Image Backup Software

For small images of say 5 gig or less I find Acronis 10 and SP just as good as each other - no difference in compression. For larger images - say 20 or 30 gig of data SP is faster. In both cases I only use the CD to make full images - no verification required

 

its not very cheap at $80 though, just for imaging software.

vcom have Perfect Image at $60, but there is no trial.. so im weary.

however, it does sound good with the hidden partition feature aswell.

 

Depends if you are shopping by price or quality and value-there are even some freebies.
Most people dont mind spending a few bucks more for quality.
You must have read about the danger of archiving your image on the same disk as your system-if your disk destructs-you lose all your data,the lot-a very real danger.
With SP if you want to go along that route,just create another partition for SP-exactly the same as a hidden partition(except its not hidden)!!

 

Pete, that indicates complete confidence. Good work.

There are many folks in the Acronis True Image Forum who don't have that sort of confidence in TI. They would never restore to the original HD as a test.

 

I would have to go with "paragon drive backup", the demo that I tried did work. The price $30.00 is not bad. The only deal killer for me, was the backup time on a 6gb system partition was about 10 minutes, true image did the same backup in less than 2 minutes (cpu amdx2 4800).

Many people have switch to paragon and are happy with it. I continue to use true image with a "boot corrector" always by its side. If paragon was quicker, I would not hesitate to move over to it.

Incidently, "paragon drive backup" boot cd has a built-in boot corrector. Many people don't understand what the "boot corrector" is for. I have used it many times so I know it's power. I think that is one of the reasons that paragon drive backup is successful where true image will fail.

As far as shadowprotect, I was going through there forums and it didn't take me long to find a " drive letter change" problem. Unless the shadowprotect boot cd can fix drive letters, I don't think the $80.00 priice is worth it.

 

Not to buy an app because of one rare reported fault sounds rather extreme,especially as on most occasions the fault is computer specific.

As a long time SP user, reliability is 100%.
But if it did happen is there any problem to use Disk Management?

You could equally say no one should buy ATI-just check the forums here and elsewhere for the problems,there are so many.

But obviously common sense must be used.

 

I just tested Paragon's Partition Manager v9.0.

It trashed my drive.

Goodbye Paragon.

 

i guess some problems with imaging has something to do with microsofts shadow copy provider and/or volume shadow copy services.
So once trialling SP on desktop it failed cause both were corrupted !??!

After a repair SP did the job,uninstalled SP[don't like hot imaging] and now i use only the recovery CD without any noise.

 

I've done numerous backups/restores, using ShadowProtect under Windows (backup only) and its Recovery CD (backup and restore) and it never failed. All my other softwares failed one or more times, except SP and Karen's Replicator.

Acronis True Image never failed either, but two times it failed to restore an image, using TI under Windows and in both cases, I had to restore the image with the Acronis Rescue CD successfully. Not really a failure, but not perfect either.

Terabyte wasn't userfriendly enough. Paragon too much info on their screens. Norton too dominating.

 

Hi Eric great you'r back !! I have similar experiences with SP,at least from the recovery CD never failed once and its also a speed demon,one irritating thing with the recovery environment is the time it load.

 

Thanks. Yes I'm back. Too many other things to do.
The loading time of the CD is indeed terrible, 3 minuts here. Sometimes my backups or restores of certain images are faster done than 3 minuts and then it's even more irritating.

 

im trying the trial of shadowprotect, but where is the recovery CD?

with acronis, i can create the CD within the program and then burn it, is this how shadowprotect do it, if so... where is the option?


----
also, the tray icon looks very similar to Sophos Antivirus. lol

 

Hi Erik - good to see you posting. You say the CD is slow ? which option are you using ? I found that the Vista version to be the fastest overall with a boot time of 1 minute 30

 

Welcome back Erik

Request the full evaluation. The recovery CD isn't provided in the "classic trial" because Storagecraft has to pay royalties to Microsoft for the WinPE stuff.

 

I'm using WinXPproSP2 and SP2, not SP3 and that's why the load time is 3 minuts. If my memory is good, member "Huupi" is also using SP2.
But I can live with this, because the rest is perfect.
One day, I will upgrade to SP3, but I prefer to wait for next upgrades.

 

If you want to use a CD then you could upgrade to Acronis 10 The Acronis boot disk only takes 55 seconds to boot and is only slower than SP3.1 for larger images. Now that I own both programs I use both just in case one ever fails --- As if

 

Long View,
How do you backup your data?
Since you're using an ISR solution (Deep Freeze, Returnil), it's highly likely that you store your data in another partition/drive.

 

Yes I use another drive for data - even before ISR I kept system/programs and data completely separate. I use Acronis or SP to back up ( Image) in the same way as I do system and programs - to another drive another drive or via network. For my main work machine I tend to use a pocket freecom drive - just in case the building burns down or some one steals all my machines and images

 

if i'm not mistaken Long View once you'r a vivid promoter of IFW/IFD with quoting unbelieveable fast backup/restore times,and now your saying that ATI would be an upgrade to SP ?? Hmmm.

if i'm wrong correct me.

 

Image for Window/DOS and Drive Snapshot are excellent and reliable...small and convenient, no questions about it...In spite of beeing fond of EazFix/RBrx I decided to avoid them (at least for a while) due to the fact that I like to use Ultimatedefrag´s options to keep the sys drive in tip top performance...IFW/IFD & DS together with Bartpe is a rock solid solution...backup in win or outside win, restore outside win in Bart or from selfbooting DVD (made by IFW in win) or from IFD CD...6.82 GB sys drive less than 5 minutes is expendible indeed...I find it hard to beat that...And upon that, if you want, possibility to backup EF/RBrx snapshots...

 

I only use imaging for my system partition. My data partition is backed up by file-backup apps.

 

Sorry Huupi I have never had a good word to say for IFW/IFD - I have tried them briefly but for me they were just too slow. The unbelieveable times that I have quoted were for Acronis 10 40 sec for C: that sort of thing. On my machines with small C: there is not much to choose between Acronis 10 and SP3.1 If I remember correctly SP2 was slower.