Windows 7 Imaging software recommendations?

[pm]

I had a problem (fiasco?) with Clonezilla while trying to port my SSD drive to a RAID drive. When I tried to restore, it wouldn't create the GPT partitions for my Windows 7 setup. I filed a bug with Sourceforge on it and I'll try to work with the developer to fix it, but I am pretty much not trusting Clonezilla any more.

Meanwhile my Windows Home Server box went out to lunch some time ago and was happily backing everything up but when I went to restore it complained about a CRC error in the SYSTEM partition and then told me to reinstall and while reinstalling it said that it had another CRC system and then only gave me the option to do a complete wipe.

So I'll install a RAID card (hardware RAID5) in my WHS box and I'll bump it to WHS 2011, but I like backups so I'd like to clone my main desktop drive and my WHS system drive too.

I've had bad experiences with Acronis and Ghost in the past though too. Ghost seems to want to install a vast pile of Norton-ware to my system, is expensive and always seems to have an excuse as to why I need to buy a newer version.

Additionally I've had issues with Acronis failing to do a restore too... I forget the details but it was a long time ago. I've also heard that people haven't been as happy with versions of Acronis 2010 or newer.

I've heard people talk about ImageX and how great that is, but I'm not clear on how to make a WinPE disk with ImageX on it, nor on how to use it.

I have way, way too much data for Carbonite or Mozy. Once I started shooting 1080p videos, my disk utilization pushed over 1TB and beyond and I can't imagine what Carbonite would charge me for >1TB of space nor how long it would take to upload that on my cheap DSL setup. (edit: looks like ~$55/month on Mozy, or $90 per month on Carbonite...)

So what do people recommend? I'd like to make an image of my system on another drive and then unplug that drive and take it to work with me. Offsite remote backup the cheap way.

 

[corkyg]

Acronis 2011 works perfectly when you boot to the Rescue Media and use the cloning function manually. You could also just store your video product on an external drive.

 

[docp]

I suggest Norton ghost.
I have been using it for last four years without any issue
It worked without any hiccough and it saved my system numerous times.
Give it a try.

 

[COPOHawk]

I have been a big Norton Ghost fan over the years (others have had problems). For daily backup for myself and a lot of workstations that I support (50+)...this is what I use...especially Ghost 15.0

I had used older versions of Acronis...and wasn't impressed enough to move away from Ghost.

However...for cloning...Acronis 2011 ROCKS. I had used Clonezilla and had pretty good luck. I had a failing HDD (customer) a month back that Clonezilla wouldn't clone. I bought Acronis 2011 and booted off of the recovery disk. The automated process is super easy to use...and it just works! No more Clonezilla for me.

In other words...I agree with CorkyG

 

[Capt Caveman]

I recently just cloned my Win7 desktop hdd to a ssd. I installed Acronis Trial True Image on my laptop, imaged the hdd to my laptop and then restored the image to my ssd. Everything worked great.

 

[saratoga172]

I've used Acronis most recently. Worked great for some Windows 7 images we needed to flash at the internship I did over the summer.

Haven't used Norton Ghost since I was back in highschool (jr year, 4 years ago roughly) but it worked great when I used it.

 

[rei]

I've used Acronis for YEARS, having moved from Ghost. Acronis has gotten much too bloated for me lately and I've jumped ship to Macrium Reflect Pro.

Macrium even has a completely free version.

 

[MobiusPizza]

Many people said Acronis 2010 is much better than 2011 for the bloat reason

 

[groberts101]

Many people said Acronis 2010 is much better than 2011 for the bloat reason

as long as you don't use 2010 to clone with. It has lost alignments for many using SSD's.

As Corky said already.. just use the rescue media and Acronis doesn't even need to be installed to use it(it runs from the CD to ram). I prefer dedicated backup images and running the tool on another backup OS volume to avoid bloat on the main system volume. Best of all worlds... although, at extra cost.

 

[Zap]

So what do people recommend? I'd like to make an image of my system on another drive and then unplug that drive and take it to work with me. Offsite remote backup the cheap way.

Have you tried the software that comes standard with Windows 7?

Start > Programs > Maintenance > Backup and Restore > Create a system image

You can create these images on blank DVDs (I wouldn't recommend it past initial Windows install with all drivers/updates because that already takes two DVDs), on HDDs or on removable media (USB drives).

Restoring from these images can be done by booting up on the Windows install DVD, or through a "system repair disc" that you can create from Backup and Restore.

Only issues I've had were:
1) Doesn't compress that well so images are larger than with, say, Acronis.
2) Sometimes doesn't like writing to optical drives when the controller the drive is hooked up to is in RAID/AHCI mode (doesn't always happen, but sometimes does).

 

[corkyg]

Many people said Acronis 2010 is much better than 2011 for the bloat reason

If you use the Rescue Media and then UNINSTALL Acronis, there is no bloat. It does not need to be installed to use the bootable media creation. You have to install it to create the media - but then, uninstall it. End of bloat.

For real BLOAT, save videos and muovie files.