Go Back by Roxio vs. XP's Restore

I've always found my own advise.......to be the best advice I could ever get

Try them both

Me persoanally I have no clue. I heard some one say that XP Restore is fine.


I haven't used GoBack yet. that reminds me, I have to by Norton for my new computer.

Norton Bought GOBack.
Changed it bit "like they do everything they buy"
I've always prefered GOBack.
A fair bit more flexibility in controling restore points etc.
also "to me" more user friendly and makes more sense.

IMHO.

People don't use system restore on a regular basis...at least I hope not. Its for cases when its one of the few things left to do. I think those programs like goback are for older oses that don't have system restore built in. Therefor comparing them is really kind of pointless. But I am prone to being wrong.

I think System restore is a very cutdown version of GOback just like XP's CD writing capability is a cutdown of Roxio's own product

PowerQuest Drive Image

I would like to know what features it has over XP's. I hate when it's a 'must restore' situation and 'sorry, you computer cannot be restored' greets you.

Man I was having so many different hardware problems at the same time and I would create restores on the hour.
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I'm not that familiar with GoBack other than what it being somewhat similar to XP's System Restore. Drive Image creates and compressed image of an entire partition or drive. I have all my system files and any productivity or utility software on my C:\ partition. Everything else, games, images, music, etc. go on other partitions. I use Drive Image to create an image of my c:\ partition and store the image on a second hard drive. You can also put the image on CD's but if your image is large, it takes awhile. Cleaned up my c:\ partition has about 10Gig used and compresses to about 5Gig. If I have to restore, it takes about 15-20mins.

Drive Image is a good program for creating a "virgin" image of your system that you can always fall back to without having to go the "format c:\" root

Drive Image 7.0 and do a daily back-up Mon - Sat and then Sun as a weekly. That way I'm never more than a day out if disaster strikes.

Remember, System Restore can't protect you from lost files HD failure etc.

Snag is, you need more than one drive and a bit of space. I've got 320Gb to play with

Since I don't use Sys-restore. I'm not completely familiar with it.
With GOBack, you can restore select files.. and not have to restore whole system.
You accidentally delete a directory,, later to find out that there was stuff in there that you need,
Simply restore what you need, GoBack allows you to create a "virtual drive" of the time you want to go back to.
pick the files you want, replace and your done.
System Restore and GoBack will not protect you from a full blown hard drive failure, only a OS system failure.
This is hand for "like me" if your a software junkie and are always installing and uninstalling software.
sometimes things get screwed up. or as mentioned, you accidentally delete something.

For full blown BACKUPS, I use Acronis TrueImage Server 7.0.
It also will create a "virtual drive" and allow select file restore. I switched from Norton Ghost to Acronis as it doesn't require rebooting to dos to backup.

Decide what features you want and check out what each has and does.
Powerquest - DriveImage
Norton - Ghost
Symantec - GoBack
Acronis - TrueImage

as someone else said, Microsoft Stuff is usually scaled down versions of something else.
such as thier back up programs are scaled down Veritas stuff.
TrueImage is my choice, as it provides, "on the fly" full back up images to a seperate drive in case of catastrophic failure.
It allows select file recovery, built in time scheduling, Supports tape drives, etc.. but that's my choice.
compare price's and features, and TRY THEM ALL OUT.. as they all provide "trial" versions.
Get and use the one "THAT YOU WILL USE". speaking from experience and many gigs of lost data.
as far as install and forget goes, i would say GoBack is the winner, hands down. but as mentioned, if your drive goes, so goes your data. Now your talking "data recovery" $$$$ for that i use Runtime software's GetDataBack.


Ok ok,, I'll shut up now.

Back up, back up back up.

well, my home system for whatever reason has rejected Go Back so i've been forced to use system restore a couple times.. alternatively, my laptop's had to go back a couple times.

go back seems to have much more flexibility and options.. and the fact that it loads the second your computer boots helps prevent accidents on a higher level. the two times i tried to sys restore, for whatever reason, windows said it couldn't go through with it, and i had to eat the driver mistake i made. go back, the two times ive used it, worked flawlessly. the downside is go back will rob windows of some boot up time- on my mobile system, at least.

WOW

Very interesting thread. I have already bookmarked it.

Good question to the guy who started the thread.

