[<<]Message[>>]        Author[>>]        Subject            Thread    

Number   :  9180
Date     :  2004-11-10
Author   :  divadgnot
Subject  :  Excellent Results With Xxclone for Laptop Backup
Size(KB) :  2



I look after three home laptops and for two years I've been keeping 
cloned duplicates of each disk drive as backups. It takes only a 
few minutes to remove a backup disk from its USB2 holder and fit it 
instead of a main drive if necessary. Also as disks get bigger and 
cheaper it's been an easy way of migrating to larger drives. Two of 
my USB holders are Amacom Flip2Disks (http://www.amacom-
tech.com/flip2disk_ben.html) and I've been using Amacom's bundled 
cloning and backup software (`FlipBack'). 

Amacom's concept is good but their FlipBack software is flawed. 
It's a struggle to get it to recognise and format new drives in XP 
and, although it claims to `synchronise' the two drives 
in `incremental' mode, it doesn't: it writes to the backup but 
never deletes, so the backup soon gets seriously cluttered with 
items that are long gone from the main drive. If you don't discover 
this before you *need* a disk replacement you're in trouble. I 
raised these issues with Amacom six months ago. At that time a new 
version of Flipback was `nearly ready' - but there's still no sign 
of it. 

I've now spent a week testing out Xxclone as an alternative to 
all this hassle and the results are excellent. I've done full 
disaster rehearsals on a Win 2k SP4 laptop and a Win XP Pro SP2 
laptop. To start with I used Disk Management and Partition Magic to 
match the partitions on the USB2 backup to those on the main 
drives. Then I cloned all partitions with Xxcopy, did several 
incremental backups, and then physically replaced the drives in the 
laptops with the backup drives. Results as follows.

1.	It was all straightforward and trouble-free. The only 
reboot required was when first starting up the cloned drive after 
fitting it inside the laptop.
2.	Xxclone's `Incremental Backup' does indeed copy and delete 
as required to keep the backup an exact copy of the main drive.
3.	I found the log file option very useful in the early stages 
as a confidence builder. 

Other advantages over FlipBack:

1.	The cloning process is more transparent with a marked 
absence of crashes and cryptic error messages.
2.	Xxclone doesn't mind if the target drive is smaller than the 
source drive.
3.	You can use command line parameters in a batch file. 
4.	The existence of this forum. 

Thanks to the Xxclone developers for making this beta software 
available. Really trustworthy backups for laptop users have always 
seemed a bit problematical. My solution is to buy laptops where I 
can get at the drive easily, and to keep a clone I can actually 
test. Previous ways of doing this have been expensive and fiddly. 
Now with Xxclone, a bare 2.5" drive, and a USB2 holder it's suddenly 
got cheaper and easier.



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