Recommended backup software?

Mike Stanbro wrote:
I have been building and using PCs since their inception. I have tried essentially every backup software solution out there. Acronis True Image is the best package I have ever used and I have it on five computers. It has worked for me for the past four years.

You mentioned Retrospect. Good product, but not as good as Acronis in my opinion.

You said that your Acronis quietly failed. I would suggest that it should be completely removed and reinstalled. The following link gives instructions on how to uninstall and includes a utility that deletes all traces of the product. I had a similar problem on a laptop that suffered a corrupted hard disk. I had to uninstall, run the cleanup utility, and then reinstall. After that, it went back to normal.

http://kb.acronis.com/content/34876

Also, if you have not done so already, run a full check of your hard disk to make sure the file system is in good shape. Backup tools can get hung up if the file system has problems.

I already did that (uninstall/reinstall), same thing. I also checked the filesystem (after XP, it is a habit after every patch tuesday to do a chkdsk /f before the reboot... although windows 8 and newer have the chkdsk /scan command that allows for online filesystem scanning/cleaning), and did the usual checking for corrupted stuff via tasklist and taskmgr. I even dumped an image via wbadmin and scanned that on a separate PC as a way to check for rootkits.

What I might do is just dump the machine via wbadmin to an external drive, completely wipe the system hard disk using the diskpart clean all command, and then restore the image back. I've seen this fix issues before.