Image For Windows Reviews:

Hello,

After doing plenty of research and testing different backup solutions I chose to buy BING/IFW/IFD/IFL. I like the speed in which it backs up and the byte-for-byte verification. Has anyone used any of these Terabyte products and how do I backup my MBR along with my partition. I also use Eaz-fix and they work just fine together.

Much kudos to everyone who contributes to this forum.

 

apathy,

You made a good choice. See...

https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=195318

The MBR is included in your backup image. No special setting is needed.

 

@apathy

Echo that.

LLOOLL
Do a search: some great threads here: have dissected these tools for all occasions.

Although that is true : may require some tweaking.
Regards

 

I like Terabyte's stuff too. Over time, I have bought BING, IFW and IFD. At this point, I have migrated to another imaging app that I use most of the time, but I still use IFD too...

 

I am another very satisfied Terabyte Unlimited (TU) user:

BING/IFW/IFD/IFL

I use BING for partitioning, as a boot manager and for image creation/restore; IFW in Win XP for image creation/restore; and IFL in Debian for image creation/restore (looks/works just like IFD in a terminal window). Have used IFD as well.

All of the software has worked flawlessly. Images created with one TU product have always restored with another TU product.

Have also restored files/folders from images with TBIview without issue.

 

i use IFW and i love it, also the support is +10

 

Another happy user here I use BING only. Byte-for-byte verification - I dont use it anymore, a waste of time because BING has never failed to backup my OS partition.

 

I am looking at IFW too, for the most part because it create bootable discs when you create the image. I guess the main drawback for me though if the lack of 'good' compression. I currently use TI8 and that has very good compression. With IFW I will not be able to create images that can fit on a CD, as they are about 150 meg larger than if the image were to have been created with TI.

I would love to here dome opinions on this because I'm torn between the two.

 

n8chavez,

IFW will tell you when to swap discs if a second one is needed. There is no issue about an image being too large.

 

n8chavez: I'm with Brian on this. As the number of programs/data grows on your hard drive, you will eventually need to span disks on TI too. So, if I'm understanding you correctly, IFW may be doing this a bit earlier. But IMO, you would eventually be there anyway...

(One question... if compression is more important than speed, have you tested increasing the compression option in IFW to the max?)

 

I used the IFW/IFD combo for some time.

I successfully recovered backed up images of my OS partition 6 times during that period, using both IFW and IFD apps.

Image verification is very good. When an image failed verification twice, I found that the drive had developed a faulty read/write area (verified by testing with WD DLGDIAG). After HD repair by DLGDIAG, never another failed verification.

I switched to Acronis TI10 some time ago, based on a combination of user-suggestions and the slick GUI of Acronis TI10. Acronis TI10 has proved just as reliable.

The IFW/IFD combo is a good combination of value and reliability.

 

I would say that compression is more important than speed, but it is important. That being said, I've been able to get both with TI; I can make an umage of my active partition which is 1.41 gb in 4 minutes, the resulting image is around 550 meg. The same image created with IFW would be around 680 meg (created in three minutes). I haven't had the need to span multiple disks since I started imaging, once I cleaned out all the crap that Windows doesn't use.

Is there a max compression setting? I was under the impresion that it was either 'standard' or 'none'.

 

Following all the rave reviews I gave IFD a try and stopped after a few minutes.
It was so slow in comparison to Acronis 10 and SP 3.1 Is IFW any faster than IFD ? would only be of use if at least as fast as Acronis 10 or SP 3.1

 

Long View,

Here is a time comparison.

https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=195318#15

https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=195318#20

 

Sorry, I thought there were 3 settings. Not sure why I thought that but there are only 2...

 

Thanks Brian - so it is a good deal slower. Using SP 3.1 I just imaged 2 gig to another drive in 55 seconds. Acronis 10 can match that. what I'm looking for is the fastest to handle 50 to 100 gig of data.

 

Long View,

Can't help you there as the largest image I've created is 5 GB. Be careful with quoted speeds and times. Sometimes people don't add the Verify/Validate time.

I'm not concerned with speed because my images are created on a schedule. Unless I look, I wouldn't know whether they took x or 10x minutes. Restore speed is more important to me and that is rarely discussed.

More times.

https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=187031&page=2&highlight=ShadowProtect#47


PS: I forgot about my Games partition image. It's 10 GB and as nothing changes, I create it every 6 months or so

 

I don't think you will find any imaging app that is quicker than SP in both backup and restore.

Re. IFW/IFD/IFL and Acronis, a fairer comparison of the boot environments would probably be IFL vs Acronis, as Acronis uses linux for it's boot environment.

IFW is usually quickest out of the three terabyte products.

 

BING is not the fastest, but I dont care:

Backup 7,55 GB to external hdd (My CPU is AMD Athlon 64 3200+)

Create image -----7 min 24 sec
Validate image ----5 min 30 sec (I dont find this necessary, did so for testing)
Total ------------12 min 54 sec

Restoring is much faster.

 

arghhh you said IFW/IFD/IFL and Acronis in the same sentance.

 

At real image time SP is by far the fastest.

But loading boot environment in case of restore the system part. SP is the slowest by far,ATI and sure IFD load much faster.

So the differences between them is not that big.

They all shine in reliability !

 

Huupi - not sure what you mean here "But loading boot envirenment....... slowest " ?

I have several machines where making a system image Acronis 10 takes 45 sec
and SP 40. Then I bought SP and made a CD. This CD can restore on an old machine in half the time that Acronis would take 3 mins plus compared with 7. then again using another drive the time is much greater. I think that all these imaging programs are extremely hardware dependent. On the wrong machine ( dell ? ) Acronis can be very slow. when I did try IFD I gave up - it was going to take 30 mins or more on one of my machines - just too slow for me. so I never did get to see a restore.