[gui-talk] Advice on accessibility of these hard drive backup products needed, quickly if possible

[Doug Lee]

I haven't seen any answers yet, but the point of image-based backup is
to restore things to the exact state they were in before.  There is no
merging of registry entries, for example; you restore the registry you
had.  This approach is not likely to be useful if your goal is to
install a fresh instance of Windows and then put all your applications
into it in one step, unless I'm missing some functionality in the
image-based backup software out there.

On Thu, Dec 09, 2010 at 09:21:48AM -0600, Steve Jacobson wrote:
Doug,

I am curious just in terms of developing a strategy for myself.  How valuable is a full image to begin with.  How often can one truly restore a full image that 
may contain operating system files of a different version than, say, the version that had to be installed on a new har drive?  Given the relationship between 
files and registry entries, I have leaned toward defining documents and files that I originate or need to keep.  One seems almost always better off reinstalling 
software than trying to move all files and registry entries, but perhaps the backup and resotre software handles this better than I know.  Do you have 
thoughts on this?  This in no way answers your question, I know, and I sure wish we had  some kind of access to safe mode at times.

Best regards,

Steve Jacobson

On Thu, 09 Dec 2010 09:15:12 -0500, Doug Lee wrote:

>I am working with a client who has experienced enough hard drive
>issues on multiple machines to have become quite urgently interested
>in a backup solution, and one that backs up the drive image, not just
>files and folders.  The following three products have been recommended
>by technical people in her company, but I don't know how many of these
>are reasonably accessible.  She is a JAWS user.

>The thrree products:

>1.  Norton Ghost from Symantec (http://www.norton.com/).
>2.  True Image from Acronis (though the tech thought it was called ImageWriter) (http://www.acronis.com/).
>3.  Casper from Future Systems Solutions (http://www.fssdev.com/products/casper/).

>We're looking to meet the following criteria at a minimum:

>1.  Backs up whole image, not just files and folders.

>2.  Can restore seamlessly to drives of different geometry than the
>original.

>3.  Can be used with JAWS.  I know the actual backup and restore
>processes, once kicked off, may involve rebooting into a DOS-like
>environment with no speech, so I'm talking about accessible setup and
>accessible ways of detecting and handling errors or other
>irregularities.

>4.  Can handle whole-disk encryption environments.  This is not urgent
>yet but may become so sooner than we'd like.

>Advice most welcome.  A purchasing decision will probably be made in
>the next 12 hours though.

>-- 
>Doug Lee                 dgl at dlee.org                http://www.dlee.org
>SSB BART Group           doug.lee at ssbbartgroup.com   http://www.ssbbartgroup.com
>"Never does the human soul appear so strong as when it foregoes
>revenge, and dares forgive an injury." --E. H. Chapin

>_______________________________________________
>gui-talk mailing list
>gui-talk at nfbnet.org
>http://www.nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/gui-talk_nfbnet.org
>To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for gui-talk:
>http://www.nfbnet.org/mailman/options/gui-talk_nfbnet.org/steve.jacobson%40visi.com





_______________________________________________
gui-talk mailing list
gui-talk at nfbnet.org
http://www.nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/gui-talk_nfbnet.org
To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for gui-talk:
http://www.nfbnet.org/mailman/options/gui-talk_nfbnet.org/dgl%40dlee.org

-- 
Doug Lee                 dgl at dlee.org                http://www.dlee.org
SSB BART Group           doug.lee at ssbbartgroup.com   http://www.ssbbartgroup.com
"Innovation is hard to schedule." -- Dan Fylstra