Backup had a been one of those concern that is well known but yet not well addressed. Since musing about the process of brainstorming for a backup strategy, I have yet to find a solution that I felt was easy and simple for a non-technical small business owner to setup and use.
As mentioned before, since I’m now using Ubuntu, my focus would be tools that should runs on Linux. But keeping in mind that many non-technical users are on Windows and I also uses MacOSX, the perfect backup solution is indeed one that runs on the 3 major platforms – Linux, Mac and Windows.
As with most solution search these day, the first stop is to visit the seach engine and generate a few alternatives as the starting point.
With the increasing popularity of using the “cloud”, the other alternative is to backup to one of those online backup services. A few that I had tried come to mind – Mozy, Carbonite, Wuala and here is a list with comparison.
So far none had led me to sustained use.
Now that Google is providing space to upload any file, perhaps someone will soon come up with a way backup files to Google. The price for additional space is pretty attractive too.
Do you have any other recommendation?
Since I never quite got back on the post on alternative disk/partition cloning tools after a few days, it might be appropriate to at least close it after a year.
I actually did got something out of that exercise but things began to turn really busy after that. In fact using that same tool, I cloned and deployed more than 30 Ubuntu desktop.
So which is it? Clonezilla.
Halfway throght the list, Clonezilla fit the bill so well that it wasn’t necessary to try the other.
So far clonezilla has worked for me on Windows XP and Ubuntu system. It has even worked on virtual machine on VirtualBox.
How does it work?
Continue reading ‘Revisiting Alternative Disk/Partition Cloning Tools’
My question today is ‘What are the open source/free alternatives to disk/partition cloning tools like Norton Ghost, Acronis True Image or Paragon Drive Backup.”
The selection has certainly improved and matured since I research this topic more than 2 years ago. Back then a few alternatives (including SystemRescueCD and PartD, Partition Saving) was tested but none gives the comfort that the restore would be fail-proof should the need suddenly appears. The main problem I remembered was NTFS wasn’t well supported at that time. In the end I stuck to Norton Ghost.
Now it is time to return to this topic after installing 2 PCs in 2 days and potentially having to provision 100 more PCs to come.
Let me list the alternatives and I will get back with the result in a few days. In the meantime, if you have any experience, good or bad, with open source/free disk clone utilities, please leave a comment.
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UBCD – Ultimate Boot CD for Windows
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FOG – Free, Ghost-like Cloning Solution
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PING – Partimage is Not Ghost
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Wikipedia has a good article to learn more about disk cloning.
As a small business owner, we often have our heads filled with more immediate concerns. Backup is not one of those immediate concern. In fact, backing up data is one of the often stressed but seldom carried out activities.
I have to confess that I had been thinking about backup since day-one and have yet to do any concrete about it. So I sat down today and did a mind map (using FreeMind) for a backup strategy.
So the next steps are
- Figure out and decide on what strategy to use
- Find the right softwares (free/open source preferred)
- Implement
- Train users
- Monitor and manage
I will be posting the progress and any related softwares that I find. Hope this helps you too.
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