Opinions please.

[Hugger]

I'm trying to decide whether to get Bounceback Ultimate or Acronis True Image Home 2010.
Thanks for any help.
Hugger

[lodore]

are you open to the option of neither and sergestions of alternative products?

[pasha101]

I would recommend that you install trial versions of both and see which works best for your situation and configuration. Give them both a fair workout on your system and then purchase the one that you prefer. I use Acronis on my laptop and it does what it should in my case. I haven't used Bounceback so no opinion on that one. Good luck.

[Hugger]

Originally Posted by lodore

are you open to the option of neither and sergestions of alternative products?

lodore,
Yes. I always try to keep an open mind.
Thanks.
Hugger

[Hugger]

Originally Posted by pasha101

I would recommend that you install trial versions of both and see which works best for your situation and configuration. Give them both a fair workout on your system and then purchase the one that you prefer. I use Acronis on my laptop and it does what it should in my case. I haven't used Bounceback so no opinion on that one. Good luck.

pasha101,
I'll probably be doing that. I was just interested in other members experiences.
Thanks.
Hugger

[Cudni]

Likewise, never heard of the first product you mentioned but I have used TI on occasion.

[culla]

this works and its free

http://www.filehippo.com/download_driveimagexml/

[lodore]

Originally Posted by Hugger

lodore,
Yes. I always try to keep an open mind.
Thanks.
Hugger

I reccomend trying macrium reflect

[Meriadoc]

ShadowProtect all the way. Fastest imaging I've used, never failed me.

free - macrium reflect.

[PJC]

I no longer use Image Back Up Software.
For almost three (3) years, Instant System Recovery (Rollback Rx) has been very reliable.

[newbino]

Originally Posted by Meriadoc

ShadowProtect all the way. Fastest imaging I've used, never failed me.
free - macrium reflect.

I second this

[Aaron Here]

Since you say you welcome suggestions, I highly recommend Drive Snapshot. While ShadowProtect and Acronis True Image (both of which I've used) will do the job, I find them to be bloated and cumbersome compared to DS which is very small, very fast, completely portable, and most importantly, I've performed many system-recoveries with it and it's never failed me!

[J_L]

Paragon Backup & Recover Free is great. Only freeware that fully works on my RAID setup. Boot cd is full of features.

[Hugger]

Thanks everybody for your input.
I tried Bounceback Ultimate on my W7 Pro x64 pc for the past few days.
It's gotten some good reviews which was what made me curious.
However, today I made a full system image/copy. The control panel is very easy to use.
But I got a BSOD after about 10 minutes.
Rebooted and gave up on the copy. But got another BSOD so I reverted to an earlier image using SP.
Bounceback is off my system for now. And the BSOD's are gone too.
Maybe next year.
For now I will continue to look for a second backup system that gives me good control over my data and system.
Thanks.
Hugger

[Longboard]

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

Terabyte Image utilities comes with the best suite of tools for control of multibooting and disc management as part of package.

Originally Posted by Meriadoc
ShadowProtect all the way. Fastest imaging I've used, never failed me.
free - macrium reflect.

Shadow protect and Macrium are terrific tools.

Drive Snapshot a great tool.

If one of dem dont work =

[zfactor]

macrium all the way, shadow protect albeit expensive is my second choice

[andyman35]

Macrium for me too, quite simply it just works

[andyman35]

Originally Posted by Espozito

I no longer use Image Back Up Software.
For almost three (3) years, Instant System Recovery (Rollback Rx) has been very reliable.

The potential problem there is if you suffer a hard disk failure.

[Aaron Here]

Originally Posted by andyman35

The potential problem there is if you suffer a hard disk failure.

So true - as mature as the science is, hard disks still fail ...and there are even less catastrophic events than a disk-crash that could render Rollback Rx useless. While I (just as Espozito) use and value Rollback Rx, I'm afraid he is complacent to "put all his eggs in Rollback Rx's basket".

[PJC]

Originally Posted by andyman35

The potential problem there is if you suffer a hard disk failure.

Since 1998 I've been using a PC, I haven't faced such an incident.
However, I keep Nothing stored in my PCs.
If my Hard Disk dies, I'll buy another one.

