Alternative to True Image (nervous nellie)

Thanks for the testing and sharing it.
So if IFW has not failed with others, they will say the same about IFW.
Now the question is that what are the things lacking in IDW that it failed to impress u?

 

ErikAlbert,

You’re in the same league as the “my AV is the best because it scans the fastest” people.
The criterion is RELIABILITY not SPEED. If speed is what you’re after try motor racing.

Important is that you KNOW that when your pc refuses to run that you can bring it to life by restoring an image. If it takes 10 minutes longer than another imageing software, who cares. You want your computer running again.

Yours truly uses BING more than a year now, have made, many, many images, restores, resizes, partitions. BING’s score is 100%. Yes, I know your talking about IFW. IFW/IFD has the same RELIABILITY.

See one of the posts of Furballi in this thread: “BING 1.2x to 1.7x has been 100% reliable for me from 2001 to 2006. Dozens of chipsets, optical drives, CPUs, GPUs, productivity applications, and never once a bad image file”. That’s a period of FIVE YEARS !!!!!!!!.
For same experiences see user comments e.g download.com, beta news or Terrabyte forum.

Now this is what I call facts.

If I remember well your using TI for something like 1 month now. Like to hear your experiences after having used TI for a year or so.

 

The test wasn't about reliability, it was about backup speed.
I just wanted to kill the fairy tale, that IFW is faster than ATI.
I never tested the reliability of IFW, but according my readings IFW seems to be very reliable.
I have to be a long time user of IFW to confirm its reliability and I'm not. So I can't tell much about the rest of IFW.
The only difference between ATI and IFW is that ATI beats IFW concerning userfriendliness.

I'm not a fan of ATI, I'm too cold to be a fan of any software.
ATI and IFW are IMO equal, once they are ACCEPTED by your system along with other softwares.
At work, I don't care how friendly the vendor or support is, our users have to work with these softwares EACH day and they don't work with the vendor or support, that's my job.
I consider good support as normal and vendors are always friendly because they want you to buy their software.
If the support isn't there, I'm already suspicious. The vendor doesn't interest me.

 

I didn't ask for a speed test, member "aigle" did and I'm just answering his question.
You made your choice, I made my choice and aigle will make his choice.
I'm happy with my choice : Acronis True Image.
If you believe Terabyte is better than Acronis, no problem for me.
I believe in RESULTS on MY COMPUTER and nobody has to follow my advice.
I'm just sharing real facts.

If ATI ever fails, I will tell you about it, one month or one year later, it doesn't matter.
IFW will fail one day too, all softwares fail one day like anything else created by mankind.
You don't have to teach me history.

 

I haven't read that fairy tale anywhere at Wilders, it must have been an off day for me when it was posted.

Users have reported some builds of ATI, including the latest, running more slowly on their system than other builds. That doesn't mean the same thing doesn't happen with Terabyte products. It does, however, mean that the question of which is faster does NOT have a discrete balck and white answer. Just for the record and in the interest of balanced perspectives.

 

There are three primary contributors to the imaging speed:

1.Speed and current load of CPU/RAM/system. Multitasking while imaging will reduce the processing speed. Run the image file outside of windows if you want to devote 100% of the CPU load to the drive image software.

2.Speed of HDD. A HDD currently provides the best speed for large data storage. About 2100MB/min at the inner-most surface of the disc platter.

3.Coding of the drive image software to fully utilize the capability of the PC.

A fast rig n a good drive image sofware should process at 1500MB/min or higher, especially with the new Seagate HDDs with perpendicular recording technology. I've seen burst speed as high as 2000MB/min with a partition containing video files (cannot take advantage of additional compression by the image software).

 

Free alternative supposed to work:

http://www.runtime.org/dixml.htm

more info here:

http://habibbijan.com/guides/driveimage.php

I have never tried it. Never tried Acronis TI, Ghost or any other. Guess I am too scared to get into this. But sooner or later I have to. (I know I should have done a year ago when I bought my pc). I will buy a second harddisk, external, for extra safety. (Dont believe in burning to DVD after reading this forum).

The big problem for me too is to find the best/right alternative. Don't think it has been made yet. I would pay whatever they demand, if only they could come up whit a good simple solution for beginners and advanced.

