Recovery Software That Allows...

Is there any recovery software out there that will allow you to compare backups side by side by file, folder, etc.?

Reason I ask is because I recently had to restore using Paragon and in the process I lost 3Gbs of HD space that I cant find anywhere. And to top it off they dont offer a way to compare archives to see where the space went. I have to literally sift through 30+Gbs of backup data between two archives.

 

Hi whitedragon551,

Drive Snapshot (www.drivesnapshot.de) lets you mount several images as virtual drives which act exactly as normal drives in the windows explorer.
You can then use e.g. a folder comparison software.

In fact, you can even backup a mounted image again,
enabling you to change its content and then save the changes (with different image name).

Greetings,
D.

 

Anyone know if Macrium or ShadowProtect do this?

 

For Macrium see http://www.macrium.com/KB/KnowledgebaseArticle50061.aspx.

 

Shadow Protect will a llow you to mount an Archive.

 

I can do that from within Paragon. Im looking for something that will take 2 separate backups, compare them, and give me the differences between the two. Almost everything I have seen allows mounting and browsing of an archive, but cant compare two archives unless you do it by hand.

Im rather PO'd that I have lost 3Gbs of space for no reason what so ever.

 

You could mount both backups and compare them with FreeFileSync.

 

Macrium can mount to backups at once?

 

Yes I just did it.

 

Paragon will allow me to extract files and folders. I guess Ill just extract 30+ Gbs from both archives and then compare the folders. It will take almost all night, but atleast then Ill save myself the hassle from switching backup programs.

 

I'm not a Paragon user myself, but their site says that all versions of their Backup softwares let you mount the backup images, so there should be no need to extract anything.

I use Beyond Compare to compare files and folders (or mounted drives in this type of case). It's not free, but maybe there's a trial period. It will display the two drive contents next to each other and highlight the differences. You can press the 'not equal' sign to display only the differences. Some of these differences are in time stamps only, so you need to 'compare contents' (either by CRC or Binary). It takes a few minutes so be patient.

 

Ill give that a try. FreeFileSync has over 10,000 files that are different and I cant tell which ones I actually need to look at.

 

If i remember correctly, Comodo Time Machine also lets you mount images to see the files in them, and you can recover them TOO!!!

 

Does FreeFileSync allow you to compare? If not mount the image that you think has the 3gb's on it and compare it to your existing setup or the one that has the missing 3gb's.
http://www.scootersoftware.com/

 

You could also use disk space analysis software, such as those mentioned at http://www.techsupportalert.com/best-free-disk-space-analyzer.htm.