Best Backup App?

[Ci2e]

I was going to a friends house with a cd-rw I burned that had Splinter Cell Pandora Tomorrow Multiplayer Demo then restarted the computer and it keeps on saying,"BOOT DISK FAILURE Pleaes enter system disk, and press enter." I'm wondering what the best backup software is so he can backup what he needs. By the way what is the best stuff to backup if anyone could give their opinion. Thanks in advance for all replies.

 

[Xie]

Are you trying to boot from the cd or is this the next time you reboot?

 

[Mainframeguy]

Acronis recommended

Altholugh I am already using DriveImage and the Retrospect software that came with my Maxtor external drive I would recommend to you this which is what I would buy if I were starting over again

 

[Ci2e]

Ever since the install of the game whenever I reboot his pc it says boot disk failure unless the windows xp pro cd is in one of the cd-rom drives. Even when it sees the bootable disc it asks if I want to boot from it and I don't respond and then shortly see the Windows loading logo. The bad thing is sometimes if you remove the windows xp pro cd from the cd-rom you get a black screen with a blinking cursor on the top left of the screen and I find at that point you can only reset the system.

That True Image 7 looks very good for my problem.

And the Acronis Recovery Expert looks excellent for my hard drive that just decided to lose its data where windows can't read the volume at all period, bad luck here I'm having.

 

[Dadx2mj]

Norton Ghost is also a very good back up app. It has saved my bacon more times than I can count.

 

[Gus K]

A little less glossy but a cheap and effective alternative to the high priced imaging apps.

http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/imagew.html

 

[Ci2e]

Thanks for all the replies- guys.

I was just wondering if you have a 40GB hard drive and you back it up to a CD-RW how does a 40GB image file fit onto a CD-RW? Is the data compressed in some way shape or form or is the technique used more technologically advanced than that?

 

[Ded Morozh]

I use Norton Ghost and it generally compresses it about 2/3s. I have a Ghosted install of win2k (completely updated, but no apps) that took 2 cds. WinXP took three, but I think I installed office and whatnot as well

 

[Wolf1.8]

Thanks for all the replies- guys.

I was just wondering if you have a 40GB hard drive and you back it up to a CD-RW how does a 40GB image file fit onto a CD-RW? Is the data compressed in some way shape or form or is the technique used more technologically advanced than that?

if you create an image it will usually be compressed...if your 40gig drive is at capacity and you were to create a CD image, the imaging software would span the image across multiple cd's...you can't compress a 40gig image to just 1 cdrw

 

[Lee]

Roxio goback now owned by symantec or windows backup utility

 

[Ci2e]

Having to backup a 40gb hard drive to multiple discs isn't all that bad just means you can't restore without babysitting it. After I get an app to do this would it be a good idea to make a base install of windows totally updated with or without a couple games or apps installed, or what? That's what I was really wanting to know exactly what should and should not be backed up when making a backup image to restore from.

 

[DeeBeeS]

I have two hard drives and use True Image by Acronis and keep this image on my slave hard drive, I thinks this is better than putting it on CD,s as I normally create a new image every so often. I have copied the whole of C Drive which with True Image took 33 minutes for 20GB.