Better Windows XP Backup?

March 27, 2005 9:46 AM

I've used standard MS Backup with DLT and it's really getting old (just snapped a tape and lost a 5 hour backup session).

Any cheap (even free) backup utilities that do a good job of backing up the NTFS file system, registry, etc to DVD-RW? Standard MS backup will not utilize DVD-RW (grr). I've researched and found nothing good. Thanks!

posted by nj_subgenius to computers & internet (7 comments total)

...for XP Professional.
posted by nj_subgenius at 9:48 AM on March 27, 2005

Do you have DVD-RAM instead? That would make things much easier.
posted by randomstriker at 10:43 PM on March 27, 2005

Cheapsake solution: Standard MS Backup doesn't do DVD, but it does know how to write its backup stream to plain old files. If you've got scratch disk space, run the backup to a file dump, and then write that file to the DVD media of your choice. You could conceivably wrap the whole process in a batch file if you wanted to be clever and automated.
posted by majick at 9:59 AM on March 28, 2005

Just quickly - I'd be hesitant to blame MS Backup for snapping a tape. That is _much_ more likely to be caused by a faulty tape, or a faulty drive. The software has little impact there...

I was a Quantum repair engineer for two years
posted by coriolisdave at 3:27 PM on March 28, 2005

Decent backup programs are surprisingly hard to find, but I've been using Backup4all - http://www.backup4all.com/ - recently and it's doing a good job so far. I used WinBackup before that, but it really doesn't get on with DVDs (as well as suffering from Just Breaking From Time to Time Syndrome).
posted by kryptothesuperdog at 3:36 PM on March 28, 2005

I use the concept described in the post tagged as the best answer. I've added a heavy duty compression stage in there so I can fit more than just 4.5Gig of data on a DVD-RW (currently around 6.5 I think). I use 7-zip(.org).
posted by krisjohn at 5:08 PM on March 28, 2005

Thanks for the input, coriolisdave, but I was referring to DLT, not MS backup, as being the central issue. Good for you and your Quantum repair engineering.
posted by nj_subgenius at 7:48 AM on April 2, 2005