A Problem With Easeus ToDo Backup

[Bigaldoc]

I've had the laptop of a friend for a couple of weeks, waiting for a DVD from Toshiba and a replacement hard drive. As you can imagine, my friend had no backup and did not burn the Toshiba recovery DVD when the laptop was new.

Finally got it restored to "factory condition" two days ago, tweaked, added some software, did over 100 MS updates, etc. We've all been down this road! It's got Vista loaded and all seems well. I installed Easeus ToDo Free Imaging Backup and also convinced my friend that she needs a USB external to backup. A 500GB was very inexpensive and I even bought a Toshiba branded one, just to be sure.

I made a full image at the close of the day Wednesday AND another yesterday morning. All seemed well and the USB drive showed the two image files. My "final" step of course, before turning the laptop over to her, was to try a full restore from the Easus CD which I burned after installing it.

The CD booted fine, started a restore of the latest file and it was chugging along just fine. At about the halfway point I walked away for a bathroom call. Big mistake! When I came back, the laptop was powered OFF! Huh? A restoration should at least stop at a "completion" window and not power off the machine! Computer would NOT boot. When I rebooted with the Easeus CD it could not find the USB drive, so I thought the USB drive has gone belly-up. I had to repeat the whole restoration routine again and this time I WILL NOT install Easeus and will try Macrium Reflect FREE Edition which a couple of you seem to be using successfully. The USB drive IS intact and the two image files are there, so I can only conclude that Easeus is a problem, at least for me and this laptop.

[tedshemyers]

I would also like to recommend Acronis True Image Home. I have very successfullu used both the 2010 and 2011 editions on our PC's at home. As with any 3rd party app, Macrium Reflect Free does not have the total feature set as their paid offering, but most likely will work fine for the average user.

[Bigaldoc]

Yesterday I installed Macrium on my friend's laptop and as mentioned by Hey Jude, Wasbit and others in Free disk image software it seems like a good choice. It did a couple of backups in pretty quick time and I like the idea that the "job" is now available to be run again, so it should make it easy to tell/show my friend what to do.

I was concerned about a Linux based boot disk because way back when I had a Gateway laptop, the touch pad didn't work from a Linux based CD. But it works just fine on her Toshiba. Thanks to all who made their comments in the above thread!

By the way, I also learned during all of my work on this laptop that it does not boot well at all if the external USB drive is connected when you boot. It takes FOREVER to boot, sometimes as much as 15 minutes or so. I do believe I've seen that "caution" also from Loungers like DaveA and maybe others. Connecting it AFTER the laptop is booted works just fine.