for one thing, burning directly to a DVD/CD is rather problematic....it seems to me that for any sort of efficiency and accuracy an image must first be made on the HDD, then that goes to a disc...I've tried a few direct to disc routines before (have a somewhat muddy memory on the subject) and those were either very slow or failed completely...

it seems from what you're saying that acronis will not (in the same routine) make the image then automatically burn it like, let's say, Nero will when transcoding a movie...sounds rather like a PITA...

I'm using an old version or should I say it's old now. That was about 3 years ago and I only had to use it the one time and it was totally pain free.

No need to fret about it. Acronis will ask you exactly what you want to do, or at least this version did. I was amazed when I loaded the exact clone onto the new HDD. You could'nt even tell that that was a new drive. Everything was exact as it was before.

Oh and the Acronis program I used was not a trial version.

Good Luck Bob

Edit: I also agree with Peerless on burning to a disc. Big pain and never comes out like it was originally. The HDD to HDD is the way to go. IMHO

Hiya,
I only ever give my C drive max 10 gigs of space,store everything else on other drives.
What is wrong with Ghost? works fine for me.
I always defrag /compact before making a ghost as Norton doesn't do a very good job of this
I always also go through and clean out all unwanted files first before defrg.
this keeps ghosts to managable size. I also store at least one Ghost on an external HD.
Done away with all ghosts now as running Virtual box,where the '' Snapshot'' function is 100 times quicker than ghosts (but running that on ubuntu), but you could run it on XP,anything that happens in VBox is once removed from your system.
All the best,
N2

Hi guys

Once again I must thank all of you for your advice and experience, things are definitely becoming a little more clearer.

OK, the overwhelming consensus seems to be "stick with creating an image on an external drive", therefore this will be the way to go. Plus, I am not that bull headed that I cannot recognise good advice when I get it.

N2

I have used Norton Ghost before, both 2009 and V14, but now V15 seems overblown. You know, every year manufacturers of windows apps have to make their products more complex, add useless facilities while doing away with or making useful facilities harder to find. And I have just about had enough of this nonsense, that's why I won't touch NG15 or Acronis TrueImage 2011, I just want something I can use without having to worry about bloated windows apps slowing down, and possibly destabilising, my machine.

Apart from that, and wanting something relatively simple, I think that the version of Acronis I have, which is not installed, may do the trick.

I'll get back to you guys by Saturday or Sunday.


UK Bob

I heartily agree...it seems when the devs can't actually make some progress on the root of their software they just add in more junk which is usually just bothersome at best, and plain annoying and cumbersome at the worst..

Hi Guys

You know, my computer related problems seems very small when compared to Hurricane Irene lashing the US at the moment, though I understand from the BBC that it is abating somewhat.

BBC News - Hurricane Irene pummels New York amid fears of flooding

Anyway, I've installed Acronis True Image WD (Western Digital) Edition and did a back-up to one of my external HDs. And, as Remoc said, it was very easy, once I chose the right setting, and it compressed my 29.5GB of data and stuff from my C:\ drive down to about 20GB.

While doing this, I was installing a Toshiba DVD player I bought in a local super market (Tesco) with my groceries over a year ago (I simply forgot I had it). The manual said it could play all 1 - 6 region code DVD disks (UK = Region 2). But, of course, it could not so I had to spend 15 - 20 minutes looking on the Internet for the necessary code to break my players "region 2 only" electronic blockage. Luckily, other users had come across this problem before and so the code making my player "multi-regional" was readily available.

You see, I have a lot of region 1 (America & Canada) and region 3 DVD disks which, from time to time, I continue to watch. Plus, I do like Toshiba DVD players because their picture quality is always very good, even on their cheapest players.

Anyway, back to my backup problem, I still have to go through the manual to see if there is a way to transfer my "new backup" to recordable DVDs, which is my ultimate goal.


UK Bob

free backup and disk clone tool
 

i've been using easeus todo backup free, which works well to me.
it is backup wizard, easy to backup and restore.
automatic schedule backup is also available.
the one-click system backup is also very useful.
here's More backup info

Cheers Bailifei

I'll use your recommendation as "plan B" is the if the current software I have does not work as expected.


UK Bob