paragon System Backup 2010 vs others

whats the difference between paragon system backup2010 and paragon's drive backup aren't they the same thing?

 

Hi,

System Backup uses a fit and forget approach. It searches automatically for drives to backup and a location to save the backup image.

The user selects from a short list - how often to backup, and how many backups to keep.

System backup is for making drive/partition images - not for separate file/folder backup.

From then on - System Backup looks after it.

Drive Backup offers a much greater range of features in terms of scheduling - what to include/ exclude, separate file and folder backup, and so on.

Drive Backup offers much more - but the user has more to specify , of course and can set different schedules for different purpose.

It also includes additional tools, for example for partitioning.

You can check the list of features on the Paragon site for more details.

Hope it helps.

 

i just want to image and compress the image of my data on a dvd or ext hdd so for those purposes doesnt it matter which one i use?

 

I haven't seen the latest system Backup 2010

In the beta version there was a folder called Advanced in the start menu. That allowed a bit more manual control - you could specify max compression and image splitting.

You can definitely do that with the Drive Backup . You can probably also do it with the Free Drive Backup & Recovery 10 , here:

http://www.paragon-software.com/home/db-express/

 

what about compression. I can't find any information of the compression ratio. Say i wanted to compress 500gb of data how much will the compressed data be in gbs after. so i know how much dvd's i will need.

Also will compression downgrade the quality of my videos, pictures and music

 

It depends on the original files.

If your image contains a lot of files such as jpg's, they won't compress a lot more. Some files will reduce dramatically in size.

That's why they can't give figures on the exact amount.

Usually selecting "normal" compression will result in an image 50 -60% of the original used space.

You can exclude o/s auxilliary files ( pagefile and hibernation file ) -and clear old restore points, as well as having ageneral clean up before imaging. That can reduce the original Used space quite a bit.

E.G. I recently imaged a small o/s partition that had 14 and a bit gb used space. Excluding o/s auxilliary files took it down to 9.4gb - normal compression of the image taken of that - resulted in 5.22gb.

Choosing a high level of compression will mean it takes longer - but the image will be smaller still.

500gb of Used space - would probably be 250-300gb after normal compression.

It shouldn't have any effect on the quality of the data.

It will take a while - 1gb a minute roughly to back up. It will take a lot of dvd's. Better use an external HD.

 

Here comes Howard's commandment number 27.