Hard Drive Software

First, it came time for a hard drive upgrade. Then, we told you about a great new Internet hard drive. Now, we’ve got more hard drive software feedback than we can humanly handle!

Bob Kubichek - I would use Acronis because; (1) It is much easier to use than the latest version of Norton Ghost or PQ’s Drive Image; (2) It does NOT use as many system resources as does Ghost; (3)In my opinion, it is much faster than Ghost; (4) Acronis does files or folders, and also has user-configurable filters, to customize file / folder rejection. The ability to “Mount” images to act like virtual drives is a nice option that both titles have. Otherwise, Acronis has the same options and features that Ghost has, except one: it does not make a bootable recovery CD/DVD like Ghost does. This the only reason that I still use Norton’s Ghost 2003 v8.0 to image hard drives. Plus, the fact that Ghost still fits on a floppy. They both have their strengths and weaknesses, but it depends on your situation.

Paul Horechuk: Have you had a look at QTparted, included on the Knoppix Live CDs? A friend of mine with his own PC repair business uses it a lot for doing backups. The main reason for doing this is that Windows cannot lock any files if the OS isn’t running. QT will copy a full partition and restore it to another drive. Since the file system is immaterial at this point, it works with NTFS. He’s even gone the extra step and set up an external 250GB drive with USB and Firewire interfaces. He then boots Knoppix and backs up the Windows partition before doing any work on the Windows data to remove virii and malware.

Gress: While Partition Magic is a great product, its current incarnation requires .NET service and is large and unwieldy. I used the earlier versions for many years, but have since switched. Acronis True Image is a very good product, but I found that BootitNG is a more complete product. What you get for the price is a very good Boot Manager, Partition Manager, Imaging for Windows, and Imaging for DOS. I have been using it for about 3 years now and am very satisfied.

Larry Filbert: I used Acronis True Image to migrate the image of my old 12GB hard drive to the new 40GB hard drive - with absolutely no problem whatsoever. I initially created an image backup of the old drive (to CD) and then used that image to create the new one. I have been using the resulting (larger) drive as my C: drive for years now with absolutely no problem. It was all easy and straightforward. I just had to tell Acronis how big the new drive was, and off it went. Simple.

Hard drives won’t be a part of the PC for too much longer. Soon, we’ll be storing our data in holograms! Our computers will essentially be working at the speed of light. Well, at least the data storage and retrieval part will. I’m not a physicist, but I realize that any kind of friction will slow us down (literally and physically). Don’t ask me why I was driven to write about it again tonight… pun intended.

[tags]knoppix,boot manager,norton ghost,acronis true image,partition magic,hard drive software,partition manager,qtparted,internet hard drive,recovery cd,repair business[/tags]