We have been using Acronis True Image Echo Workstation for about 4 years.  I
first found it when I had a laptop with a failing drive that I wanted to
clone.  What I needed was something that would allow me to clone drives
initially so that I could replace the failing drive.  It worked for that but
it also works for restoring to dissimilar hardware.

http://kb.acronis.com/content/1566

Now when I want to upgrade to a newer computer with the same OS it is a
fairly trivial exercise. It also allows for other backup features you
mentioned. I also used one of their products in evaluation mode to convert a
physical computer to a Vmware Virtual Machine.  This was for a Centos Linux
computer guest which I host on a Windows 2008 Vmware workstation host.  It
works great for that as well.

CF
619-795-0720




-----Original Message-----
From: Dave Powell, MMfab [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Monday, January 30, 2012 3:03 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: OT: free or cheap PC backup software

Anybody have any experience?  Special loves or hates ?  I've been reading
specs and user comments on several, but would like input from the list too.

Priority is full image backups that will let me recover a whole system
without reinstalling anything, working with enough USB drives so I can have
a least 2 full backups of every machine, with at 1 offsite at all times.

Ability to restore individual file from full image backups is nice but not
vital.   (I have daily file backups of important files working with xcopy --
that's good enough so I don't need new software to improve on it).

Must be possible to schedule recurring jobs.

Must work across a network -- copying from other PCs to external drives
connected to my PC.  Ideally it would be controlled by my PC reaching out to
read the other machines.  The free/cheap pgms I have seen so far work the
other way round -- running on the machine being backed up and writing across
the network.  I can live with that as long as I get some kind of
notification of success or failure to my machine (perhaps an email), and my
share passwords are not visible on the other machines.

Must work with XP and Windows 7  (backing up from XP 7 & Win-7 to Win-7).

Must work !  (can't pretend to work and flake out on me when I need it).

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