Acronis True image or alternative?

[tepe2]

Im new to disc imaging. I have been looking for a disc imaging tool for about 2 years. Read a lot about Acronis TI, Norton and others but did not buy any of them. Did not try them. From what I read none of them seemed reliable.

This thread helped me alot:

http://www.wilderssecurity.com/showt...nervous+nellie

Read the first pages. This is why I decided to try BING.

I use BING to create images of my OS-partition. I have created and restored several images successfully. Never let me down. I store images on second internal hdd and also on external hdd.

BING is also a complete partition tool. I thought I would not get use of it, but I soon realised that a partition tool is great when you work with disc imaging and specially if you have more than one hdd.

BING is also a multi-boot manager. But I have no use for it now. Maybe in the future.

You can get info at the Terabyte homepage:

http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/index.html

I believe IFW works similar to ATI and is more reliable than ATI. But I would not use IFW. I would feel safer with IFD or BING.

As for disc imaging I believe IFD and BING work the same way. But there are some difference. BING can be installed in a 8 MB small parition at the end of your HDD, so you dont have to use the CD. I have it installed because I find it easier than using the CD. With IFD you have to use CD.

Another difference: when you restore an image with BING you must restore to a same size partition, or larger. But this is not a problem for me as I can use BING to resize a partition. See post nr 10 in this thread:

http://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=169679

Some say BING and IFD is not userfriendly. Maybe ATI is more userfriendly, but I want something that works and is reliable. I see myself as a novice or close to, and BING is the first and only disc imaging tool I have used. It really was not that hard. I got info at Terabytes homepage, read the manual and watched the tutorial videos.

You can also store images on CD/DVD, but I have not tried.

Only one more thing to say: I consider BING as my best buy so far.

[tepe2]

Originally Posted by pvsurfer

Does Image for DOS work with NTFS partitions?

From Terabyte homepage:

You can backup to, or restore from, just about any drive letter, including network drives. The program can also directly access FAT, FAT32, and NTFS partitions, as well as most writable USB2, IEEE1394, ATAPI or ASPI accessible CD or DVD drives, without the need for any special drivers. By default, backups made to CD/DVD are bootable, which provides you with a convenient recovery CD/DVD.

Image for DOS works seamlessly with on-board hardware and firmware based RAID.

Of course BING also work with NTFS. You can create FAT, FAT32 and NTFS partitions. And delete or resize. As already mentioned BING is a complete partition tool.

I have only heard of one disc imaging tool that can compare to Terabytes software. Shadow Protect. I dont know much about it. I have just read about it here at Wilders.

[lodore]

you should try shadow protect desktop its very decent app.
its very reliable and very fast.
im sure you would find it better than terabyte unlimited program with a nicer interface.
paragon is decent as well thou
but at the end of the day if the terabyte unlimited is reliable and works for you and your pc that is all that matters.
that way you can rest easy as night knowing you have a backup that will restore if needed.
lodore

[twl845]

Originally Posted by lodore

you should try shadow protect desktop its very decent app.
its very reliable and very fast.
im sure you would find it better than terabyte unlimited program with a nicer interface.
paragon is decent as well thou
but at the end of the day if the terabyte unlimited is reliable and works for you and your pc that is all that matters.
that way you can rest easy as night knowing you have a backup that will restore if needed.
lodore

Lodore, I am a newbie when it comes to an imaging app. I have been following the posts refering to Shadow Protect, and I'm reading the user manual to try and learn the program. In some places it is a little over my head, but it has been my experience that when you get the actual app in front of you it isn't as complicated as the manual depicts it. I would like to ask you if you think an intermediate user can easily grasp this thing, or do you think It might be a little over my head. All I'm interested in doing is making an image on my external drive for back up purposes to avoid a catastrophe. I won't be doing any fancy manuevers like the learned techies who's posts I've been following with great interest.

[Peter2150]

Originally Posted by twl845

Pete - Thanks for that info. The only Nvidia driver I have is a Nvidia Ge Force FX5200 driver. Is there any idea when Version 3 will be out?

No word yet. I suspect it will be well worth the wait though.

[Peter2150]

Originally Posted by pvsurfer

Does Image for DOS work with NTFS partitions?

Yes it does. Very reliable, but slow as molasses. I can restore my disk from an external drive with ShadowProtect in 6 minutes. With Image for DOS, I through in the towel after 1 hour and it was only 32% done.

[pvsurfer]

Originally Posted by Peter2150

Yes it does. Very reliable, but slow as molasses. I can restore my disk from an external drive with ShadowProtect in 6 minutes. With Image for DOS, I through in the towel after 1 hour and it was only 32% done.

OMG! ....I think I'll pass on trying it.

[Peter2150]

Originally Posted by pvsurfer

OMG! ....I think I'll pass on trying it.

