Windows Backup in Vista Ultimate question

I have Home Premium edition and thing the implementation of backup really is extremely poor. You might as well simply copy the files to DVD, as use the backup program.

What about Vista Ultimate?

I'm used to the backup that comes with XP Pro, and I love it. Is Vista Ultimate's implementation similar?

I want a backup solution that can copy EVERY single file on the computer and place in an archive that can be later searched, and have single files within the archive expanded at will.

With XP pro, I had some serious failures in which the full backup was a godsend. Vista Home Premium is not even close, as it won't backup the OS files.

 

Stay away from Vista Complete System Backup, it is garbage. I tried it thinking it was a standard image file, and I could re-image my drives no problem.

But after I went back to XP I tried to plop a black Hard drive into my computer, and put a backup image of Vista back on there. It would not work at all, it kept saying that my drive configuration was not identical to the time when I made the image.... I was like so what I have enough space just slap the damn image down.

After messing around for a week, I finally got it to work by disconnecting all my drives, and just using 1 drive in the SATA 1 port. It started to work then failed saying my image file was corrupt. It's a POS.

For your needs it sounds like Acronis True Image is perfect for you. It is not free, but well worth the price. You can image your entire drive and then mount the images and explore them at your leisure. I have been using it in XP for a long time, and wish I installed it in Vista when instead of using the default.

 

I went shopping for True Image and found True Image Home version 7.0 at Staples for $40.00. Is that a decent deal, and is their a "Pro" edition, and if so, what are the extras?

 

It's $50 at Acronis.com, so it's not a bad price. You can go there to compare the differences among versions.

 

am using complete backup every week.

i also used it to restore my drive (10 times i think) with no problem.

i booted from the vista dvd->repair->complete backup (select not to format disk)

 

I also used the DVD, but I had a different hard drive configuration than when I made the image. So it did not work. If you are restoring to the exact same system as before then it should work. But what if you add more hard drives, or want to put the image on another drive in your system? It's not flexible and un-reliable.

 

Face it - Microsoft's default programs are next to useless. Never trust them with your data. Vista Backup is to Acronis the way IE is to Firefox and VFirewall is to a *real* Firewall. Don't waste time with inferior products when there are far better alternatives out there.

By the way, a free version of Acronis is available at Seagate's website for people with Seagate or Maxtor hard drives.

And yes - I personally use True Image. Does exactly what it says, and I can trust it to put everything back where it was when I use it to reinstall an image. I've even used it successfully to backup and reinstall OSx86 partitions on my laptop.