Alternative to True Image (nervous nellie)

For myself at least, it's still not clear to me how, when you point IFD to your D: drive, it immediately displays the contents of your MyDocuments folder. Either:

1) This nonstandard way of having D: mapped to your MyDocuments folder is something IFD can't handle or
2) Your file system is corrupted and needs a chkdsk with repair run on it or
3) You're not using the Tab, arrow, and enter keys in a way that IFD likes or
4) There's something else about your drive that either you or I haven't mentioned that IFD doesn't like

If the "secure" folder and the other image you tried are in the root of D: then, according to what you said, they are in your MyDocuments folder because you said that "D:\" = "MyDocuments". I assume, then, that the folder "secure" and the other image file show up as being in your MyDocuments folder when you look in it with Windows Explorer. If one of us misunderstood the other and your MyDocuments folder is simply IN the root of D: and IFD, for some odd reason, displays MyVideos, MyPictures, etc when you first access it, then you need to use the arrow and tab keys to select ".." and hit enter to move up a level in your folder hierarchy. Then everything should be displayed, but in DOS 8.3 filename format, i.e., any names with more than 8 letters will be truncated to 6 letters and have a ~1, ~2, etc., appended to them.

I'm not pointing a finger anywhere, just trying to list possibilities and I'm sure I've missed some, at that.

User-friendly or not, I don't care, IFD/IFW has been MUCH more reliable on my system than ATI. User-friendly is a debate that has no merit -- the market as a composite will determine how important user-friendliness IS or ISN'T, regardless of how you define it: some like it, some don't, some understand it, some don't. If you don't like it and/or understand it, don't waste your time with it. I prefer to keep my own counsel and urge others to do the same. It's a dead horse that doesn't need any more beating.

 

@Tommy
Post your problem here:
http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/webnews.html

or

http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/cgi-bin/dnewsweb?cmd=xover&group=public.apps.image&utag=

You will get good advice.

I am not making any conclusions or being rude but if IFD cant do it there might be a problem with your set-up. I have seen where IFD/BING has been used to "debug" software and hardware configs.

However, notwithstanding strong support here and my own experience; this might not be the right tool for you if it wont work right in your environment.


Ps: what he said up one post

 

- I just gave TI a try. No access problems.
- partition D is perfect
- startet other boot discs and also no problem to access all directories on D

Could it be because IFD is a Trial version?
When i have time i will do a clean OS-Setup on my Laptop.

Set back 'My Documents' to D:\My Documents\ -> same efect. I put the folder 'secure' bellow 'My Documents'. Everything works. In my case IFD does not list directories before 'MyDocuments' and no chance to get to the D-Root.

 

Trial versions are full functional AFAIK

 

That's really weird, Tommy. Is a "\.." entry, which would move you up one level, not listed for you to select ? If not, I'm stumped and could only refer you to Terabyte support, the same as Longboard did.

 

"\.." is not listed. Tha'ts the most weird thing at all, and i won't change my directory setting in no way. It's a pitty, i like IFW/IWD, small an 'good'. But if it won't work under my circumstances i will trial TI for a while, even if i have to install 120 MB regarding to the Setup (where the hell are these 120 MB).

 

BTW, it may be a bit OT, but here's a post that illustrates how user-friendly ATI can be: https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=145936

 

"one button restore" on Acronis True Image Home ? Never saw that button, must be another Acronis.

 

I completely agree, Pete. Unfortunately, since I always RTFM, I guess I'm not that good a judge of user-friendliness.

 

I too had problems finding my usb drive with Image for DOS. Terabyte could not explain this but suggested using Image for Linux. Image for Linux worked perfectly. Might be worth giving it a go.

 

True Image is highly overrated.
The only reasons I use it are:

1. It does proper incremental/differential backups.
2. It allows mounting of volumes from archives.

 

I tried ShadowProtect but it just will not behave properly on my laptop. I get hourglasses all over the place while trying to run manual backups with that program. Like the idea behind it but no go here at least in this version.

Would like something more automatic than Image for Windows but for now, it does do imaging which many products have trouble doing reliably.

Gary

 

As I understand it, one of the 3rd party libraries used by ShadowProtect causes its GUI to hang on a small fraction of machines. The fix for this has been in QA for about 2 weeks and I believe that it will be released soon (within a few days).

UPDATE: Gary's hang was a different issue, but has also been resolved.

