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Oct 8th 2007 at 4:42 PM

Back in the heady, easy days of XP, I'd automatically back up what was important to me with a little python, a little regex, and a little zipfile. (I'd say that I scheduled the task, but I didn't.) (Of course, I still have the offsite svn server.)

Now our primary computer at home is a Vista machine with two administrator accounts, two limited user accounts, with UAC sprinkled all over the place. And that pushed the pain threshold just past the roll-your-own point for me.

What to do?

I noticed that my USB drive is a Seagate. And then I saw that Seagate OEMs Acronis True Image. Hmm. Would it work?

I tried it out, and it tells me that it did!

Back up your stuff.

Comments

tpederson on Oct 9th 2007 at 12:17 AM

How is Vista working for you? From what I've seen Paul M go through, I would be hesitant to use it. Seems very buggy and cumbersome, although it might be the case that Paul doesn't know how to configure it well. I would seriously consider a Mac box again after all these years of not thinking about them at all.

dblume on Oct 9th 2007 at 5:58 AM

Vista doesn't do enough to warrant itself yet. But since I'm in the consumer business, I need to be familiar with it. It's not buggy though. I haven't seen any stability problems. The problems are an artifact of the design.

narilka on Oct 9th 2007 at 2:40 AM

I'm unclear from this post if the UAC mentioned about Vista is about the Backup feature. It'll automatically do it for you, not sure if Acronis does.

dblume on Oct 9th 2007 at 5:55 AM

Ooh, no complaints about Vista's Drive->Properties->Tools->Backup feature. This post was strictly about the pleasant surprise to get an OEM'ed version of True Image for free. UAC was only mentioned in the context that I'd now prefer to use a professional application in Vista than to write my own. UAC just gets in the way a little too much. Would my own script be able to restore from the network directly into the Program Files directory? Probably not, if UAC now mandates a new two-hop transfer: Network->Documents->Program Files.

narilka on Oct 9th 2007 at 6:22 AM

Backup is actually right in the start menu, and also the welcome center, if you still have that come up. You *could* turn off UAC... But at any rate, nice about the OEM'ed ver. of TI!

sjonsvenson on Oct 9th 2007 at 6:19 PM

Have you tried the restore?

dblume on Oct 9th 2007 at 6:28 PM

Not yet. Hence, "It tells me it worked."

sjonsvenson on Oct 9th 2007 at 7:26 PM

My brother makes backup-copies on CD-R, almost religiously. One day I asked one of his backups to restore a file and I couldn't read it on my PC. I remember his shocked face when he realised all his backups were useless.

dblume on Oct 9th 2007 at 9:06 PM

I appreciate the anecdote. That's exactly why I chose my words carefully.

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