Open source Acronis-like backup software?

you can try clonezilla depending on your needs... it's free,  Honestly, though, Acronis is one of those solutions that people don't complain about the price because it just works.  Has features that people need, is easy to use, and does what it advertises.  Workstation edition is $75, but I guess all that depends on what you need it to do.

can you give a little more information on what you are looking at from Acronis?  There are certain things that some open source backups won't handle like SQL, Exchange, etc. that may not work for you.

Paragon free edition is very good:
http://download.cnet.com/Paragon-Backup-Recovery-Free/3000-2242_4-10972187.html?tag=mncol

However, if this is for business use I do not think that Acronis True Image is at all overpriced.

i will agree with Alan
go for
http://www.paragon-software.com/home/br-free/

its free and have almost the same features
both Acronis and Paragon have nice online tutorials and lot of help is available on youtube

Its the best among free ones out there

Hi, if you have a Seagate disk, you can use: DiscWizard

or if you have a Western Digital disk, use: Acronis True Image WD

Both are free

interestingly enough.  It appears the free version of Acronis (Western digital edition) will function on a system that has a WD drive attached.  I would imagine if you got western digital external drive or mounted a spare WD drive in the computer you want to run it from.  you can use that edition.  Caveat, though... the backup images you create with the WD edition will not work in the professional "backup and recovery" software if you upgrade later.

This is all without us really knowing what functionality you are looking for.  If you want to push images out over a network, and want free... clonezillaSE is probably the way to go.

Apologies for being so vague, everyone.

What we'd like is a solution that will:


Thanks again for all the input. It sounds like CloneZilla is going to be the way to go, anyone have anything else?

I hope you are aware that you can't use the free version of paragon in a business environment? It is only for personal use. Since you mention servers and workstations I assume that this is for a business environment, and for that reason your option is either CloneZilla if it has to be free and OpenSource (TrentonKnew and I recommended that), or a business version of Paragon which when compared to competing products is at least as good for less $'s (which I also recommended). In my point of view you haven't accepted the correct answers.

Datadudes, I'm thinking the last comment of rindi is correct, you asked for an Open Source solution, only Clonezilla (GPL) matches that. A cheaper solution with Acronis is not available for business use, Paragon for small-business is.

Would you consider closing this question differently?

Gerwin Jansen
Topic Advisor EE

My apologies for the confusion.

I do realize that the Paragon "free" edition is not to be used in an enterprise environment, so we have not moved forward with that. I had previously awarded the points because Paragon is the closest thing to doing what we need a solution to do. After a more thorough review of the expert comments, I realized that CloneZilla doesn't fit the bill (despite my saying so later) because of the need to boot to CloneZilla in order to make a backup.

In order to hopefully arrive at a solution that will work for us, I'd like to add to my clarifying questions from comment 39800132:


The sites that we wish to backup are all over the state, making it impractical for us to have to be in front of the computer when performing the backup.

Then the commercial Paragon product I commented on would fit the bill. Of course it isn't free, but there is no free utility available that would satisfy your needs. The tools from paragon are the most cost efficient though.

It seems unwise in your situation to restrict your choices to open source software.

We are aware of some of the commercial solutions, we were just looking for a low/no-cost alternative.

Thank you, everyone, for the assistance. Paragon looks to be the solution after all.

Awarding an A-grade because it isn't anyone's fault that there isn't a no-cost alternative to Acronis, and rindi provided the best solution before anyone else.