image/backup software - acronis, drivesnapshot?

[thepunisher]

I have been looking for one of these programs and it appears as though drivesnapshot is very popular on here, is it better than acronis and what are the key differences?

I like that i read you can convert an acronis image to a vmware system, but haven't checked drivesnapshot out to find out if that works?

it seems drive is also more expensive....

[n8chavez]

I prefer Drive Snapshot. It is a lot smaller; Acronis is well over 100 meg, DS is less than one. Also DS can be used on bootable discs along with other data; images 9or otherwise. Acronis cannot. There are a lot of other features which Acronis insists on putting on their software that has nothing to do with the actual imaging. DS just plain works, and works well.

[Mrkvonic]

Hello,
You can use ATI from bootable CDs; I myself have ATI plugins on my Ultimate Boot CD discs.
Mrk

[Jo Ann]

Originally Posted by Mrkvonic

Hello,
You can use ATI from bootable CDs; I myself have ATI plugins on my Ultimate Boot CD discs.
Mrk

Actually, DS is far more portable than ATI (no plugin required)!

@thepunisher, ATI vs DS:

ATI is less expensive than DS, provides a user-friendly GUI (Linux) rescue CD (iso) and permits cloning as well as imaging. ATI is noticeably slower than DS in creating and restoring images.

DS costs more than ATI, does not provide any kind of GUI rescue CD (although placing DS on any kind of Windows boot CD is pretty easy) and does not have cloning functionality. However, DS does create and restore images much faster than ATI.

Images created by both are compressed and as far as the important issue of reliability goes, I have not had any problems with ATI v11 or DS v1.39 on either XP or Vista.

[n8chavez]

Drive Snapshot is one file; snapshot.exe. It is 245k. Acronis True Image 11 is ridiculously large.

All you need to do is put snapshot.exe on a disc, along with your images and other data, with any variation of PE and your good to go. ATI requires an extra plugin and much more harddrive space.

DS is more geek friendly. There are plenty of users her that can help you customize DS and any .bat file you might want to create. There is also the frontend, which will be coming out shortly, which will vastly improve DS' features. That should be something to consider.

[RAD]

I can specific recommend against ATI, and for Paragon Drive backup.
But there are many other good ones also. I just know paragon works as advertized under Vista.

[EASTER]

Originally Posted by n8chavez

Drive Snapshot is one file; snapshot.exe. It is 245k. Acronis True Image 11 is ridiculously large.

All you need to do is put snapshot.exe on a disc, along with your images and other data, with any variation of PE and your good to go. ATI requires an extra plugin and much more harddrive space.

DS is more geek friendly. There are plenty of users her that can help you customize DS and any .bat file you might want to create. There is also the frontend, which will be coming out shortly, which will vastly improve DS' features. That should be something to consider.

A very long time loyal user of PARAGON here but since turning to the incredible miraculous & minature DriveSnapshot that app is long since mothballed.

With DS it's been proven 100% reliable in both imaging and more importantly restores. IT never chokes, hangs, or otherwise even hints at any issues on my XP Pro. I admire the programming thats gone into this MAMMOTH image app. It blows anything else i seen clean out the window.

EASTER

[Wintermute]

I am using Drive Snapshot since several years now and I can highly recommend it. It´s definitely worth its price, and I like the fact that you can put snapshot.exe to USB flash drives or a rescue boot cd without any problems.

[Aaron Here]

Originally Posted by Jo Ann

Actually, DS is far more portable than ATI (no plugin required)!

@thepunisher, ATI vs DS:

ATI is less expensive than DS, provides a user-friendly GUI (Linux) rescue CD (iso) and permits cloning as well as imaging. ATI is noticeably slower than DS in creating and restoring images.

DS costs more than ATI, does not provide any kind of GUI rescue CD (although placing DS on any kind of Windows boot CD is pretty easy) and does not have cloning functionality. However, DS does create and restore images much faster than ATI.

Images created by both are compressed and as far as the important issue of reliability goes, I have not had any problems with ATI v11 or DS v1.39 on either XP or Vista.

Jo Ann,

I completely agree with your objective and excellent comparison.

I own both ATI and DS. Both have successfully backed up and restored our PCs a few times over, but DS completes those jobs almost twice as fast as does ATI. Consequently, I now use DS for all my regular backups (disk-images) and just use ATI for its cloning function when migrating to a new hard drive.

[raakii]

DS is the best of all without doubt .

[Hugger]

Originally Posted by Jo Ann

Actually, DS is far more portable than ATI (no plugin required)!

@thepunisher, ATI vs DS:

ATI is less expensive than DS, provides a user-friendly GUI (Linux) rescue CD (iso) and permits cloning as well as imaging. ATI is noticeably slower than DS in creating and restoring images.

DS costs more than ATI, does not provide any kind of GUI rescue CD (although placing DS on any kind of Windows boot CD is pretty easy) and does not have cloning functionality. However, DS does create and restore images much faster than ATI.

Images created by both are compressed and as far as the important issue of reliability goes, I have not had any problems with ATI v11 or DS v1.39 on either XP or Vista.

