Best paid imaging program ?

Discussion in 'backup, imaging & disk mgmt' started by max2, Jul 18, 2015.

  1. Gaddster

    Gaddster Registered Member

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    I see Ghost is on the list, which I assume its Symantec Ghost not Norton Ghost? Or Symantec Ghost was used at the default settings

    I imaged my USB stick (yumi) using Symantec Ghost but did have to do a sector by sector image or it gave a boot error after restoring.........Drive Snapshot & Clonezilla booted fine after restoring but True Image gave the same boot error, which strangely Backup and Recovery (made by the same company) restored and booted fine.

    However Macrium Relect is the ONLY imaging tool that I've ever come across that does not even see (so you cant even image) removable devices, its ridiculous.
     
  2. Brian K

    Brian K Imaging Specialist

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    Sorry, that was slack of me. I think it was Norton Ghost 15.
     
  3. Alexhousek

    Alexhousek Registered Member

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    Gaddster, you are really beginning to sound like a broken record. You have written or stated the same thing 4 times in a row. I'm beginning to question your motivation here. I think you've made your point...

     
  4. Snoop3

    Snoop3 Registered Member

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    idk how useful it is to be able to image portable drives or flash drives. i've never had any reason to.
     
  5. Minimalist

    Minimalist Registered Member

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    Me neither. I guess it's a functionality that not a lot of users would need it.
     
  6. Peter2150

    Peter2150 Global Moderator

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    Same here. Imaging flash drives just isn't a worry here. My advice to Gaddster is simple. Just use another imaging program, as I doubt based on customer input Macrium is going to take it to seriously.
     
  7. Brian K

    Brian K Imaging Specialist

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    I find it handy. I only use a few flash drives but I have dozens of images I can restore to a flash drive when needed. The few flash drives I use are "fast" and the majority of flash drives I own are "slow". I doubt I'll buy any more flash drives for a long time.

    Another use for a flash drive image is restoring it to a USB external HD (a small partition on the HD). Then the external HD is bootable and can be used to run a restore (or backup) from a single USB device.
     
  8. Gaddster

    Gaddster Registered Member

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    So every other piece of software can overcome these magical "drive geometry limitations" but not Reflect? Absolute nonsense.

    Some shills on the forum even say that it doesn't image such devices because Macrium`s
    primary goal is reliability for end users, which makes no sense.

    Really?

    Its odd how people can blatantly shill Macrium Reflect like its the second coming (just like they used to do with Rollback Rx) but say anything factual about its downsides (or quote lies posted by Macrium Support) and its some sort of sinister motivation to slam the product.
     
  9. jwcca

    jwcca Registered Member

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    @Gaddster: It could be that Macrium uses only VSS and those devices don't support VSS so Reflect won't image them. So they've told the truth.

    Perhaps other software uses something like RSS (or whatever) which is less likely to be 100% safe in the hands of some users and so an image may have problems.

    You don't understand so you tout their statements as lies, which is a lie itself since you don't understand the truth (said that twice to make sure that you get the message).
     
  10. Snoop3

    Snoop3 Registered Member

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    you're an expert though.

    its a valid point by Gaddster but i think most users prob wouldn't need too often.
    sometimes my YUMI flash drive becomes corrupted and i think it would be easier to image it than to re-install all that stuff. thats about it for me though.


    the Macrium Reflect thread on here is like 99 pages - i dont use it for now, but they cant all be shills.
     
    Last edited: Jul 31, 2015
  11. Brian K

    Brian K Imaging Specialist

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    You can image flash drives using VSS.
     
  12. TheRollbackFrog

    TheRollbackFrog Imaging Specialist

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    Only if NTFS formatted.
     
  13. Raza0007

    Raza0007 Registered Member

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    Every imaging tool has its own unique features. If Macrium does not image Flash Drives then this is what its designers want. As I mentioned before, that I was surprised to learn after reading your post that Macrium does not image flash drives. And I was surprised primarily because I had never felt the need to image flash drives before, so I had never tested this feature. However, like you I would like my preferred backup utility to have this feature, just in case.

    However, I do not understand your grievance against Macrium. Have they deceived you somehow? Did they promise you that Macrium can image flash drives, and you found out later that it cannot, then you do have a case against them? Otherwise, it is after all up to Macrium's developers to decide what features to include in their software.

    Let me give you an example, ShadowProtect is considered among the best imaging softwares and it is very expensive too. A single PC license costs over $100 I believe. It will surprise you to know that it does not do "file and folder" backups. You cannot use ShadowProtect to backup an individual folder on your PC, you have to image the entire partition. This doesn't make any sense to me, but this what ShadowProtect developers want. Even with this glaring deficiency ShadowProtect is considered among the best backup software around.

    So, by the same token, if Macrium cannot backup flash drives then it does not take anything away from Macrium. And if you really want to image flash drives you should then consider a software that has this ability.
     