[andyman35]

Originally Posted by Espozito

Since 1998 I've been using a PC, I haven't faced such an incident.
However, I keep Nothing stored in my PCs.
If my Hard Disk dies, I'll buy another one.

I had it happen to me the once,a 200gb drive just died on me without any warning taking a ton of stuff along to the grave with it

Ever since then I've ensured that I've got at least one copy of everything important,that's why I'm such an advocate of imaging products.You say that you keep nothing of importance on the drive,fair enough,but HDD failure would still mean a few hours labour reinstalling the OS,drivers,updates, and apps,etc.With imaging that becomes a 10 minute job.

[snowdrift]

Drive Image XML 2.14

[PJC]

Originally Posted by andyman35

I had it happen to me the once,a 200gb drive just died on me without any warning taking a ton of stuff along to the grave with it Ever since then I've ensured that I've got at least one copy of everything important,that's why I'm such an advocate of imaging products.You say that you keep nothing of importance on the drive,fair enough,
but HDD failure would still mean a few hours labour reinstalling the OS,drivers,updates, and apps,etc.
With imaging that becomes a 10 minute job.

Imaging has Not been Reliable, too.
Many Imaging Solutions have Frequently failed to Restore themselves.
I still prefer the Instant System Recovery solution (e.g. Rollback Rx etc.)
that restores a Snapshot in less than two (2) minutes and has Never failed to do so.

Moreover, to fully Back Up your System, Imaging Solutions take several Minutes, whereas,
Instant System Recovery solutions (e.g. Rollback Rx etc.) take ONLY a few Seconds .

I Test a lot of Software and the Instant System Recovery solution (e.g. Rollback Rx etc.)
allows me to quickly go Back and Forth across different Setups, Configurations etc.
With Imaging Solutions, it would have taken Much More Time to Restore-Back Up-Restore and so on
than what it takes me with my Instant System Recovery solution (e.g. Rollback Rx etc.).

Like I said, if my Hard Disk dies, NO problem.
Besides, every six (6) months, PCs require a Format
especially when their owners Test a lot of software...

[MerleOne]

Originally Posted by andyman35

Macrium for me too, quite simply it just works

Macrium is excellent, not bloated, and their support is good too.

[Sully]

I personally don't trust harddrives. I have had brand new WD raptors and blacks that went bad after only 2 years. Maxtor, quantum fireballs, seagates, ibm deathstars, even some connors (anyone remember them?), I don't trust any of them really. Samsung drives have tended to be the longest living drives I have used, but I have had some of those fail after only a year or two as well. Raid 1 or higher helps, but you just don't know when they are going to go. Even a bad cable or ram can corrupt the data on a drive, and once it is corrupt, what good is a good drive with corrupt data?

I just use raid boxes for storage or flash or optical. That part is the most important part to me. The imaging solution, not as critical if you actually have your data SAFE.

Imaging wise, I tend to not use the rollback softwares, mainly because I change things way too much to trust it. I have used a number of them, and they are allright. I can see if you rollback to yesterday it would be a good method.

I like to make an image of the system installation, not really the data. My data that I keep is not on my system drive. I like to restore to whichever OS or particular date I need. Of all that I have tried, Macrium Free is to me heads and shoulders above the rest. The primary reason that it just works, as has been said. I also like the linux recovery cd and the bartPE plugin. I like that you can mount the images. I like that you can automate the imaging with an .xml file. I like that it is fast and compresses very well. I like the simple GUI. There really isn't anything I don't like about it.

For me, making an image off drive A, onto drive B (not partitions) takes about 3 minutes and shrinks 10-15gb down to about 2-4gb depending. Restoration for me consists of a reboot, and depending on the OS either a boot.ini option for bartPE (xp) or grub4dos using Win7RescuePE or a slew of other .iso methods. Complete time from reboot to reboot is roughly 5 minutes. Not as quick as rollback softwares, but then again I can put my image over to a network drive or optical drive and it is a standard image. If my drive fails, it is of little concern.

I think before you decide which imaging software you want, you need to decide which you need. If you need rollback features, forget the classic imaging tools and focus on which one of those you can live with. If you just want to stop installing the OS and the time it takes or want to switch between OS's, maybe focus on imaging.

The bottom line is if your data is truly safe, the rest is simply a method and whatever fills the bill is the right product.

Sul.