Suggestions for software to do local backups? No Acronis!

[dc2000]

Hi everyone:

First let me share the bad experience that I had while using one of the major brands of software for the local backup -- Acronis True Image 2014. I purchased and was using their software since 2014. I set it up to make incremental backups of my local files to an external hard drive, as well as make an image of my disk C to another external hard drive. The settings in the program also allowed me to automatically remove old backups when space was needed.

This scheme seems to have worked until about a month ago when my external disk got filled up and I started seeing error messages of disk being full via the popup balloons. This infuriated me since the only reason I was using Acronis software was to make it clean up old backups in the first place. That was the first time that I posted a question on Acronis form, that went nowhere. (In that thread I also discovered that I couldn't delete old backups even manually.) So I thought, OK, obviously other users may not know what is wrong so I decided to contact Acronis tech support instead. Little did I know, that it actually cost $20 to contact their support about any issue after the initial 90 day period since the software was purchased. What?! That's right. You have to pay them to fix it I was so incensed by it that I even tweeted to Acronis, and got this response.

At this point I was curious to get to the bottom of it. Upon further digging into Acronis True Image I discovered a very erratic behavior, and namely, that the main process of the software was not closing after I closed its UI. It continued running, using significant number of CPU clocks & disk. Here's my other post with a screen capture of what was happening.

Upon even further digging into it, I learned that Acronis is actually a Russian company that for some reason is based in US. (That explained their barbaric approach to software tech support by charging for it.) I obviously did not know all this when I purchased their software. Now I'm seriously concerned with entrusting it to back up my data.

So now, my question. Can you recommend a local backup solution to do the following:

1. Be developed/run in a Western country? (Sorry, but no Russia, China, etc.)

2. Do the following:

- Let me set up a schedule for backups, example: Daily at 2 a.m.

- Allow to create and later do incremental image backups of my disk C:, the one with the operating system.

- Allow to do incremental backups of select folders. For instance, I may want to back up D:\My Special Files and D:\My other documents from disk D but not the rest of the files on that disk.

- Allow for automatic removal of old backups when external disk is full.

I would appreciate if someone could give their recommendations based on your personal experience.

Thank you!

 

[KYHI]

Macrium Reflect Free

 

[RolandJS]

Norton Ghost, by itself, not bundled within other Norton products.

 

[pparks1]

Getting a short amount of technical support is pretty common with consumer type products.

I used to use Acronis, but switched to Paragon Backup. I think it is based out of the UK.

 

[popeye]

Imaging is the only way to go if you have a fast device to do it. Macrium all the way. Incremental backup is ok but if you want something that will bring your system back to full operation imaging is the way to go.
Depends how much one is willing to lose by often they image. Can do both image and backup.

 

[whs]

Free Macrium is excellent. Here is a tutorial I made:

Imaging with free Macrium - Windows 7 Help Forums

AOMEI Backupper is a good free one too. Here are their tutorials:

AOMEI Backupper How-to Guides: Backup, Restore and Clone

 

[CuriousOne]

Macrium Reflect.
Will the winpe work to reboot and restore if you are on Windows 8.1?

 

[whs]

Macrium Reflect.
Will the winpe work to reboot and restore if you are on Windows 8.1?

Yes it works if you created it with the current Macrium release.

But if you don't want to work with a recovery CD or flash drive, use this program. It works well with 8.1. I have used it.

One Key Recovery - Create a Factory Restore Partition with AOMEI OneKey Recovery

But there are also native 8.1 facilities such as refresh with custom refresh images.

http://www.eightforums.com/tutorials/3610-refresh-windows-8-create-use-custom-recovery-image.html

 

[dc2000]

Thank you all for your suggestions. I can't wait to get rid of Acronis. Oh man, I wish I knew how bad it is. I checked and Macrium looks very promising!