Paragon Drive Backup PE/Pro vs. ShadowProtect

Between Paragon Drive Backup PE/Pro and ShadowProtect, which is easier to use when backing up to an external usb HD? Which of the two performs backups faster? Which of the two has a more reliable way of performing backups? Which of the two is lighter in terms of memory resources? Which of the two occupies less storage space when making backups? Which of the two is easier to use and more reliable in terms of making a boot and recovery CD? Why would one choose one over the other? Any comments would be very much appreciated. Thanks in advance.


Peace & Gratitude,

CogitoErgoSum

 

This is why I think evaluation releases of commercial software is very valuable. You should try both of them and see which one fits best.

Don't expect to get a consumer report here, our answers will all be colored by our personal preferences. If one product was the best, we all would use the same product.

If you need help with your own evaluations, we certainly can offer that.

 

i have used both.
my main reason for getting paragon was the great support and the massive decent code i found.
try both and buy which one you prefer.
backing up and restoring to an external usb drive will most likely be easier with shadow protect desktop.
but if your external drive isnt reconised by the paragon linux recovery cd you can ask for a winpe vista edition recovery cd to be made.
lodore

 

Its remarkable that if anything goes wrong,its always Linux based recovery environments [ATI , Paragon],never heard of anything bad with the M$ preinstalled environments [ WinPe,VistPE ],ShadowProtect among others !

 

Hi Ladore, how will u compare the two? Pros and Cons? Which one u will prefer?

 

Do agree with Wilbertnl-its so simple to download trials and make an uncoloured conclusion for yourself,instead of calling for claims and counterclaims.

For anyone to give a detailed report as required may be too much to expect

That said,I much prefer Shadow Protect-for a start,the backup speed is about 2 times faster,but there again this sort of remark is going to attract the usual post-"not in my case" etc-so whats the point?

The best thing about Paragon is the beautiful GUI

 

massive decent code = massive discount code

 

Does that mean you can go back to any point which an image was taken during the week?

 

I brought paragon drive backup pro and use cyclic backup to backup once a day. yesterday I installed wmware server and it didnt work correctly on vista.
so i booted up the recovery cd and restored the image from the day before. a few mins later and it was done+) never had a restore problem with paragon.
then again never had a restore problem with shadow protect desktop eiether.i found it hard to just schdule one backup a day with shadow protect desktop.
i wouldnt hesitate to buy eiether.
lodore

 

I got a bit confused with the scheduling in SP - it appears you need to set a time 'range' up in each day rather than a specific time?

 

Thanks Ladore! Seems u prefer Paragon a bit over SP.

 

Just specify "Later-start time" and thats it.

 

A couple of other advantages of SP,apart from its general speed and reliability,which is understood.

The speed of incremental backups has been mentioned,but the capability to schedule as often as every 15 minutes,makes this pretty close to a CDS,plus the fact that the time taken in the background is about 20 seconds.

SP has a function called Disk Map,which performs some functions like Paragon Hard Disk Manager.

SP has HIR,which means images can restored to new unrelated hardware.

Tried this with Paragon-ended up with 8 DVDs as beer coasters and no success.

 

NP. only a tiny bit thou.
try both and see what you prefer.
cant go wrong with eiether. i mean they are both the same price both reliable.shadow protect desktop is faster not sure by how much thou.
but mainly i adopted for paragon since i used to use the old paragon hard disc manger 8.0 on my old dell for manging partitions and restoring images when it become unbootable due to beta testing and it always restored everytime.
btw its lodore not ladore but meh
lodore

 

Oh, sorry. I always used to read it ladore, just noticed today.

 

I'm also now trialing out ShadowProtect and i see what all the crow's about. It's reasonably swift imaging speed is not impressive to me as others, but it is quick nonetheless, which is a welcome advantage;

Of course it's Recovery Environment is it's bread and butter to restore a single disk. Like others you are free to explore and manipulate images made. I find best advantages of SP to be a Superb scheduling technique, kind of daunting as a new user, but very impressive, after all, that is one fine schedule system IMHO. The HIR has to be another benefit although i not tried it, i'm convinced by other customers it's GOOD ENOUGH to get you up and going as a start to another different system. It's perfectly stable and really doesn't pressure the system at all while incrementing by schedule.

I am a die hard Paragon user for a very long time but this is a very worthy competitive challenger. The merger feature of collapse gives it a distinct lead when compared to others.

It's likely the best imaging program ATM due to multiple features, all of which work as expected. Anyway thats my take on it from this early experience with it.

I can see why it's marketing is geared toward the high-end interests of major networking systems. It's an incredible safeguard imager IMO due mainly to it's brilliant scheduling method that doesn't raise some concern about a surprise interrupt but efficiently backups without user interaction.

 

When you say you wasted 8 DVDs, was this in general due to the software not working correctly or trying to get HIR to work with Paragon?

I also noticed that the Paragon boot CD appears to have some basic partitioning functions aswell?

 

Shadow Protect, like Shadow User, is not stated as being compatible with Vista - at least nowhere that i can find is it explicitly stated as being compatible


http://kb.storagecraft.com/activekb/Default.aspx

 

In all fairness to Paragon-it doesnt have a similar function to HIR-so the wasted DVDs were due to my ignorance at the time,in trying to get a new computer working with images from the old one.

True Image doesnt have this feature either and as far as I'm aware SP is the only app of its type which does.

Its a very important step forward for imaging software.

With SP,this is possible"The HIR Configuration tool allows you to restore system images to dissimilar hardware or completely different machines or virtual environments"

HIR is also very handy for getting new hard disks working with the minimum amount of fuss.

edit; Driver reinstalls may be needed for other than Windows drivers,in some cases.

 

The Help manual does say that all versions of Vista are catered for,but does not explicitly include 64bit.

Best to email Support.