(I deleted all existing partitions and started over with a newly formatted and partitioned drive.) OS is Win7 Enterprise - 64-bit No RAID installed, just a a boot-partition and one straight-forward primary (system) partition. Installed Paragon Backup & Recovery Free 2013 (PBRF_13), and created a recovery disk as per standard .img file that was presented in the PBRF_13 file package. I then made a backup of my boot-partition and Csystem) partition and stored it to my NAS in a dedicated folder. (NAS is formatted as FAT32.) After re-starting my laptop with the recovery disk as OS, I tried to acess the backup archive on my NAS, which worked OK, once the NIC was configured and the path and mount point were defined. However, when I tried to restore the backed –up Cartition with help of the recovery disk – after all, the proof of the pudding is in the eating - the Simple Restore Wizard gave the error message "PLEASE WAIT. Getting partitions info...." , after which, the following message came up: "ERROR. No HDD installed. program will be terminated." When trying to restore the backed-up archive via the Paragon Backup and Recovery ™, the archive could be located and accessed, but the only option available was [F5], all other options were greyed-out. In other words: I do have an archive now, I can access it, but there’s no way I can use it to restore my C: partition… What have I done wrong? For your information I have also added 3 extractions of a tarballed error-log and a screendump of my HDD layout (Windows DiskManager). Thank you in advance for yor feedback and have good day. Rob
My guess is that the Recovery CD which is Linux does not have the proper drivers for your system which is why it can't find your HD. I assume you made the backup while running the Windows version of the program. What happens if you boot up the Recovery CD or key and try to make the image with it. If it can't see your HD and make the image then the Linux environment is likely the problem. The paid versions of Paragon allow you to create a WinPE based recovery CD which is the Windows environment and also allows any needed drivers to be loaded.
Correct again. Think I have to fabricate myself a Win- restore CD in this case. By looking into the logs myself I saw the sported Linux kernel in Free 2013 is 2.6 while the recent-most stable kernel is 3.9. Since there are lot of updates in the kernel that make it compliant with modern hardware, it is pathetic that Paragon doesn't once in a while update their recovery-CD image. There isn't much that users can do about it themselves, since it's all hard-coded. Paragon really missed the bus here....
I have to speculate that Paragon, for obvious reasons, does not devote as much programming attention to thier free products as it does to their paid versions. I have been using HDM12 suite and have had a couple of occasions to have to recover my hard drive. In one instance, one of my RAID0 drives failed, and in another instance, another software vendor remoted into my computer and crashed the registry. In both cases, on two different computers, HDM12 had me back in business in 90 minutes. I highly recommend the paid versions. I was a former Acronis user, but fled from them almost two years ago as one of their product updates crashed both of my computers. Have a great day. Regards, -Phil
Hi Phil, Thank you for sharing your experiences with Acronis. The story sounds familiar. I had the same experience with them. Which was the reason to try my luck with another manufacturer and since Pragon was reviewed best, I thought to ge there instead. I am aware this is a tempting market strategy but only in short term. The way I see it, freeware is meant to advertise the features and benefits of a product. This being backup software, I suppose reliability and stability should be paramount. The difference with the "real deal" should lay in the number of functions and tools that are sported in the paid version vs. the free version, but not in software being buggy or not. (Buggy software does not motivate me to invest money in whatever product from the same manufacturer.) Have a nice day and best regards, Rob
I also moved from Acronis because every new release introduced bugs and they were often systemic bugs that should have been obvious and corrected before the marketing dept pushed it out the door. After moving to Paragon it became obvious that Acronis has more features and the Paragon UI is not overly user-friendly either. In my many years with Acronis it never failed me but it did irritate me. Acronis, Paragon and any other that uses a Linux-based recovery environment have this problem and to be fair it does usually work for the vast majority of systems. The ones that have the trouble tend to have the newer hardware. I understand the point that if it fails why should you consider using the product at all. Now that software companies cannot provide a pre-built WinPE recovery disk they may be pushed into keeping on top of the default Linux environment. Acronis used to have lots of Linux environment issues but they did start updating the Linux and ended up with a pretty good system - at least it was when I left them. I think most customers would sooner use the simple to create Linux recovery CD than fool with the WinPE gymnastics.