Hi PV

IFD is like I said slow. But what did work was using IFW under BartePe. That was at least in the ballpark. Good apps, but they really only do the partitions, and not the whole disk. So if you want MBR and track 0 included, ATI,SP and probably Paragon are best. Paragon under Winpe that is.

Pete

[lodore]

Originally Posted by twl845

Lodore, I am a newbie when it comes to an imaging app. I have been following the posts refering to Shadow Protect, and I'm reading the user manual to try and learn the program. In some places it is a little over my head, but it has been my experience that when you get the actual app in front of you it isn't as complicated as the manual depicts it. I would like to ask you if you think an intermediate user can easily grasp this thing, or do you think It might be a little over my head. All I'm interested in doing is making an image on my external drive for back up purposes to avoid a catastrophe. I won't be doing any fancy manuevers like the learned techies who's posts I've been following with great interest.

hello twl845,
using the program is alot eaiser than reading the manual.
the main menu has 4 main buttons.
backup now.
schedule backup
restore volume
browse and restore volume.
backup now is the main one you will need.
you say if you want a full backup of diffrential backup.
most people just use full backup's
tell it what you want to backup e.g. C:
then tell it what to backup to.
its best to backup to an external hard drive.
then finish the wizard and it will do its magic.

If one day windows cant boot you stick in the recovery cd you made by burning the ISO image to a cd.
and select restore.
select the image you want to restore and tell it where you want to restore it to.
I hope you understand the above.
loodre

[twl845]

Lodore, Thanks for the heads up. I was hoping it was as you described.

[tepe2]

Originally Posted by Peter2150

Yes it does. Very reliable, but slow as molasses. I can restore my disk from an external drive with ShadowProtect in 6 minutes. With Image for DOS, I through in the towel after 1 hour and it was only 32% done.

Must be a reason for this. If ShadowProtect use 6 minutes, then I believe IFD should use 6-8 minutes. From what I have read at Wilders, SP is faster than Terabyte software, but the difference should not be that big.

[pvsurfer]

Originally Posted by Peter2150

Hi PV

IFD is like I said slow. But what did work was using IFW under BartePe. That was at least in the ballpark. Good apps, but they really only do the partitions, and not the whole disk. So if you want MBR and track 0 included, ATI,SP and probably Paragon are best. Paragon under Winpe that is.

Pete

Actually, I'm a very satisfied ATI user, but like many of us here I'm always looking for something better. At the moment, I'm testing Paragon HDM and I find it also works well. I happen to be fortunate with their Linux Boot CDs, as they recognize all of my drives/devices - although using them to backup is considerably slower than when using their Windows GUI (Linux drives still have a ways to go in that regard).

[Peter2150]

Originally Posted by tepe2

Must be a reason for this. If ShadowProtect use 6 minutes, then I believe IFD should use 6-8 minutes. From what I have read at Wilders, SP is faster than Terabyte software, but the difference should not be that big.

Sure there is a reason. Shadow Protect is running under Windows and can use all the windows stuff for disk access that DOS can't do. Image for Windows can be used for restore if you run it under Bartpe. Then again running it under windows you see the same speed.

When I tried the Paragon recovery CD it also run's under DOS, and I could grow wiskers on my machine waiting for it also.

[tepe2]

Originally Posted by Peter2150

Sure there is a reason. Shadow Protect is running under Windows and can use all the windows stuff for disk access that DOS can't do. Image for Windows can be used for restore if you run it under Bartpe. Then again running it under windows you see the same speed.

When I tried the Paragon recovery CD it also run's under DOS, and I could grow wiskers on my machine waiting for it also.

I have never used IFD. More than one hour? Sure something must be very wrong. I dont think other IFD-users have this problem. I use BING and I have no problem with speed. I like that IFD/BING work outside Windows. Makes me feel more safe. But Im sure SP is a great tool, because not only you but a lot of people here at Wilders talk good about it.

[lodore]

Originally Posted by Peter2150

When I tried the Paragon recovery CD it also run's under DOS, and I could grow wiskers on my machine waiting for it also.

thats why im trying to get a winpe recovery cd from paragon.
if not i will get them to help me create a bartpe cd with the paragon plugin instead
lodore

[Long View]

Originally Posted by tepe2

Im sure SP is a great tool, because not only you but a lot of people here at Wilders talk good about it.

I'm sure that most of the programs discussed are great. It does seem though that results vary. I can not get Acronis 6,7,8,9,9.1 or 10 to fail and speeds are greater than with other programs. Others have nothing but problems with Acronis and then rave about Paragon or SP or even Ghost.

All that anyone can really do is give a couple of these programs a trial and then go for the one that suits them best. So although I have little doubt that SP or Paragon will be great for some don't be surprised if another program gives you better results.