windows help

[Brucifer]

I'm getting an XP system going again after being a linux desktop person for a while. What I'm looking for is a program that can make a disk image for backup purposes, and also one that is a good backup program for data files. Would prefer something that isn't MS or in bed with them. Unfortunately the ones that I used to use were bought out by MS, and have been incorporated into windows stuff, or just done away with so they didn't have the competition.

So what's everyone using for this stuff???

[vaughan]

Try O&O disk image. (http://www.oo-software.com/home/en/products/oodiskimage/)

[mitchellds]

symantec Ghost is another I make use of.

[AMDave]

Brucifer, given your *nix experience, I think you might really enjoy G4U
http://www.feyrer.de/g4u/
It came well recommended to me by some Mid-range server and Solaris admins because of the ability to pipe any Win/*nix drive image to a http/ftp folder somewhere else in the same run and can restore over the same connection as well as to another local partition.

You can even grub your drive and boot to it localy so you don't have to pop in a CD to restore the HD image if windows gets corrupted.
I like that bit very much.


If you are still interested in doing a little bit of coding, for the data files, you can knock out a wsf/cscript file that you can schedule to run archive and ZIP compress (and copy or ftp it somewhere) your most critical stuff without having to resort to a proprietary tool.
A great place to kick off is here:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-au/library/9bbdkx3k.aspx

If you are a WinZIP user already then you can use "c:\program files\winzip\wzzip" which accepts CLI arguments.

Or maybe a solution like this is your style?
http://www.roelbroersma.nl/index.php/2006/03/05/script-it-a-logfiles-compressbackup-script

Zero cost and you get to hack out a windows script which will remind you that you can still control windows to some extent, like you did in linux.

[Brucifer]

Thank you very much AMDave, that's just what I was looking for!!!
:icon_mrgreen: