There doesnít appear to be a ďbackupsĒ forum, so Iíll post inline with the discussion in this thread. Hereís a few points:
1) Your backups are like an insurance policy; paying the premiums may give you a sense of security (your agent will tell you this Ďfeelingí is what you are paying for), but itís only as good as itís ability to cover you in a real disaster. In my experience, the back up is only half of it. If I havenít done a trial restore, which requires the purchase of a spare internal HDD, then Iím half exposed. When I first did this15 years ago , it was amazing to find how nearly impossible it was on my home and work systems to restore what I thought I had safely backed up. And yet how enlightening.
2) I use Norton Ghost for backup. Iíve been through the last 4 or 5 versions of Ghost and find it too to be bloatware; adding useless or debilitating features that produce a re-learning curve with each release for the primary purpose of forcing the expiration of a previous versionís support and the purchase a the newest version. It now sucks so many resources that I disabled the service and only run manually. It still finds ways to hog resources sometimes. But I can do the main thing I want: clone my HDD magnet for magnet and restore it to a second HDD. Useless side note: my 1985 grad research was on the particle formulation that enabled high density magnetic recording media :-) and I have a couple patents in this area. Now I just need to makes ones that donít catch viruses :-D
3) Thereís good backup stuff at http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/forums/topic34773.html
ďPreparation Guide For Use Before Using Malware Removal Tools and Requesting Help,Ē Step 1.
4) Rochester Computer Recycling and Recovery, a Dell authorized re-seller, where I bought my latest used PC recommends the following:
Free Antivirus SW: AVG, Avast, Antivir, and they add the proviso ďremember to use only one Antivirus program at a timeĒ
Commercial Antivirus SW: Norton Antivirus
Free Anti-Spyware SW: Spywareblaster; Spybot Search & Destroy; Malwarebytes
5) I use AdAware free version, SP S&D, Symantec Endpoint Protection 11, MWB and feel I too must have some slow down due to it. Iím watching this post to see whatís recommened.