Backup Software: Alternatives to WD Smartware?

sonstream

I'm a long term user of acronis and have had no problems with it at all from laptop drive to one thats connected in a cradle works 100% all the time

Mr_Toad

Another happy Acronis user here.

I'm an inveterate tinkerer and am always swapping and changing hardware and software about. Over the years I've tried any number of different backup solutions but I find Acronis to be excellent.

I take various images images, the basic OS with nothing else installed, another once all the basic software is loaded and the machine is set up to my liking.

I then use Acronis to automate backing up the data. I've had to use Acronis to restore on many occasions and it has never let me down.

I made my brother in law buy it, he's a complete IT disater waiting to happen, and his machine is running the continuous backups which have saved him from his own stupidity on many occasions.

buglawton

spud17 wrote: »

I just knew somebody would come back with Synctoy.

My experience with it was not brilliant, it constantly gave errors/corrupted data and was very slow compared to SyncBack.

Not doubting your experiences, just putting forward my findings.

Make sure Synctoy is a recent version. It also seems to be unreliable across corporate networks and if folder paths are deep/file names super long. But for my photo backups via usb drive it's flawless.

EricGeek

I use and recommend Handy Backup 7, it's easy to use and reliable backup software.

macman

I've removed WD Smartware on the PC running XP, as it's unusable with it on, even with the firmware and software upgrade to 1.6.0. The CPU runs at 100% load all the time (on the other one running W7, it's OK).
I'm then going to upgrade the XP one to use Macrium Reflect Standard, which gives an automatic file backup option (not available on the free edition). Thanks to all for their suggestions.

Mr_Toad

Let us know how it works.