Is R&R Reliable? Or should I use something else

[fbrdphreak]

Hey all,
I have a few Thinkpads I'm reviewing and will need to run benchies on my personal model. This involves switching HDD's and preferrably re-imaging to base OS for consistency. Accordingly when I'm done I want to bring the entire setup back to how I last used it. If I backup to a network drive or DVD, how reliable is the restoration process?
I've heard of other users doing this and they got version incompatibility (R&R complained that the backup was made in a different version)

Can you make a R&R backup from the PreDesktop OS? If so, that should stay consistent as long as I keep that same image on all the HDD's in question, yes?
I REALLY don't want to have to reconfigure my T42 if it goes down the drain; data will be backed up, but reinstalling apps and configuring will be a [censored].

Let me know if I need to clarify what I'm doing
Thanks!

edit Or should I use something else? Ghost maybe? Ease of use is the key

[d lehmann]

I haven't tried R&R personally.
I use Acronis Trueimage (not the latest version BTW) It seems to be less bloated from what I have read about R&R
The easiest way is to image to a network drive etc.
I always image to a drive rather than to cd, but in the options, I select the size of the files to be 650mb. That way, if need be, I can drop and drag to cd or dvd (Which is my preference) and restore directly. Acronis has run into some problems with periphial drives in the past and their lack of timely responses has been a major contention with some users, but I have had good luck with the prog.
I believe in testing the backup all the way, at least the first time, and not just using their check image option. I use a separate scratch hdrive to do a real restore to. I feel you must be 100% safe with imaging.

Browse here for any problems
http://www.wilderssecurity.com/forumdisplay.php?f=65

As far as the ibm service partition is concerned, I have been able to include it in images on one r40 I have, but on another r40 I have I can't get it to image and I haven't figured out why yet. I'm thinking that when I unhide it, it still doesn't show for some reason on this other machine and that is probably the reason I can't image it.

[fbrdphreak]

Great info, thanks.

Anyone have any first hand experience w/R&R? Thx!

[storage_man]

I also have NOT tried R&R - WHY - Because True Image is so much better even the latest version (8). I do two backup strategies:

1) I purchased a HDD caddie from IBM that fits into my Ultra bay. Bought a HDD to put into the caddie and then I clone the permnament HDD to the Caddie. This gives me a complete/bootable image incase of a HDD failure. Takes about 20 min ( I do this once per month)

2) I have a External USB 2.0 HDD that I use to create a IMAGE Backup with incrementals at random times. I use this for Errors on my part - like deleting a file/directory by mistake.

With this strategy, I'm covered no matter what happens.

Storage_man


PS: everybody will say that I must have very important data - Not true - It just takes to long to recovery all the software and setting.

[s0larian]

R&R works just fine. Acronis is great, too. But R&R has also advantages over Acronis. And the best: R&R is free.

Pro Acronis:
- faster

Pro R&R:
- free
- works with IBM Client Security and full disk encryption
- is able to exclude certain files for backup (Acronis wasn't able to do this 1/2 year ago)

[pphilipko]

just use the R&R. I'VE used it, and its works perfectly. No need to waste money...