  14. Robin A.

    Robin A. Registered Member

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    Not the best example, I think.
     
  15. Raza0007

    Raza0007 Registered Member

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    Robin, why not!

    Gaddster, in one of his earlier posts, mentioned that Macrium charges £47.95, for a single license and does not even do a simple thing as backup a flash drive. According to him at that price, Macrium should have included this feature. So, I gave an example of SP that charges $100 (do not know their price in pounds) for a single license and does not have the ability to backup an individual folder.
     
    Last edited: Jul 31, 2015
  16. Brian K

    Brian K Imaging Specialist

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    TRF,

    I uninstalled PHYLock and enabled VSS in IFW. I imaged a 1 GB FAT USB. The IFW log said "Attempting to Create VSS Snapshot" and then created the image. The image restored OK.
     
  17. nozzle

    nozzle Registered Member

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    I've found the free AOMEI Backupper a superb imager. It's simple, fast, and allows you to reimage the system from Windows to an image of Windows right from the desktop without going to a disk or USB device.
    The best paid imager I've found is Image for Windows at Terabyte Unlimited. I paid for the new Macrium Reflect 6 thinking it was better than IFW but to my surprise the second image I made had an error - something I never had with IFW for 3 years. So there are my recommendations. Good luck.

    nozzle
     
  18. pandlouk

    pandlouk Registered Member

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    Hi Gaddster,

    imaging a usb flash drive is not difficult and I agree with you Macrium should at least give the option to create raw images of usb flash drives.
    But restoring images on usb flash drives is very very tricky because over the years the various generations of flash drives use different sizes of block sizes ( 4k, 8K, 16K, 32K, 64K, 256K, 512K, 1M, 2M and some of the latest flash drives even use 8M block sizes).
    Unfortunatly all the imaging apps that create images of flash drives fail miserably on restoring those images to the correct alignment on the same drive and this results in a big performance penalty when writing on those drives and faster wearing of their cells.
    And for this particular case I prefer Macrium's approach to not support imaging on those drives, than the approach of all the other apps that do support it but implement it in such a half-assed way.

    The only commercial program that restores correctly such images is "Image for DOS/Linux/Windows" but only when the user manually adjust the free space before the partition and this should be performed individually for each drive.

    Panagiotis
     
    Last edited: Jul 31, 2015
  19. jwcca

    jwcca Registered Member

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    Panagiotis your explanation is the best.
    Macrium basically protects those of us that wouldn't know about setting the alignment from either wearing out our drives or having images fail,
    (maybe they should tell us why, but that's another issue)
    Thanks
     
  20. TheRollbackFrog

    TheRollbackFrog Imaging Specialist

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    Greetings, Brian!

    I was only quoting Microsoft. I'm not sure what IFW is doing in that case, but according to M$, VSS doesn't support it.
     
  21. Robin A.

    Robin A. Registered Member

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    Is this important? I´m not going to run Windows from a UFD.
     
  22. pandlouk

    pandlouk Registered Member

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    You are welcome.

    I wouldn't say that they do not support it for protecting the users, more likely they do not support it because is very difficult, if not impossible, to implement it correctly with no user interaction.
    But the end result is that they do a favour to their users by not supporting it...

    Panagiotis
     
  23. pandlouk

    pandlouk Registered Member

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    It depends on how you use the flash drive.
    If you use it only for reads (viewing or copying files from the flash drive) it is not important. The read speed is not affected from the misallignment (from my tests it has 0-5% impact in the read speed depending on the drive).
    But if you use the drive for writes to (e.g. moving files from one pc to another) it is very important because it cripples the write speed (>70% impact when transferring files on the drive).
    See the following:
    http://kim.oyhus.no/FlashBlockSize.html
    (I took a screenshot of the page from googlecache)
    FlashBlockSize.jpg
    http://blog.mcnalu.net/faster-usb-sticks.html

    A drive that I bought last year an "Integral 64GB Fusion USB 3.0" it was misaligned from the factory format and it gave me write speed of 6mb/s. After I reformatted it on the correct alignment the write speed was 18mb/s on usb2 and 20mb/s on usb3 ports.

    Panagiotis
     
  24. TheRollbackFrog

    TheRollbackFrog Imaging Specialist

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    I don't personally feel it's important at all, but with the introduction of "Windows To Go" (BOOTable Windows from a UFD) in Windows 8 and its follow-ons, it may have some importance to users who have or use that facility.
     
  25. LockBox

    LockBox Registered Member

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    ShadowProtect: The best. Expensive, but highly reliable.
    How many of you remember ShadowUser (ShadowMode)? Great product that StorageCraft inexplicably retired years ago.
    Here's a WayBack page from 2007 for ShadowUser. https://web.archive.org/web/20070302211555/http://www.storagecraft.com/products/ShadowUser/
     
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