| heycarnut 2007-02-05, 1:15 am |
| On Feb 2, 4:02 pm, "NGT" <ngte...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> It appears Windows Vista Business (and higher) comes with "Windows
> Complete PC Backup and Restore", an image-based backup/recovery
> system.
>
> Has anyone here tried it?
> How does it compare with the image-based backup solutions from
> Symantec and Acronis?
I have tested it a bit (a couple of dozen fake system crashes/etc. to
test restoration, etc.)
It is fast, quite simple to utilize, and automagically does
incremental backups once the first backup of an O/S is made.
It will backup XP as well as Vista partitions on a multi-boot machine.
Restoration is done via the install disk, by selecting the restoration
option instead of install.
At that time, you can select which of the O/S you may have backed up
to be restored, and additionally you have the option if incrementals
have been made to select the resotre point in time.
Pretty slick for a built-in, and if you don't need to backup non-
supported O/S on the machine (e.g. linux), it can replace something
like Acronis or Ghost quite nicely.
It lacks some of the gadgets of these (like browsing of backup sets or
mounting of them as a virtual HD), but if you don't need to do this
(using it purely as a disaster recovery tool), it seems to work very
well.
Combined with the built-in system restore/shadow copy/prior versions
and file-based backup that vista has, I'd be hard pressed to say
Acronis or Ghost has any real advantage for the *casual* user, other
than Linux/other non-windos O/S support.
R
|