By the way, how much space does these back ups take? If you have a 40 gigabyte hard drive (with only 10 gigs of stuff) then how much would each of the programs mentioned would take out of your hard drive just to back it up?????

Confused in NYC

Try them both

heheh i wouldn't wait for a system's crash to 'try one out'. you loose data that way.

bought myself a dvd burner the other day.. oooooh yeah. i can finally back up an entire job without wasting more harddrive space somewhere else. i lost a portable drive already.. reallly bad.

Just to add:

I have my eyes on a program called Partition Magic for a while now. You might want to look into that also. (to impove harddrive preformance). Also I would debate that getting a second hard drive should be an option as well. (Or ALLOT od CD's or DVD to hold the data)

40 gigabyte hard drive (with only 10 gigs of stuff

10 Gigs will compress down to about 4-6 Gigs with Drive Image depending on file types. Cheapest route for backups are CD's. Fastest route is an inexpensive second hard drive. I just make sure that MS, Norton's etc. doesn't have anything to do with it

Yeah Partition Magic is great.

I have a 120gig part. 60 and 60 and a 40 gig. I back up zips, rars, skins and whatnot on the partition and also on the 40 (games on the part. and only system files and proggies on C: like Єssencay♣). Then I back them up again on my secondary pc. If there was a hard drive failure or something of that nature, I'd rather do a clean install over a compressed restore. I don't know, I'm funny about that...especially compressed.

I'll try it out, especially Go Back.

For DesignCaddy: What exactly do you mean by this? "the downside is go back will rob windows of some boot up time-"

Also, did you notice when doing optimization that you had a large amount of "unmovable" {after} you had started using Go Back? My using systemWorks I seen on the graph about 1 inch from top to bottom of red; the color associated with "unmovable". Moreover, the SMART sensor within Norton Utilities stopped working. Because of these two (2) things, I uninstalled Go Back. From what I have read thus far here, I think I should use Go Back and just accept the red and the sensor issues.

Ron

Go Back link> http://www.symantec.com/goback/

ronald, go back only worked on my laptop.. (it kept telling my other machines they didn't have the memory for it.. odd, it was an error, must just have not liked my hardware). it was a p4 running xp. nothing too shabby.. but i found that after i put go back on, it booted my desktop VERY slowely (that is, the 'starting programs phase' of windows loading - the period after you log in). when i uninstalled go back, i had fast boots again. i attribute my slow boot up to go back's storing/checking itself, which it should only really do once in a while or after you make system changes. its probobly worth the wait, if it even happens for you.


i noticed a large amount of unmovable on my present machine, which does not have go back. i wouldn't be suprised if that is in fact system restore data. go back and sys restore take up a certain % of your disk by default. that amount is adjustable. i'm sure there is a lot on your machine that is unmovable tho.. many system files. i can't speak for the sensor issues, i never had a problem. overall i think it would be worth putting up with the lost drive space if you're concerned about losing data.

hope that helps

For DesignCaddy: Yes, your information is helpfull. I went ahead and installed Go Back. The sensor issue (not working after Go Back) installation) may be (I am told by DELL) because my drive does not have SMART. I questioned the tech...letting him know that "prior" to Go Back the sensor traffic light worked just fine. He seems to think that what I was seeing was not fact...but a false reading. I am having DELL check with IBM to see if my drive does have or does not have SMART.

The three times I needed XP system restore it did not want to do its job and so hopefully, if needed, GB will work. Again thanks!

ahhh.. when you boot up immediately start hitting escape and get rid of the Dell boot screen. watch the prompts flash up where it detects your hardware, and notice if it tells you PRIMARY DRIVE SMART (not)COMPATABLE - SMART DISABLED or something similar to that. most new drives, i had thought, were SMART compatable.. it may simple be turned off. depending on your bios, it might tell you.. mine does.. if you happen to find that it is capable but turned off, then get into your system bios on a boot and turn the option on for that drive.

For DesignCaddy: In fact (according to DELL and our checking on your suggestion) I do have SMART on this IBM drive. Norton sent me an E-Mail and they are investigating why installing GoBack knocks-out the SMART Sensor in Norton System Doctor. We shall see...

I used GoBack 3 Deluxe for a while and I didn't like it. It only keeps a few days in history. You can't restore to a previous date like System Restore.