Date: 11/22/07 (Computer Help)    Keywords: software

I have 3 full 500GB hard drives that I would like to backup. What is the best compression ratio that I can get with disk imaging backup software? If possible, I would like to avoid having to buy 1500GB of storage to back the drives up, so I do not want to make clones. What I would like to do is make a disk image of each drive and compress the image so I can store it in a smaller space and then unzip it if the need ever arises. If I could get say a 1-to-5 compression ration, I could make a 100GB disk image of each of the 500GB hard drives, and store the 3 100GB disk images on just one 320GB hard drive. Is this possible? What type of compression can you expect using disk imaging to backup a hard drive? Are there any other space-saving alternatives for backing up data?

Source: http://community.livejournal.com/computer_help/844054.html