Can anyone recommend a good freeware or open source backup software solution?

http://lifehacker.com/search/backup software/

alternatively, You can use xcopy or even *shudder* WINDOWS BACKUP (gasp!)

Hyuk, hyuk

Have Phun

If you want an open source,partimage is for you,its a linux partition backup software

Hi,

do you know Cobian Backup?

http://www.educ.umu.se/~cobian/cobianbackup.htm

You should also make a search on sourceforge.

Regards,

Orkblutt

disavowed.. "freeware or open source"??
did you lost job @m$ !!??

Aimless: Neither XCOPY nor ROBOCOPY support the Shadow Copy Service. In other words, they won't be able to copy my Outlook PST/OST while Outlook is running.

esther: This is for Windows, thanks though.

evaluator: I quit MS two years ago

Orkblutt: Cobian Backup looks pretty good! I'll give it a try! Thanks!

From Cobian Backup's help file:
"Cobian Backup 9 is a 32 bit application and, on 64 bit systems it must run under WOW64. This works fine on XP64 or Windows Server 2003 64 because 32 bit programs are allowed to call VSS from WOW64. Vista and Windows Server 2008 don't allow that, and VSS must be called as a native 64 bit application, which means that you can't use VSS from Cobian Backup 9 on Vista 64 at this moment. A solution for this issue could be found in the future."

Any suggestions for backup software that allows shadow copies and is compatible with Vista on x64?

Macrium Reflect
http://www.macrium.com/

I'm using the Free Edition. Never had any problem. A neat, fast and reliable app. Supports x86&x64 Vista. Has BartPE plugin for recovery CD too.

This is of some interest to me, I had recently been evaluating a few backup tools. I hadn't discovered Macrium Reflect when searching. The free editon looks to be quite capable if you only need to create images of drives. Support for file back is only available in the commercial version.

I installed a 30 day evaluation copy to give it a trial. It met most of my modest requirements. It has a fairly small install footprint and the user interface is decent.

One criticism I have which seems prevalent with the backup tools I have tried is when it comes to highlighting folders for backup. You do this in a small window and have to continually scroll back and forth if the hierarchy is deeper than on folder. Thankfully, you only have to do this once unless you are creating multiple backups of course. Still, I which you could do this in a full-sized window like that used in Explorer for example as it is quite annoying.

My other criticism of Macrium is when you are creating backups to DVD or CD, it only calculates the total size of the back up, but it doesn't tell you how many discs you require beforehand. Of course, you can work this out for yourself.

One nice feature if your backup fits on one DVD or CD is that the software mounts the un/compressed backup ready to use. If, however, you backup spans to more than one disc then you can't access the backup files without the need to copy the contents of each disc to a common destination first.

One tool that I found and quite like is Genie Backup Manager Pro, this addresses most of my criticisms above but it may not be suitable for you as it is a commercial product. I'm still on the lookout for that killer app that can run off a pendrive for example and has some of the feater of Macrium Reflect and Genie Backup Manager Pro combined.

Myself and I'm sure disavowed would be interested to hear other peoples experiences and recommendations.

Thanks wbe, 5aLIVE.

It looks like Macrium Reflect can only save backups as an image or a single-file archive. I'm looking to create individual file copies though... kind of like ROBOCOPY but with support for shadow copies. I've looked at HOBOCOPY (http://alt.pluralsight.com/wiki/default.aspx/Craig/HoboCopy.html) but I question how reliable it is... has anyone tried it?