Backup software

[Chop]

Hi all,

I'm currently happy with the setup of my machine, as it's rather stable and up to date. The thing is that I want to make a backup of it to ensure that I can recover in the event of a disaster. As you all probably know, it takes one small problem and you have to start from scratch and I really don't want to anymore.

That brings me to my question; what good backup software is on the market? I would like it to have these features

It must be able to backup the boot sector / image (the operating system part).
I want to be able to select the folders that I want backed up.
It should have some compression
It must be able to span disks (I want to backup to DVD-RAM)
It must be able to track changes to files so when I backup again it will only refresh those files that changed or are new.

OR another option would perhaps be to just make a disk image with compression to another harddrive

Thanks in advance

 

[Chop]

I have Windows XP home

 

[Davegod]

I'm considering following this thread. I think you can also use Ghost or whatever to make an image of the drive but can't really say I understand how that works, never bothered to look into it

 

[XBoxLPU]

bump

 

[BlueWeasel]

I am not sure that you can find a backup/image software that can do everything you want it to do.

Personally, I love Ghost and use it very often. I just yesterday reinstalled WinXP and my applications and made a Ghost image of my entire C:\ drive. That way I can restore it to its "new" condition anytime as needed. I keep games on my D:\ partition and all important data on my E:\ partition.

 

[Chop]

I've decided to re-partition my hard drive and make a ghost image of the main drive and just manually backup any important documents etc. that I want to keep.

Thanks for the advice.