>The main difference between Ghost and Backup Exec:
>
>- Ghost is "image" backup
>- Backup Exec is file backup

Thank you Al,

I thought same as you, but saw this: http://admin.digitalriver.com/v2.0-img/page-builder/Symantec/images/FS_BESR_DS.pdf According to that, Symantec Backup Exec™ System Recovery recovers server, desktop, and laptop systems, even from a bare-metal state.
• Recovers to dissimilar hardware or virtual environments with Symantec Restore Anyware™ technology
• Supports Microsoft Windows Vista™ and Extended 64-bit (EM64T, AMD64) environments

I am looking at Acronis True Image as you suggested.

Thank you.

Alex



>
>Image backups:
>
>- used to require a reboot of your computer to back up the system volume. Since the advent of Volume Shadow Copy I don't know if this is still the case. This can be a problem for servers or other machines that need to run 24/7
>- for your application (backup to another machine on a LAN) you'd need to choose an image product that is network-capable i.e. able to backup to UNC volume or FTP, rather than just to local devices such as external USB drive, DVD etc. On the other hand, you could consider backing up to external USB hard drive(s) which are also convenient for off-site storage.
>- looking at the specs for Ghost 10, the Symantec site doesn't say if it supports backup to network or FTP volumes. Acronis True Image does, however: http://www.acronis.com/promo/ipwa/
>- Ghost does not appear to support Vista, it looks like True Image does
>- the beauty of image backup/restore is that after a restore your system is exactly the way it was at the time of the image backup - no reinstallations or reconfigurations required
>- the downside to image backup is that if hardware changes significantly (e.g. failed motherboard) then the restored image may not be able to boot. In some cases you can boot in Safe mode and update hardware drivers as required; in other cases you may need to reinstall the OS on the new hardware, connect the restored image as a secondary drive to transfer your files. For critical systems you can consider stocking a spare motherboard if this is a concern
>- there are some open source options for image backup of NTFS systems but I don't know of any that can be scheduled to run regularly from within Windows (these typically require reboot)
>
>File backups:
>
>- unless you have specialized/compatible hardware and software with hardware boot/disaster recovery capabilities, you typically have to reinstall the OS and backup software before you can restore from a file backup
>- this takes longer than an image restore but it's usually more adaptable to hardware changes
>- once you've got that far, a full restore should have you back where you were. However, hardware changes could still pose problems after the restore
>- it's usually easier to restore individual files or folders from a file backup than from an image backup
>- Windows Backup is free with Windows and is able to backup to external USB hard drives etc. It is actually a detuned/"crippled" version of Backup Exec. It can't backup to optical drives or span multiple media, and it does not support compression. However, if you want to use USB hard drives you can enable compression on them instead
>
>I'm a fan of image backup, it's saved my bacon a couple of times.
>
>If your recent rebuild was due to a hard drive failure, you can use 2 identical drives in a RAID 1 configuration to largely eliminate that vulnerability.