JoAnn,
Thanks for your comparison.
I've been using Shadow Protect Desktop for a while and have never been all that happy with it.
I'm thinking of going to ATI next because I'm not tech inclined like most of you and I would benefit from an easy to use GUI.
For someone like me, speed comes in second to ease of use so long as the program images and restores the complete operating system.
Hugger

[lodore]

Surely the program working comes before easy to use gui comes in?

[Mrkvonic]

No. For most people, it's the same thing.
The average user can only tell you about what he sees - he does not care what's underneath; if he can't use it, it's useless.
Mrk

[layman]

Originally Posted by Hugger

JoAnn,
Thanks for your comparison.
I've been using Shadow Protect Desktop for a while and have never been all that happy with it.
I'm thinking of going to ATI next because I'm not tech inclined like most of you and I would benefit from an easy to use GUI.
For someone like me, speed comes in second to ease of use so long as the program images and restores the complete operating system.
Hugger

True Image has become a monstrosity of feature bloat. If ease of use is what you're looking for, check out Macrium Reflect. It is staightforward and well thought out. There is a free version that's quite good, too. The potential difficulty (as with all imaging products) lies with the rescue disk, the issue being whether or not your hardware is covered by the stock drivers.

[Hugger]

Originally Posted by lodore

Surely the program working comes before easy to use gui comes in?

If I can't use it what good is it?

[lodore]

Originally Posted by Hugger

If I can't use it what good is it?

surely its easier to learn how to use a program than having a program that is easy to use, but creates corrupted backups that you cannot restore?

[Fly]

I got Acronis (I think version 8, I've read that the later versions are more bloated, but I'm sure someone knowledgeable can give you some pointers so you don't have to learn it all) as an OEM version (cheap) with an external harddisk.

My version is easy to use. Keep in mind that I don't use incremental backups or anthing fancy or have data management issues, I just use it to make an image of the entire system/harddisk, it's easy. There are some occasional BIOS errors, but nothing that can't be overcome by trying again.

For restoring an image I use a bootable cd-r.

[Shankle]

Couple of questions about Drive Snapshot.

1. What is 39 euros in U.S. dollars?
2. I presume that the email version is what I would want for a home owner.
3. Is there or isn't there a GUI interface that has been written for DS?
4. Is the GUI interface included with the email version?
5: I presume I can backup to an external Disk drive (western digital)?
6: Not clear on how to do a Restore. Do I make a CD recovery cd? if
so how?
7. I see no way of verifying the backup. Maybe just can't read.
8. I am running Vista business and I think DS has some problems with Vista?

Thanks to anyone kind enough to answer these questions.

[Kerodo]

Originally Posted by Shankle

Couple of questions about Drive Snapshot.

1. What is 39 euros in U.S. dollars?

http://www.xe.com/ucc/

[Brian K]

The CD version is 49 Euros.

[mistycat]

While I can't comment on other program's, Acronis is bloated but has been uninstalled for year's here with just the boot CD used and, as far as speed, hundred's of restores and no failure's of around 6-8 G take around 2 minute's, that's with v 9, don't know about newer version's although I may have heard it is slower now.

[Jo Ann]

Originally Posted by Shankle

Couple of questions about Drive Snapshot.

1. What is 39 euros in U.S. dollars?
2. I presume that the email version is what I would want for a home owner.
3. Is there or isn't there a GUI interface that has been written for DS?
4. Is the GUI interface included with the email version?
5: I presume I can backup to an external Disk drive (western digital)?
6: Not clear on how to do a Restore. Do I make a CD recovery cd? if
so how?
7. I see no way of verifying the backup. Maybe just can't read.
8. I am running Vista business and I think DS has some problems with Vista?

Thanks to anyone kind enough to answer these questions.

1. Already answered.
2. Yes
3. None that I'm aware of.
4. No.
5. Yes.
6. To restore a system drive/partition, you can use the included DS (DOS) recovery disk, or bootup into any external Windows environment and run snapshot.exe from wherever it resides. Downoading the free UBCD4Win is the easiest way to do the latter (GUI) approach. DOS recovery is best left to those comfortable using DOS commands - unless one uses markymoo's Drive Snap front-end (at additional cost).
7. There's a checkbox for that (on the final screen) when creating the image.
8. The current version has no such problem that I'm aware of (I've used it many times on 32 bit Vista ).

Hth,
JA

[Jo Ann]

Originally Posted by mistycat

While I can't comment on other program's, Acronis is bloated but has been uninstalled for year's here with just the boot CD used and, as far as speed, hundred's of restores and no failure's of around 6-8 G take around 2 minute's, that's with v 9, don't know about newer version's although I may have heard it is slower now.

Although my personal favorite is DS (due primarily to its speedy backups and restores), in defense of ATI it just may be more 'bloated' than some others simply because it has a more user-friendly interface and more features than most of the competition (with the possible exception of Paragon Drive Backup)!

[freddy78]

do you get an ISO so you can burn a CD if you buy the email version? I know a boot floppy can be made.

thanks

[Jo Ann]

Originally Posted by freddy78

do you get an ISO so you can burn a CD if you buy the email version? I know a boot floppy can be made.

thanks

Assuming that you are referring to DS, the answer is no (unfortunately). Not with any version!