Disk Imaging backup/restore for Windows

[BryanC1968]

@RBoynton

From the list in my previous post I would have $200 in the NICS and Switch... My current wireless router is a WRT54GS (wireless g speeds) flashed with Tomato... There are also 3 laptops in the house that all support wireless n speeds...

The 2 Desktops are getting old... I built the 1st one in March of 2003 and the 2nd one in March of 2005... My son bought his own MacBook a couple years ago with his own money... We bought my daughter a laptop this past Christmas, and my wife surprised me with a Laptop for my birthday back in March...

That is why I was including the router in the upgrade so I could take advantage of the wireless n speeds of the laptops on the network... We house all our shared content (Music, Videos, Pictures, etc) on the server for everyone to access from their own computers...

[BryanC1968]

I thought since I am using it as a router, DHCP server, DNS server, that all the local network traffic would also be going thru the UT box. But now that I think about it... I guess I wouldn't have to upgrade those NICs... Only the internet traffic would be going thru it... All local LAN traffic would be handled by the switch wouldn't it...? Since I only have a 6 Mbps Internet connection...

[BryanC1968]

My Ubuntu file server and my UT box were all pieced together from spare parts I have accumulated over time from working on computers... and from friends and family members who have given me older systems they have retired after purchasing new ones... The only things I purchased new in file server were the 2 640 GB hard drives... And New Memory for the UT box...

[dxh]

If you have a switch that all of your lan clients connect to then it should never reach the UT nics.

[alhadi]

@Spiral

Thanks for that opensource . will look into it and give the feedback right here.

its weekend so tomorrow i'll test it and then report

[sky-knight]

CloneZilla is powerful stuff. I'm not sure if you can do a live image with it, but it's what I use for all my offline disk imaging now.

[BryanC1968]

CloneZilla Limitations:

(1) The destination partition must be equal or larger than the source one.
(2) Differential/incremental backup is not implemented yet.
(3) Online imaging/cloning is not implemented yet. The partition to be imaged or cloned has to be unmounted.
(4) Software RAID/fake RAID is not supported by default. It's can be done manually only.
(5) Due to the image format limitation, the image can not be explored or mounted. You can _NOT_ recovery single file from the image. However, you still have workaround to make it, read this.
(6) Recovery Clonezilla live with multiple CDs or DVDs is not implemented yet. Now all the files have to be in one CD or DVD if you choose to create the recovery iso file.

[dknyinva]

Alhadi,

Here are few more commercial backup products to try

http://www.altaro.com/
http://www.paragon-software.com/home/

Happy testing

[BryanC1968]

Found this on DSLReports.com

Preferred Backup & Imaging Programs - 2011 Member Choice

[mooseracing]

I use a mix:

On the Servers I use built in Windows backup for daily data. It has imaging since '08.

Alot of times if I am expanding and replacing an array I will use Acronis.

For desktops we use the role on windows server Windows Deployment Services. We've kicked off as many as 20 desktop deployments, I couldn't run any faster to try and beat the 15GB images from being deployed. Otherwise I would have loaded it up more.

Then I use Paragon if I need to edit partitions, I haven't tried its imaging tools.