 

Here are some more alternatives (scroll down past all of the Ghost-specific stuff):

http://ghost.radified.com/ghost_1a.htm

 

That is a good list to get going with

Here are acouple more

DriveImageXP (FREEWARE; no longer supported from the old Lexun developer, sites all gone but utilities still on freeware sites)
http://www.softpedia.com/get/System/Back-Up-and-Recovery/DrvImagerXP.shtml

HD Clone
http://www.miray.de/products/sat.hdclone.html

Forgot this:CasperXP
http://www.fssdev.com/products/casperxp/


There are afew others lost in this thread.

Regards

 

I hope you are right about ShadowProtect. It seems to have promise, but it is unusable for me now. I like what they are trying to do with it.

Gary

 

It looks like the ShadowProtect GUI has problems with certain (but not all) desktop themes that have *very* large fonts. In fact Windows itself has problems with some large-font themes, for instance, on XP, if you enable the Accessiblity high-contrast option, then the display settings Themes tab doesn't work properly. I'm trying to narrow down the exact theme setting(s) that caused Gary's issue. The GUI has no problem with any of the run-of-the-mill themes, and no problem with most large-font themes. I'll let you know when I've figured out exactly which theme setting causes problems. Thanks for telling us about this Gary!

UPDATE - THIS BUG IS NOW FIXED and will be available in the next update, which will be coming out in a few days.

 

You are very welcome. Thanks for your interest in making your product the best it can be for all users. Again, the functionality and feature are good and am sure will improve. In fact, from the recovery CD, I was able to create and restore an image of my C drive with no problems. And, for now, I will switch themes and see how things go from within Windwos XP Pro. Again thanks and this program is worth a try to anyone who loves imaging programs and maybe are looking for alternatives to TrueImage.

Gary

 

I found the bug that was causing this (a font scaling issue in a control paint routine that was in an infinite loop) and have fixed it. I'll see if I can squeeze this fix into the upcoming SP2 release of ShadowProtect.

 

Great thread so far. I was in the trying to pick out imaging software. I tried giving TrueImage a run (75MB install?!) but I can't get past the registration screen (keep getting failed to register messages) which has just done my confidence in the software no favours.

So I thought I'd give IFW and IFD a run. I've run into some problems so hopefully some of the more experienced users can offer some advice on where I might be going wrong.

Currently I have 2 hard drives in a RAID1 (mirror) setup via the BIOS on my motherboard (ASUS P5W DH Deluxe, on board INTEL ICH7R RAID). Each hard drive has been split into 2 partitions, C: (OS and apps), D: (data). I want to create a full image of the entire hard drive and restore.

1) Tried to create a backup using IFW. I use the same settings as the video tutorial (phylock and all) the only difference being I disable the use hard disk flag (i have more than enough RAM). Validation and byte for byte are both on. Image gets created but validation fails at around 99%. Tried it again, same problem. Has anyone come across this before? Could it be my AntiVirus (NOD32) causing this problem? Either way, I don't have enough confidence in the image to attempt a backup...

2) So I decide to give IFD a shot. I'll create an image and try a restore. So I specify the system partition (C:\) and turn on validation and byte for byte. Image is created but validation once again fails at 99%.

So I try creating another image of C:\ (same settings) and once again, validation fails at 99%. I decide to try a manual validate of this image and it succeeds. However, at this point in time, I really do not have the confidence in any of the created images to attempt a restore (in the back of my mind, I'm prepping myself for a format and reinstall...)

I've already sent TeraByte an email (so far their response has been quick and good), but any advice from fellow users would be much appreciated. I downloaded all the installations from the TeryByte website so I believe they are up to date.

I really would like to use IFW / IFD because it seems simple, small and quick but if I have no confidence in the backups, that's a pretty big deal breaker.

Is it worth trying to use ImageForLinux?

Thanks in advance,
K

 

You might give ShadowProtect a try.

http://www.storagecraft.com/products/ShadowProtectDesktop/

Gary

 

If any of you are trialing/evaluating ShadowProtect, or are registered users of ShadowProtect, and run into any issues, please email support 'at' storagecraft.com. There's an intermittent issue with our support forum database which has been delaying notifications to StorageCraft of new postings in our support forum. StorageCraft will bend over backwards to fix any bugs you find in as timely a manner as possible. StorageCraft doesn't outsource support incidents, so when your issue comes up it is dealt with immediately by the engineers who are directly responsible for the relevant code.

 

Try a product that allowsyou to mount volumes frm the backup archives.
Ghost 10, Acronis TRue Image 9, Shadow Protect, and Norton Save and Restore come to mind. The latter requires Windows XP.

You can then use the following to increase your confidence in the archives:
ReadFile
GetFileTypeDistribution
CompareDrives