Acronis
I use CloneGenius to ‘back up’ my WinXP partition.
It boots and then can image an entire partition. It recognizes USB drives, so it is easy to use an external drive.
[My disk drive has 2 partitions. The Windows partition which has the OS and installed programs (20 gig) and the ‘data’ partition which contains everything else. I usually just ‘clone’ the Windows partition, which takes about 40 minutes, uncompressed. www.clonegenius.com]
Tech ping
I have used Acronis True Image for a couple of years and have been VERY satisfied with it. I recovered from two crashes and did not lose a file. Not one.
I use SuperDuper! for Mac to create a bootable clone of the hard-drive... and it really really works (I know from a few recovery experiences).
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I got it covered.
Acronis TrueImage 11.
You can buy just TrueImage, or get the Acronis Suite depeending on your needs.
I’ve been using Acronis TrueImage 10 exclusively for my customers asking for backup software for about 14 months, I’ve installed and used it on 20 PCs and have had 100% success restoring data from the backups.
Just one thing to ALWAYS remember, do NOT make the backup partition on a DYNAMIC drive.
You can now buy a relatively cheap portable HDD for $80, Acronis for about $35, and can save images of your OS incrementally on a scheduled basis. That leaves just massive physical damage, be it a flood, fire, or moose rampaging your computer desk to worry about.
This could be worth at least looking at:
Free Hard Disk and Partition Imaging and Backup Software
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Backup, image or clone the partitions, files and folders on your computer
The hard disk and partition imaging software take a snapshot of your hard disk so that you can restore your system at a later time to the exact same state the system was when you imaged the disk or partition. This is useful for system recovery in case of a hard disk disaster. The term "image" is used because such software often copy the state of the hard disk sector by sector to your image. Hence if your hard disk was (say) defragmented with certain software occupying certain sectors when you backed up, it will be returned to that same state when you restore your backup. The image utilities often do not allow fine control what you backup - you can specify the partitions or hard disks to back up, but you usually will not be able to specify which folders to exclude or include. They are useful for backing up your system drive or partition, that is, the drive that you placed your operating system on. Hard disk imaging software are sometimes also used to clone a hard disk to another (useful for the times you change or upgrade your hard disk).
On the other hand, the hard disk, folder and files backup software listed here allow a finer control over what you back up. You can selectively backup and restore (say) your documents and email while omitting other files and directories. Some of the utilities allow you to schedule your backups, so that you can be sure that your important data are backed up periodically (for example, daily, weekly, monthly, etc). Depending on the utility, it may or may not support the backup of your system drive (the drive you booted from).
Note that commercial backup and imaging software, like Acronis TrueImage (free trial download here), Terabyte Unlimited's Image for Windows, (free trial download) and Drive Snapshot are not listed below.
The information provided on this page comes without any warranty whatsoever. Use it at your own risk. Just because a program, book, document or service is listed here or has a good review does not mean that I endorse or approve of the program or of any of its contents. All the other standard disclaimers also apply.
I now use Image for Windows from TerraByte Unlimited. A very generous trial copy is available and IfW is very reasonably priced.
Good Hunting... from Varmint Al
Acronis.com Acronis is the best! very easy to use and reliable. i have done many recoveries with acronis images and backups. I really love their universal restore. you can restore an image on completely different hardware. I have done this when upgrading our old servers to new hardware... seemless process... they also have a software called disk director which is awesome. I love acronis!