“A restore utility that gives me back a machine ready to go without forcing me into repairing various applications.”
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In my long search for a backup/restore utility for my Windows machines, I’ve tried just about everything I could get my hands on. Norton’s Ghost was pretty good, but only for a full backup and bare metal restore. The rub is that everything else would leave open files since it was running on top of the host operating system. (YEAH, I know, for Linux I use DD for full volume backups and Amanda or a simple tar for file backups...in this case I’m talking about Windows) Ghost worked well because you’re booting your machine into a DOS based session where you can get exclusive use of the partition. No more open files since Windows is no longer running so no more open swap files, no more open temp files, no more stuff running in the background. What I had been wanting was a cross between the two, boot into a non-Windows system to do a full backup, but still be able to use that same backup to restore just the file I accidentally dumped in a mad disk cleaning frenzy.
So why am I so excited about something as mundane as a backup/restore utility? The answer is simple, I travel a lot and have had a disk drive die out from under me. I want to be able to let a backup run over night and dump it to either optical or a USB hard disk. I don’t want to have to make multiple passes on the restore, I don’t want to have to dig around for my Windows License key, I don’t want to be forced into a single vendor solution, and most importantly I’d like a restore utility that gives me back a machine ready to go without forcing me into repairing various applications.
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