What should I use to create a backup?

Hi all,

Basic question here-I've never done much backing up of my stuff, but with raid 0 I need to start. I have two perpendicular drives in raid 0/1, and I'm about to install two more and go to raid 0/10. Meanwhile, I have my machine set up pretty close to the way I like it so far as the OS goes, so now would be a good time to burn a restorable image of my C drive so that I don't have to go through all the updates and other stuff again when I install the two new drives. What would you guys recommend I use to do that? Also, I have some apps installed on the raid 1 array that don't need the speed of the raid 0 array. I'd like to be able to restore those also, while having the OS still recognize them. If that isn't possible then I'll survive, but it would be nice.

I use Acronis Trueimage and have been very happy with it. Lets me create images as well as append to images. Never used the append feature though.

Currently I have a clean xp install image and a full image. Its nice because I dont have to restore the entire image if I just need a partition or other drive.

So it will make an image of all your drives/arrays/partitions?



*Edit* Also, will it work with raid? What if it does not have the driver stored for my particular raid controller, will it give me the opportunity to provide that driver? I checked the .pdf instruction manual and could not find the answers to these questions.

It will make an image of any drives/partitions you select.

As for RAID, I am uncertain as I have no raid setups at home. I assume it will work fine as the image is created from within windows, so as long as it sees the raid partitions it should be ok.

Now, it has the ability to create a boot CDrom in the event you need to restore an image onto a new formatted drive. I have created the CD but never checked to see if RAID was an option.

You shouldn't have a problem with RAID being recognized by Acronis True Image. I've never needed a driver in multiple setups.