(Can someone please try out DriveImageXML and tell the rest of us?)

 

You have to find another DriveImageXML-user to tell you about it.
It takes too long to evaluate the reliability of an image backup software.

Although backup is necessary, it's a very boring activity and nothing but routine. The only exciting moment of backup is the restoration and you do alot more backups than restorations.

I've been testing my backup software for weeks to break it in every possible way. In the end I was sick and tired of my backup software.
I can't do this forever and certainly not for each existing backup software.

YOU have to live with your backup solution, not other users. So you better do your own tests and it can take a long time sometimes to find your own backup solution, but that is common for all softwares.
As long my backup software does its job, I keep it and I ignore any bad comment on my backup software, because it isn't true on MY computer.
And there is no such thing as a foolproof backup software.

That's one of the reasons, why I use FirstDefense-ISR and this software doesn't bore me and can be used as a second backup solution, besides its other possibilities.

 

You may find this somewhat informative....

http://www.bargainshare.com/index.php?showtopic=77369

 

E-A keeps a true perspective !

 

Thanks pvsurfer !

 

I am really thankful to u for the testing u did and posted. How u compare the image compression ratio of the two?

 

ATI has 3 compression levels, if my memory is good. I use the normal one. I have space enough.
I have no idea how the backup of IFW works. I think it splits your backup file in pieces of 2gb, at least that was my first impression, but I could be wrong.
After backup I had 3 backup files with extensions : .IMG, .001 and .002.
In ATI I have only one backup file.

IFW is too primitive for me.
In ATI I can prepare my backup in one or several tasks, which means I can't make any mistakes anymore in choosing the source and the target of the backup and the rest of data that is required to do the backup.
Two mouse clicks to start a task.

In IFW I have to repeat this all over again for each backup, including possible mistakes. You need an IFD-floppy to restore a system partition.
Maybe BING does a better job, but I don't know BING.
I don't like to use floppies or CD's to do a backup/restore : too many inserts and forgotten ejects.
You really have to like the combination IFW/IFD/PHYLock, because there isn't much luxury, except reliability.

 

ATI rocks too in my case. I guess ATI is like RollbackRx : fortunate and unfortunate users.

 

1- I have a single SATA HD with single partition C on my laptop. Laptop has no floppy drive. If i image my HD on an external USB hard drive, how can I restore this image back on my HD( having no floppy drive to boot)?
2- I have read many threads about problems of unrecognized keyboard/ mouse awith ATI. Are there such issues with IFW?

 

Thanks, i do have a CD drive.Is it easy to make a bootable CD?
Also I will like to ask, I have never used DOS, is there any tutorial on how to use IFD with all commands etc available? Seems it will not be so easy.
Thanks.

 

It's as easy as falling off of a log. I boot from a CD for use with my laptop.

I don't know about EVERY command, but Heffy at http://www.heffy.com/image.htm has some fairly basic tutorial videos that will illustrate how simple the operations are.

Forrest Gump's momma always told me: "Easy is as easy does." My advice is to give it a try after giving the manual a targeted reading specifically for what you want to do and then judge for yourself how easy, difficult, user friendly or not, primitive or not you find it.

I don't think a person has to decide if they are going to be an Acronis or a Terabyte person -- though of course, available money can constrain you. I have no problem whatsoever being both although I might if my wife finds out what I spent (then I ask her if she likes how reliable her system is and how I can always fix it for her ). I just happen to be on the road fulltime with my laptop right now (hopefully, no more than another month) and I prefer the straightforward and high reliability (for MY system) operation of IFW/IFD. I use ATI primarily on the home desktop.

 

Crofttk and Peter! thanks for ur replies. I will give it a try.

 

Just a thought, if u can do all with IFD, why to buy IFW as well?

 

I find imaging with IFW more convenient as I can continue doing other things in WIndows while I do that and it works reliably enough for me in Windows. You get both IFW and IFD by adding only $8 to the price of IFD.

 

Try Drive Snapshot. Is fast and works fine. I'm using it the last 6 months without problems.

 

You could also try Shadow Protect from the maker of ShadowUser....
Waiting for Peter2150's comment with fear and King ErikAlbert's with anxiety....LMAO
Cheers,
Hervé