Paragon Exactimage 7.0 SE, questions

OK installed Paragon Exactimage 7.0 SE. And the companion peip7_recovery.exe, which brings one through the process of creating a bootable Paragon Recovery CD. And I did make a bootable Paragon Recovery CD.

All I'm wanting out of Paragon Exactimage 7.0 SE is to create multispan bootable DVDs. Which will function as full backup in the event of HDD failure & or OS corruption. So as to be able to load an exact copy of my previous failed HDD to a new/different HDD in the same computer. Will Paragon Exactimage 7.0 SE accomplish this?

And do I do I need to keep Paragon Exactimage 7.0 SE installed to accomplish the above? Or will the bootable Paragon Recovery CD be enough?

I have 2 optical drives. One a DVD drive & the other a DVD-RW drive.

Thanks very much.


Picked this up from the link here. Thanks.
Paragon Drive Copy 8.0 & Exactimage 7.0 free until Nov1
https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=150505

 

Update: So far so good. I booted from Paragon Recovery CD. Made an image at normal settings. ~18.2GB took about 1 hr & spanned over 4 DVDs. At best compression would've been 3 DVDs.

Later today or tomorrow I'll restore this image to another HDD.

I'll post the results.

 

A couple of questions...

Does ExactImage allow you to verify the image? If so, did you verify yours?

Also, am I understanding correctly that you tested the Recovery CD to make sure you could boot from it but the actual image was made while running under Windows?

 

Sorry I usually don't read the manuals till I get in trouble. So my answers.
I don't know.
No. The Recovery CD afaik is the complete program. It doesn't use the windows enviroment. It boots into a linux enviroment with a pretty easy to follow GUI & mouse support. I know (from the site) that the program itself can be uninstalled & one can just use it from the Recovery CD. And I'm thinking that the program itself isn't neccesary to create a Recovery CD. But to get the RecoveryCD.exe download Paragon ExactImage must be registered with the Paragon site.

 

Yes.
I did an image this weekend and that is an option box that is unchecked by default.So,you have to check the box to enable it.

 

I think it is DOS.

 

I poted it in other thread but I will post it here again as it seems more suitable.
I did a restore on two laptops just for test and on both I saw that after restore there is something different with the boot screen, the animated (three-dots) scrolling bar that apperas during boot up now scrolls just about 3 times while it always used to scroll more than 5-6 times before. Also some images I was not able to explore( it said unsupported image), another image I was not able to restore as well. More weired is that, on one restore, the restored image was missing the Exact Image installation itself!!!
Seems a bit buggy to me.

 

OK. My results. I'm excited*. It worked. Process time was 1hr to create the image & another hr to transfer/restore it. I took the image from my 40GB HDD in the form of 4 DVDs. And restored it to my 80GB HDD. Perfect. Only thing is it restored exactly so I had 40GB of unallocated space on my 80GB HDD. I then booted to Acronis Disk Director Suite & recovered the unallocated 40GB. Now I need to figure out how to restore an image proportionally not exactly.

Does anybody know how to restore an image with ExactImage proportionally?


*Because this is the first time for me I've ever been able to restore an image (OS & data) using media other than HDD to HDD. I mean I've tried a lot of apps. They didn't work & took many hours which ended in failure. And I have at least an average understanding of most software. Paragon ExactImage solved this. Irritated me to no end. I'd read about others success with ATI & other apps. And I couldn't make them work. So I'm giving 5 thumbs up to Paragon ExactImage 7.0 SE. And it was free! And I got it from Wilders.

 

Reguarding your assertion that ExactImage uses a DOS mode. Just used the Recovery CD. And it boots into a linux enviroment. It even states this in the GUI. Very friendly GUI btw.

But again this is using the Recovery CD. It probably differs substantially from ExactImage inside the Windows enviroment. If thats what you are referencing.

Anyways I'm just damn tickled I got an imaging program to work.

 

Congrats. If it works, KEEP IT. Are you accidently a FDISR or RollbackRx or EazFix user ?

 

Nope none of those. But I did try the 1st 2. Not for me. They get in the way. And they don't solve the problem as I see it. I don't see the problem as OS corruption/failure or infestation. I can use an image for that. And guess what an image & or a cloned HDD solves the problem as I see it. Ime the problem is HDD FAILURE!!! Nothing less is a problem. Maybe a pain. But a plan for outright failure of a HDD. Thats the way I see it. Those other programs seem useless to me.

 

You are right. All the other programs are LUXURY. I said that in several posts.

 

Glad it worked well for you!

Your experiment motivated me to finally look at EI too. I agree that it has a nice GUI. And as you discovered, the disk that one can create is for restores only. Images are only created while booted up in Windows. But after looking things over, I have decided to stay where I'm at. (Which will go unmentioned... not out to hijack this thread with another brand.)

Nevertheless, if the situation calls for it, I will certainly mention this free promotion. Everyone should consider a program like this.

 

"Images are only created while booted up in Windows."
Untrue. Using the Recovery CD is in a linux enviroment.

 

Hmmm... When I booted the Restore CD, all I saw was a restore option. Where was the ability to create a new image

 

Me too.

@ zapjb

How u prepare the recovery CD? Can u post a screenshot of the option from where u created it. Also u created it in default mode or advanced mode? YThanks.

 

Afaik you have register your products at Paragons site.

Why register? This gives the available updates/upgrades. But more importantly it lets you download the Paragon Recovery CD. Which is an interesting program. The Recovery CD is the complete Exact Image program. It has a exe extension. It doesn't install. It leads you through the steps to create a Recovery CD. I think it might be system specific. Otherwise it'd be just an iso. With the Recovery CD Exact Image does not need to be installed on your computer.

 

Thanks zapjb for the info on ISO download, totally missed that. But isn't the download the same as you get when you do the "recovery media builder" wizard?

 

Heck I don't know for sure. But I wouldn't think so. Does the info about "recovery media builder" wizard say that it's the complete Exact Image program? And Exact Image does not need to be installed on your computer as a result?

Because the info about the Recovery CD does say the above.

 

Thanks for the info.
So how can I register mine?

 

Go to Paragons site.

 

Thanks zapjb,
I did not know about the Recovery CD being available at the "My Account" area of Paragons web site. I thought you could only recover images with this software but with this Recovery CD, I can also backup images. Thanks again.

 

Paragon Account login:

http://kb.paragon-software.com/ess

E-mail and password can be found in the e-mail containing the serial number.

Extract the ISO file paragon_ei_esd_en.iso from within peip7_recovery.exe using WinRAR.

 

Chubb is very correct, I've done it myself the same way he described.

 

japjb (and all): I apologize for the misunderstanding. I never considered checking for an update/upgrade. And after doing so, I now have a bootable, complete version that I know I will like much better.

BTW... You don't need to take the extra ISO extraction step with WinRAR or 7-Zip if you don't want to. When you run peip7_recovery.exe directly, it gives you the option to directly burn the ISO file to a CD/DVD or extract the ISO to your hard drive.