(@ seekforever) I understand that a company whose core business is to create and sell software cannot invest vast sums of money in freeware and I do not expect them to, but if you look at the kernel version in their Linux recovery image (prominently advertised in the relevant logs), it is obvious they are trailing "somewhat behind". Personally I'm a Linux user since 1999, with user experience on Red Hat, Debian, Slackware, Gentoo, Puppy, SuSE, Crunchbang, Mandriva, Ubuntu, Bodhi, Fedora, and now back to SuSE. The only thing is that when my previous laptop crashed in August '12, I had to buy a new one and the hardware came with Win7 pre-installed. So the software was there, but getting a refund for the returned OS & license was a no-no and when I looked at its performance, Win7 didn't look bad at all, compared with Vista. So I thought: Whatever, screw the refund and let's make it dual-boot. After all, Win 7 as alternative can still be useful and Linux isn't impeccable in all situations. Besides, I'm human and a change of taste is sometimes refreshing. That being said, I am tired of switching back to Acronis and I have decided to try my luck with BartPE and (TRY to) creating a plugin for Paragon B&R Free. ( Please note: no guarantees given ) Why BartPE instead of WinPE? I don't need a WAIK and there is a ton of documentation available about Bart. Although it is based on the near-to-obsolete XP, that doesn't bother me at all, since it will only be used as live OS. Being compact outweighs the lack of safety patches here. Let's see what comes of it, and maybe I can make some other users happy with the fruits of my tinkering. To be continued.
Have a look at this thread which contains a link over to a Win 7 forum. https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=335734 SIW2 has created a bootable WinPE for Paragon and it doesn't need the WAIK or at least all of it from what I understand. SIW2 is frequently on this forum so if you have problems he should be accessible.
Thank you, Seekforever . I have already seen this post and bookmarked it a week ago. My problem is, that I'm a real greenhorn at creating Windows PE, let alone writing plugins, or even worse, adding fully fledged applications to it. And I hate to just throw some scripts together without the slightest notion of what I'm doing. Therefore I will firstly try to understand the basics and once I've got that nailed, I will try to incorporate B&R Free 13, maybe with some clarifying assistance from SIW2. Thanks again and I cordially wish you a pleasant weekend. Rob
Thankyou ! I spent 2 days trying to restore a new laptop to a previous state. The Paragon Backup Recovery 2003 Free, restore CD wasn't working. - I booted to the recovery CD or USB drive, but option 1 (normal mode)always took me to booting into Windows. The other options (safe mode or low-graphics safe mode) didn't have the drivers to access my external USB hard drives that had my Paragon backups. Then I found, on this thread, the comment: "If it can't see your HD and make the image then the Linux environment is likely the problem. The paid versions of Paragon allow you to create a WinPE based recovery CD which is the Windows environment and also allows any needed drivers to be loaded." I paid for the Paragon Suite, built a recovery USB, that worked first time and in under an hour I had my laptop fully restored. I'm posting this, in the hope that it helps others. I have nothing to do with Paragon, nothing to gain by people buying their software. But I wish I'd realised this was an extra paid for feature sooner. The 2 days I lost, are worth more to me than the Paragon fee for their paid for versino.
I'm using the free version of Paragon and made a recovery cd but like others when I used it it didn't see any of the hard drives nor the backup drive where the image is stored. Now I read that I need to make a PARAGONPE recovery version. Does anyone have any instructions and/or links to this? I need to restore my Win7 64bit system pronto. I made a simple change in my backup hard drive to a larger one, after the system was built and now Windows says that I made a significant change and need to re-activate it. Gee wiz!
sag, You will have to weigh whether or not its worth your time and effort to build your own WinPE which requires some skill and from what I read is slightly time consuming -- OR -- just purchase a paid version like "paragon backup and recovery 12 - home", which they a sale on today, for about $ 19.95 (I also think that it comes with a money back warranty or at least it use to). http://www.paragon-software.com/home/brh/ ... If you search this forum you should find a thread from SIW2 where he created a WinPE builder, for use with the free paragon pgms.
