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The Australian IT (Exec Tech, Q&A Column) (Australia)

January 30, 2007

Acronis True Image

Question: I backup my hard drive to a couple of DVDs using NortonGhost 2003, but together with the integrity check it takes hours. Is there a better way, an external HD perhaps? My HD holds about 10GB and I run XP Pro.

Answer: An external hard drive is excellent way to go. I do something similar myself, the only difference being that the backup drive isn't external (which is bad, but it is better than no backup at all).

I back up to another hard drive simply because I have way too much data to put on optical media, but there are other advantages to this approach, namely speed and convenience (because you don't have to be there to change discs).

Obviously, it's a bit more expensive but ultimately it is more flexible.

If your external hard drive is large, you'll be able to store quite a few incremental backups along with the master, which might let you rescue a long-gone file if you ever need to down a track.

As far as software goes, I played with Ghost for a while (regular readers will know my opinion of Symantec's rebadged products).

I now use a thing called Acronis True Image (www.acronis.com.sg).

It's pretty much flawless and lacks the bugs that plague Ghost.