HDM 12 Suite

You know I used Paragon for quite a while, but I always used it with PHP, not VSS. If Paragon is doing all these great things to your system when using VSS, I am surprised that users systems are not crashing left, right and center..... Maybe they are but the unfortunate users do not know it is Paragon that is causing the problems.

On my part I got so offended when nobody from Paragon bothered to respond or resolve this problem in 2009, I stopped using it and switched to Macrium.

 

Then it is probably widows 7. I just recalled, I never used Paragon on windows 7, as I had already switched to Macrium before I upgraded to windows 7.

 

I might end up following suit. But I'll still keep Paragon on my system, for the partitioning utilities. They worked very well when I had to repartition my Lenovo laptop HDD. (That's a LONG story.)

 

N/P. I really learned a lot tonight. Thanks again. Your input has been very helpful.

 

I like their partition manager as well. It is the best around for now.

No problem, I had some free time tonight. It was good to learn that somebody else had at least faced a similar problem. I have been unable to get anybody to run this simple test for me since 2009!!! Can you believe that! I will sleep a lot better tonight.

 

Thanks for clarifying - I guess the manual is just poorly worded. Weird that they'd only allow you to limit based on size and not number of sets.

Thanks as well for the explanation (and link) regarding the problem with the sector copy restoration. I feel all sorts of informed now!

Too bad...

 

Well...FWIW...I did receive a response from Paragon this morning from Pavel Kuzovlev Support Engineer Paragon Software Group. He acknowledged that the issue of the disappearing Windows Update history needed to be looked into. I told him in a response that the issue has existed since 2009, and definitely needed to be fixed. I also made him aware of the MSE file that gets corrupted after a restore.

 

To restore an image of the system partition is always necessary to reboot. So, it´s better to restore from a WinPE medium. This avoids these problems, if they exist. I have restored many times from a WinPE and the Windows Update history has never disappeared.

 

That's a good suggestion. I'll give that a try and report back. Thanks.

Update:

1. Using the WinPE disk did NOT help the disappearing windows history update problem (see image below).
2. I view the WinPE disk as an emergency disk, not something I'd routinely use for non-emergent restores.
3. Paragon HDM 11 offers the clear option of doing the restore through Windows, and then rebooting to carry out the operation. If it offers that option, then that option should work without having to resort to the emergency disk.
4. The emergency disk is slower because it takes time for "Windows To Load Files". Not only that, but the GUI is clunky compared to the Windows GUI. Also, I try to keep a copy of the WinPE disk in my laptop bag, but if for some reason it breaks or it's not there if I switch bags and forget to make sure the disk is there, I want the program that's already on my computer to work the way it's supposed to work. I don't think that's asking too much from a program.
5. AND...using the disk did NOT stop the Admin Event Errors either (see image below).

After deleting the corrupted MSE file mentioned in a previous post, and rebooting, all of the errors disappear. They ONLY appear after the first reboot after the restore. But it's exactly the same with the WinPE disk as it was restoring from within the Paragon Windows program itself.

 

Yes, the update history disappears.

That shouldn't matter at all.

Windows will not try to install the same updates again.

 

That is not what the problem is. Paragon is supposed to restore your system to the state it was in at the time of the backup and clearly it does not do that. These are few of the things we have noticed, we do not know how many other things Paragon fails to restore as well.

 

Actually I have tested this out quite extensively. It does not matter how you restore it. As long as the backup was created using VSS, Paragon fails to restore certain files. I think they never get backed up. Maybe someone can mount one of the archives and check whether Paragon has backed them up in the first place.

 

That was quick. Perhaps they have improved their customer support dept. Hopefully they will resolve it soon. Paragon claims to restore your computer to the state it was in at the time of the backup and that does not appear to be true, so either they fix it or they lose customers.

 

And that's the point that SIW2 seemed to have missed. The point isn't whether MS will try to install the updates again. (I already stated that the presence of those updates DOES exist, and can be seen, if you look at Installed Updates, vs Update History.) The point is -- when a program claims to make a complete, identical restore, and there are discrepancies with ANYTHING, then "identical" goes out the window. And with this type of program in particular, that's a problem. I've used PowerQuest, IFW/IFD, and Paragon. (I briefly flirted with Acronis several years ago, but that was about it.) At times, with PowerQuest, you'd hit a wall with one of their mysterious "errors" -- and they had pages and pages of them. With IFW/IFD, I never had any issues. NEVER. But I wanted to go with Paragon for this new laptop (I still use IFW/IFD on my XP Pro desktop), and am reasonably satisfied. But issues are issues, and this program does have some issues. For context, at this point, I'd say that they're relatively minor issues, and I'd like to see if/when they address and resolve them. But to simply say there are no issues, after what's been brought to light, is simply not true.

 

SIW2, skbaltimore,

This is strange. I have used Paragon BR Home to restore my system partition, on a Win XP pc, about 5 times, so far, by restoring from the Win PE boot disc and I have my full windows history going back to 2008 (when pc was bought).

... I think that the Windows History is stored in this database file on a Win XP pc ( C:\WINDOWS\SoftwareDistribution\DataStore\DataStore.edb ), at least when using MSUpdates on a Win xp pc.

