Image Backup Software

As I said above there can be problems with any piece of software (or any operating system for that matter). Some can be cause by the user, some by conflicts with other software, or some,,,well they just happen for no apparent reason.

The perfect and infallible just does not exist.

 

Well, I guess I'll pipe in: For a novice AND considering that bloat and or less than HIGHLY reliable can contribute greatly to the "complexity" of using something I vote emphatically that you take a hard look at Terabyte Unlimited's IFW/IFD/IFL. It's a very good value and is very straightforward and effective to run at default settings.

As Longboard said, about 4 clicks sounds right and I have NEVER had this program go flakey on me or not deliver precisely as advertised.

This program is reliable enough that you could burn a boot CD, USB Key, or floppy (Shudder!...LOL, Longboard), print the instructions, for both backup and restore, on an index card for a novice user and just have them use it once a week or whatever frequency is practical.

I will admit that a novice might could use a little support when in a panic and needing to do a restore, but I think you'll have this with just about any imaging program.

Now, I've read about other backup solutions and had plenty of experience with ATI. None of what I've read or experienced has pushed me to explore the others very much, so by all means check out what the other posters recommend and do what fits best with your novice user.

Good luck.

P.S. Sorry, I am only an XP user, but I imagine that, in a boot CD environment, Vista or XP would be the same difference to IFD/IFL or IFW (a la Bart PE).

 

I've been using Macrium Reflect and it does everything I need so easily and is very fast making backups and doing restores. The free version I'm using doesn't have the option to boot from WinPE but does have a Linux recovery media and BartPE plugin option. I found the Linux recovery disk worked perfectly on my system and it boots in seconds compared to the very slow BartPE boot.

As I have only recently got into imaging myself I really like the clear interface and the ease of use this program provides and it would be a good choice for either a novice or anyone else requiring a safe and reliable image solution.

 

Sure, but Paragon can be pretty bad, and when I raised the issue I will detail below, their support team barely recognized it, blaming only my configuration.

Indeed, some years ago, on my XP machines, I installed Paragon Drive Backup V6 I think. All seem to go well, but I soon realized that I was no longer able to share folders across my Lan on the machines where it had been installed. I had a strange memory error when trying to mount a shared folder ! When Paragon was uninstalled, the folder sharing started to work again. But I wanted both !!!

It took me several days and numerous google searches & reading to finally find the solution : I had to create an entry in the registry somewhere, to tell the lanmanager service to increase an internal parameter called IRPStackSize, whose default value was too low for handling Paragon filter driver that was installed and running constantly, even if Paragon DB was off.

All this because I simply installed an imaging software, which supposedly had nothing to do with shared folders.

Last time I checked, the problem was still present with DB V8.5.

And regarding Macrium Reflect, it was even worse : MR installs also a filtrer driver that runs at all times and that has caused a great instability and several BSOD on my system. A few months ago, on a forum somewhere, another user told me the problem was still there !

 

Old farts cest moi can find all that newfangled stuff a bit but magnets: there you go. LOL

 

Proves my point above. There is no such thing as problem free software. There will always be some who have problems. I wonder if there is a typical problem percentage. You would think that any program that has been around for any length of time would only be so if most users found that it worked. A good case in point would be Acronis True Image. From the ATI forum you would figure the program was horrible and should have gone the way of the Do Do, yet it still exists and still receives many good reviews from those who do such things. I have used it with no issue for years and will continue to use it. So what % of users find it a problem? 5%, 10%, or something higher. It stands to reason that a very widely used program will have a greater numerical incidence of problems. It may be the same 5% or 10% but because there are a great many users those numbers may appear very high.

I feel its fine to let people know about issues but to dismiss a program as crap because you, or someone you knew had issues with it is not appropriate.

 

I agree with this. So many different setups in use is bound to give rise to many and varied issues.

Regarding Macrium Reflect... it works perfectly here and I would say to anyone considering such a program, at the very least install the free version to test it out. When I was looking for an image solution a few weeks ago, I tested this along with a couple from Paragon and quite clearly this was the software I was looking for and is exactly how I would have hoped such a program existed out there. It just suits my needs so completely.

As regards any drivers it installs.

It does have its own driver included that kicks in to create images if the VSS service has been stopped... as it happens I had disabled this ages ago when I went through my list of services that I considered as not being required to run. When MR finds this situation it actually still continues to write the image by virtue of this built in driver system. If it had not been for this, I may not have found VSS disabled during my tests as I very rarely look in the event viewer for issues... which is where a warning (along with a pop sound) is created when MR tries to use it before reverting to its own copy system.

It also runs a service automatically for mounting images... this can be set to manual or disabled if this feature is not required. I have now set this to manual and it doesn't affect creating images in any way... so no issue there.

Surely the answer to anyone looking for a particular solution is to look at the many options both paid and free. If there are 30 day evaluations... test them along with the free ones (why pay if free does the job) and then decide which suits and works for you. This is the way I always go about deciding on which new programs to install. These forums have provided me with so much information over the years that it is now an invaluable ingredient in this never ending process and makes the task so much easier and enjoyable.

 

I never said other users to dismiss Paragon ar Macrium, it is just a word of warning, when the same software installed on several computers exhibits the same problem, one should be extra careful. In that case, it was not just a "compatibility issue" with my previous set up.

On this subject, one of the golden (silver?) rule in imaging is to avoid having too many of them installed, since they install sometime their own drivers, drivers that are active at all times and can conflict (for instance ShadowProtect & Acronis, as seen in http://forum.storagecraft.com/Community/forums/p/368/1575.aspx - last post).

Lastly, I never had any such problem with IFW (TerabyteUnlimited). So I would also recommend this one. If Macrium and Paragon work fine on your system, all the better since they have a wealth of features, especially Paragon.

 

Just a word here : filter drivers as those installed by Macrium are *not* services and *cannot* be disabled easily. If you use Sysinternals autoruns, go to the driver tab, look for the one installed by Macrium Reflect (can't remember its name), disable it, reboot -> instant crash with BSOD and Windows will no longer boot.

You have to follow a complicated way to remove it (see http://forum.storagecraft.com/Community/forums/p/368/1575.aspx). And it's that driver, that runs at all time, that I suspect to behave badly (at least on the version I tried). As said in previous post, good for you if Macrium works fine for you, but next time you get a BSOD while mounting an image, or connecting/removing an external USB HDD, you'll know where to look first.

 

Hi MerleOne,

Just fired up autoruns and I can see the drivers there... actually there are 2 from Macrium... psmounter and pssnap. Now I know that pssnap is the one that kicks in if VSS is disabled as I mentioned before, so for me this is a good one. The other is the image mounter for windows explorer. I guess this operates in conjunction with the service I mentioned before which I have now got on manual.

Interestingly... I also see 2 from Paragon in there... hotcore3 and uim_im. These would have been added when I was doing my image software evaluation tests a few weeks ago.

It just goes to show what gets installed when trying out all these different programs. Thing is for me, as you said, as long as it works then I don't have too many issues with all these drivers being there. But I also take your point that it is important to be aware of them so that if a system suddenly becomes unstable etc then they could be the first place to look, and for that info I thank you for the heads up on this.