Back-up options for Windows 7

Posted by: Sloop John B on 29 January 2012

Young Sloop Junior managed (even with all my straight-jacketing of his computer experience) to infect a PC and necessitate a full windows reinstall. I did manage to save the 3 children's data (now teenagers and their data is getting more important)  but through luck rather than design.

 

My PC has Win 7 Professional on it so I can use windows back-up to NAS. Alas Home Premium or whatever it's called won't see a NAS.

 

I don't really like the NetBak replicator that came with the QNAP so I'm looking for some software to make sure the kids data is backed up without them having to do anything (or at least do much!)

 

Thanks

 

John

 

SJB

Posted on: 29 January 2012 by Steve2701

Sloop,

         Check out ACRONIS.

Can be very easily set to be a virtual continuous backup, also as a main backup and boot discs can be made.

We use it now at work for every part of the backup plan having saved our bacon twice.

It backs up evrything, absolutely everything, even the operating system and how that is set up - no more silly re-installs then applying your backup files.

The most important things for me is - it's simple (very) and effective (100% so far (twice) & cheap.

 

 

Posted on: 29 January 2012 by Bananahead

Have a look at the western digital mybook range. The software works really well. You just plug the drive in and do some simple settings and then just leave it alone.

Posted on: 29 January 2012 by Sloop John B

Thanks, I've downloaded a 30 day trial of Acronis to see if it will suit.

 

It's busy doing the "main" backup and seems to have many options including to do a backup on system shut-down which may be exactly what I'm looking for.

 

Hopefully the incremental ones don't take as long as the main one!

 

 

SJB

 

 

Posted on: 29 January 2012 by Steve2701

The incremental ones just run in the background so you don't even know its happening.

 The first full backup took 13 hours on the first time around, mainly due to the drive it was trying to back up was dying on its spindle.

That drive died the next day - it took longer for me to drive to PC world and get / install a new drive than the 13 minutes it took to totally re-instate the entire contents to the new drive. Emails, O/S, quirky things that all PCs pick up were all there - thankfully.

We just have a spare drive that is hooked to the PC via usb and Acronis sees it as it's main backup store, everything just gets sent to it as and when.

We have a second system (belt and braces) that use the 'my book solution'. Currently looking into the Kryptonite (?) off site backup as a final total backup, but that is in the future.