then click on the first result. I doubt other backup program supports these drives, so if you use these >512 bytes sector drive, either use Macrium or Windows built in backup because these both are certified to work with >512 byte sector drives.... +1 ShadowProtect.. but its pricey.... and a bit advanced to the normal user (its more towards admins)... I personally like ShadowProtect for being enterprise type and Macrium for ease-of-use.
Haven't decided yet. I have used Acronis and Ghost, and there Acronis wins IMO, but then again I am open for suggestions and Macrium is new to me. I would like to get a serverbased solution working (Acronis server or Symantec) but so far I have failed. Currrently using W7 backup, local image, lacking better options.