... So, are you saying that after you do a paragon restore that the "Datastore.edb" file is missing on your pc or is corrupted ?

P.S. I use the MSUpdates site for manually applying the updates and *not* the *old* Windowsupdate site (I don't think this could make any difference or could it ? )

 

Was the backup also created from the Win PE disk? The bug only appears when you do a hot backup from within windows.

 

Win 7 uses a totally different approach than XP. In Win 7, there is no longer that update site; it's a component built right into Windows 7. I do see the file you're talking about, though. That's the same. And the time listed is of the last time I booted up, so maybe Windows recreates it every time the computer boots up. I'm not sure what role that particular file is playing in the scenario where the restore removes all of the Windows Update history. As already stated, the restore does not damage the section called Installed Updates -- that part is still accurate. It only affects the Windows Update History in Win 7. Odd.

 

You are absolutely right. Since we are talking about restoring your PC back to the state it was when you backed it up; there in another issue that only happens with Paragon (v10 onwards).

About two years ago a friend of mine called me up to ask me that whenever he does a restore with paragon HDM 10 suite, his windows loses its activation, he ends up with only a 30 day trial. I was quite surprised, went to his house and performed various tests. On my system nothing of the sort happened, but on my friends system, every time after the restore, windows would lose its activation status.

I later found out that he was by chance using a pirated copy of windows. So, every time after doing the restore, Paragon HDM would remove the whatever it was that makes windows activated and genuine.

Now, I do not condone piracy, but I was quite surprised that a backup utility that claims to restore your PC to the exact state it was in at the time of the backup would go and perform this extra noble duty.

I mean, lets suppose I am a engineer at microsoft piracy prevention dept. I download and install a pirated version of windows on my PC, to figure out a way to remove the script or bootloader that was circumventing the windows activation. I run out of time so I decide that okay let me backup this system with Paragon, thinking that I will restore it over the weekend when I am free to continue my analysis. However, when I restore the image, Paragon goes in and removes the pirated bootloader, so I can not study anything.

Again, Paragon should be awarded a noble price for building a windows piracy remover into its products, but it is a backup and restore utility not a cop. It should backup whatever is on someone's system and restore it just as it was, without passing the contents through its fraud detection algorithms.

If someone does not believe me you can download a trial of HDM 12 and try it out yourself. Keep in mind I am not condoning software piracy here, just pointing out that Paragon yet again does not do a 1:1 restore.

 

Wow. That's weird. Did you ever experiment with the partition raw processing option to see if that would make a difference with regard to the piracy removal issue? Isn't that supposed to copy byte for byte exactly what's on the HDD?

Also, I asked a question a while back and no one responded. Do you use compression, and if so, which one? (Have you ever tried best compression instead of normal compression?)

Thanks.

 

skbaltimore,

This is just a long shot .... Is there any chance that you have the paragon copy exclude options set to exclude .log or .edb files ? .... Or, maybe a Folder Exclude of "C:/WINDOWS/SoftwareDistribution/* " ?

If yes, maybe the backup is *not* copying the following into the backup archive:

C:\WINDOWS\SoftwareDistribution\DataStore\DataStore.edb

C:\WINDOWS\SoftwareDistribution\DataStore\DataStore\Logs\
*.log files

It is my understanding that the .edb and the .log files (under the Logs Folder), comprise the Window update History.
... So any chance you have Copy Exclude file extensions that are prevent these files from being copyied into the backup arcive and windows is re-creating them, as a result ?

 

No I didn't. Why would anybody want to do a raw backup if they only wanted to backup their system partition? Any sector based imaging is byte for byte exact copy of what is on the partition. Raw backup just includes the free space as well.

I have used both the best compression and the normal compression in paragon. Best compression is slower but not by much. If space is an issue I would go with best compression, otherwise normal compression is quite adequate.

 

I don't have access to my laptop right now...I'm doing a battery reset gauge, which runs for hours, and requires that you don't do anything on the laptop while it's running. But I'm pretty sure I went through those "exclude" options the other night, just to be sure, and nothing was checked. The thought dawned on me as well that maybe there was something in those exclude options that might be causing the problem. (Great minds think alike)

But I'll double check as soon as the battery conditioner finishes doing its thing, and I'll let you know. Probably tomorrow.

Update: That battery utility was driving me crazy, so I aborted it and looked at the exclusion settings. No boxes are checked, so that has to mean that no filters are being used, right?

 

1. Yeah...I've never found a use for the raw backup either. I was just wondering.

2. Thanks for the info on the best compression option. Since I use flash drives as part of my redundant backup routine, it might come in handy as far as getting one more differential backup onto a flash drive that otherwise wouldn't fit.

 

Typically, imaging programs, even though they create images based on sector bitmaps need to understand the filesystem to know which sectors are in-use, where excluded files like the pagefile reside. If the file system is unsupported or if it is corrupted and you want to make an exact image for data restoration attempts then the RAW method will do this.

It is not correct to assume that modern imaging programs do an exact byte-for-byte image. They should capture all the necessary sectors of course but the restoration process does not necessarily restore the sector from address ABCD back into address ABCD.

 

Does the RAW method do an exact byte for byte 'ABCD to ABCD' system back up and restore? And if so, does it take longer to create the backup, and is the size of the backup appreciably larger? Thanks.