Newbie--ghost vs Retrospect

[tlauro]

I have a simple question. Does the Retrospect Backup 5.5 that my seagate travan drive came with backup or take a full snapshot of my C Drive as does Norton's Ghost Software.

 

 

 

My concern is that if for some reason, the C drive were to be reformatted due to a virus strike or what not, that I can hit restore and have my whole C drive back where I left off.

 

 

 

I know I can do this with Ghost, but since I have an incremental backup ability with Retrospect, I'd like to insure that I'm using it fully and that I am also getting what is desired.

 

 

 

Thanks for the help.

 

 

 

tim

 

newbie question

[Mayoff]

The Snapshot feature in Retrospect (always on) will allow you to restore the hard disk to the exact way it looked during the most recent backup of the drive, even after many incremental copies of your data.

 

 

 

Always leave verification turned on, and check the operations log to make sure no errors were reported during backup.

 

 

 

 

[RandyB]

It really depends on what your ultimate goal is. I've been using Ghost for years but just started evaluating Retrospect. There is one significant advantage to Ghost. Restoring a blown boot partition is a snap. As an OS beta tester, I have to restore my boot partition almost weekly when things are hot and heavy. My strategy was simple. Put my key but rarely changing software on C: along with the OS. Anything that changes (data, word processing files, address books and email, etc.) on a different drive or partition. I use a third partition for the Ghost images, typically 1 gig or less with compression.

 

If I need to restore my boot partition, I just boot from a Ghost floppy and transfer the saved partition onto C:. It's quick. Much, much quicker than a disaster recovery with Retrospect. For one thing, you don't need to reinstall the OS. More important, I've done it over a hundred times with nary a glitch.

 

 

 

I've used tape backups for over 10 years. "Nary a glitch" doesn't apply. Tapes go bad and drives fail, always at the worst time. However, they are getting better and more reliable.

 

 

 

Now, my case is unusual. For a casual user who might never see a crash, Retrospect is probably the best solution there is. You don't have to worry about what stupid programs are storing vital and changing data info deep in the Windows system folder. You don't have to move MyDocuments to a different partition. Etc. Just do a full backup with disaster, keep it up to date, and have at least two alternating backup sets.