Paragon Drive Backup Personal

I took advantage of a recent offer to purchase this program. I have one partition on my C:\ drive and I made my first full backup today. However, the program advised me that "The content of file pagefile.sys and hiberfil.sys was excluded from bitmap". I have no idea what this means. I just wanted to backup the system so that if necessary I could restore it as it is today. Could someone please explain to me what this means?

Also, I recently downloaded Paragon Drive Copy with the understanding that I could transfer everything I have on my current drive to a new drive I will be soon purchasing. Am I right in my assumption? And, can I do the very same thing with Paragon Drive Backup Personal?

As always I will appreciate all replies and I will thank you in advance.

John

 

All of the imaging apps I've used leave out the pagefile and hibernation file, or at least have the option to leave them out. Including them would make the image huge and you don't need them. When you restore the image Windows will re-create these files. Of course if you don't use hibernation then you won't have hiberfil.sys anyway.

As to your second question, I haven't ever used either of those, but restoring an image you've made to the new drive should work. You may want to partition and format it ahead of time to make it easier. Parted Magic is a free Linux live CD distro for doing this, works great.

 

I recently backed up my C:\ drive, it is the only partition I have. Paragon Backup Personal gave me the option to backup the C:\ and also the option to back up the MBR. I chose to only backup the C:\ drive. Was I incorrect in doing so? I don't know of the consequence of not backing up the MBR. Is this something I should have done?

Should I not be able to access Windows and I have a Paragon Disaster disc and my backup does not include the MBR will the restore be sucessful? Or, will the backup be useless?

As always all replies will be appreciated and I will thank you in advance.

John

 

Within the MBR is code that define from with part. or disk OS will boot so if MBR is missing in the imageFile OS has no clue from wih it can boot.
I would repeat the backup including the MBR.

 

Don't worry about the MBR, the MBR is specific to each hard drive. The MBR keeps track of that hard drives partitions. If you just did an image backup of a bootable partition, it will be automatically bootable when you restore it.

The only reason to backup the MBR is if you have a exotic boot manager that was written to the MBR. Then restoring the MBR is important but not necessary.
Also if you restore the MBR of a 60gb hard drive onto a 500gb hard drive, there are situations where the 500gb hard drive will show up as a 60gb hard drive.

I never backup or restore the MBR, never had any problems getting the restored drive to boot.

The pagefile/hiberfiles, those are files that take alot of space and are not usually required. The only files not to exclude are temp files (because some programs actually do use those files).

Paragon drive copy only does hard drive clones. hard drive to hard drive copys.
Paragon drivebackup does clones and also does individual partition backups plus has a scheduler, it's a more complete imaging solution.

 

I always restore the MBR from imagefile with SP but i get it its not needed to do that as you explained.OKE always something to learn !

 

if you don't backup the MBR and you get infected by a MBR rootkit, if specific clean tools fail, you have to boot into Recovery Console to do "fixmbr" in order to get rid of it... otherwise if you have the backup, you can restore it

 

Im sure paragon has an option called "restore standard MBR"

 

When I open Paragon Drive Backup Personal I am given the choices of 1) Basic Hard Disk0 (WDC WD800JO-00JJC0), 2) First Hard Disk Track, 3) Master Boot Record and 4) Drive C:.

In the past I have selected Drive C: only. But, I am now wanting to backup both Drive C: and Master Boot Record. But, I noticed that if I check 1) Basic Hard Disk that the program automatically checks all 4 choices.

My qestion is should I only be checking 3) and 4) or 1) which will check all 4? Since I only have Drive C:\ my feeling is that it really doesn't matter. Am I correct?

As always I will appreciate all replies and would thank you in advance.

John

 

You gotta love these programs that only speak geek and not English.

 

Just to clear up any confusion that may still remain about the Master Boot Record.

Backup of Entire Hard Disk:
When you backup an entire hard drive, the MBR is automatically included. When you restore, you can choose to restore everything (MBR included) or just 1 partition at a time. The option you choose also affects your resize capabilities. If you choose to restore the whole disk, you can either do a proportional resize or no resize. If you restore the partitions individually you can manually adjust the new partition sizes as you see fit.

Backup of Single Partition:
When you backup a partition by itself, the MBR is NOT included. However, you don't need it. When you restore a bootable partition Paragon will automatically update the MBR to make sure it is compatible. If there is no MBR, it will simply write a new one.

Backup of Multiple Components:
If you backup selected partitions and the MBR (without selecting the entire disk), Paragon will create a "Complex Archive". This is essentially multiple independent backups that are linked by a merged archive file. When you go to restore, if you choose the merged file, the following screen will offer a list where you can choose which component to restore. You can also bypass the merged file and go directly to either a partition or the MBR . I generally tell users not to use this method because it results in a somewhat confusing set of a files and filenames.

You can make a separate backup of the MBR if you wish, which is what I prefer to do. You can then restore that before or after the partition(s); it doesn't matter what order. You only need to do this once, unless you make a change such as adding another operating system.

If you right click your hard disk on the Disk Map you can also do 'Update MBR' to write a new boot record.

If you're having problems booting after performing a restore, check that your partition is 'Active' first (Right click partition), and then perform 'Update MBR' manually (Right click entire drive). If that doesn't fix it, post a thread here with the details so we can help!

 

Greetings,

I also purchased Paragon Drive Backup but I purchased the Pro edition which has a few capabilities which the Personal edition does not have.

If you are new to the software, as I am, and are getting a bit confused and frustrated in figuring out how to use it you might consider using the Computer Backup feature in Windows Vista. Its not at all complicated to use, does not take up much space on your hd, and you won't have a dual boot (which I find quite annoying).

When your head is a bit more clear and you feel like it you can try making a backup image with your Paragon Drive Backup Personal.

This is my approach but not everyone is the same of course