What Disk Imaging Software do you primarily use to backup and restore?

I backup one full image every week and take a differential of that every day. I also backup the data drive 2x a week. I have Task Schedule alert a message it is going to backup and to close any heavy programs down. Getting 3 big hard internal drives and a external drive from the outset is really good start to cover most home backup plans.

Thanks for voting.

 

I've used (or evaluated) Acronis TI, Image for DOS/Win, Paragon HDM and ShadowProtect. While they all did the job well enough, I have settled with Drive Snapshot because I found it faster than most and it's portable.

Since I use the blazing-fast Rollback Rx for daily (and even more frequent) snapshots, I use Drive Snapshot (in maintenace mode) on a weekly basis to image my entire C-partition, including all RB snapshots, onto an external drive. This approach works very well for me.

 

With Vista I use ShadowProtect backing up usually on a monthly basis after Microsoft updates. I don't do it more often as the use of DeepFreeze in conjunction of FD-ISR Rescue makes my system fairly secure from data loss.

With XP I backup with Acronis TI 9, every 3 months as I don't use the computer that much as my main machine.

I think the multiple choice possibility in this poll contradicts the main question in the title, as people are listing all the programs they have a license for.

 

Acronis TrueImage

 

I have voted for my new darling in the imaging department: ShadowProtect.
Fast en reliable.

I only make plain vanilla images. Every week I image 2 partitions.

 

We backup our servers and desktops using ShadowProtect. Yeah, I know, you're thinking "Well, duh, of course you use ShadowProtect - it's YOUR product!" The thing is, there's really something to be said about ISVs that "eat their own dogfood," as the saying goes. We're intimately familiar with ShadowProtect, more so than anyone else, and with full awareness of its innards we're willing to entrust it with the safety of all of our business-critical data. I'm convinced that this approach has made it a better product. Sometimes we delay releases (which annoys users) but we do this because we're using, internally, our own latest builds, on our own production equipment, and this means that we find and fix the majority of bugs, rather than waiting for our users to find and report them, and we simply won't let anything go out the door if we know about an issue that needs fixing.

ShadowProtect is really designed for the Enterprise/IT crowd. I'm surprised that we get so many nice comments from the home/end user community. But its strength is fast and efficient incremental imaging of *heavily* loaded servers, with *truly* useful backups. This is a hard feat to pull off, and ShadowProtect does it well. To the Enterprise/IT guys/gals out there (home/end users please forgive me, and ignore this), I strongly suggest you perform a rigorous test such as the one in this post:

https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showpost.php?p=1196381&postcount=96

 

Hi,

it is really interesting topic for me because I stand before the choice software to image backup.
I had tried Shadow Protect and i like this program. It is speed, has good compresion level, and i like GUI.

I read on SP forum that new version should be launch on the market soon, so i still waiting for new version, which will offer backup your data on smaller hdd/partition.

 

Acronis TrueImage 29 36.25%

holy smokes my eyes are deceiving me, no?

In spite of the traditional and marathon "HELP!" posts that always seem the norm in their forums, looks like theres still plenty of believers who stick to Acronis like glue.

If the shoe fits, wear it they say.

 

I'd expect to see larger numbers for Acronis in a poll on Wilders as this is the official stomping grounds for Acronis support. This is a natural gathering place for Acronis users. I suspect the numbers in the poll would change a bit if Wilders also happened to be hosting the official support forums for Ghost, ShadowProtect, Paragon Drive Backup, etc.

I'd expect to see equally skewed stats if I posted such a poll on the official ShadowProtect forum over at http://forum.storagecraft.com/Community/

However, I do find it interesting that ShadowProtect and Paragon are virtually neck-and-neck among this sample of users. That's a more apples-to-apples comparison as neither (to my knowledge) of these products officially host their support at Wilders.

 

LOL
OOI grnxnm are there any other forums where SP gets a pasting roasting investigative work over and comparisons by end-users similar to Wilders ??

 

Yup, the Wilders crowd has provided some very useful and interesting feedback. I'm still waiting for someone to do some truly grueling tests on these products, but the problem with such tests is that they take a *lot* of time and so I can't blame people for not doing them. These are the types of tests that we (StorageCraft) perform internally, and I can tell you first hand that I'm blown away by the results of such tests when performed using some of the major offerings in this sector. Where things really start to fall apart for some products is incremental imaging, and while it may not be that important to the home/end user crowd, incremental imaging (and more specifically, FAST, low-resource-usage, incremental imaging) is basically a must-have feature for the enterprise because businesses have to schedule backups on a frequent basis (like every 15 minutes) but they can't afford to have their servers constantly bogged down with inefficient differential images. The backups have to be so fast and efficient that they go by virtually unnoticed. The only products that I know of that have fast incremental imaging features are StorageCraft's ShadowProtect, Symantec's BESR, and Acronis' True Image. However, not all implementations are created equal, and you'll find some truly horrific results if you actually test out the incremental imaging capabilities of these products using a very legitimate real-world test like the one I linked to above.

Paragon is a very good product, IMHO, but the last time I checked it didn't have any fast incremental imaging capability and so it just isn't a viable enterprise solution. But for home/end users I think it's great and I wouldn't hesitate to recommend it (I might get in trouble for such a statement, but hey, I like to be honest, and I also appreciate good strong solid competition - keeps things from stagnating).

 

Paragon Drive Backup and BING. These two are my favorite and never fail for me.

 

Hello grnxnm,
wow i had no idea you always use the lastest versions of your own product on all your production systems.
im glad you do tons of internal testing instead of using your customers as beta testers.


the only thing that is missing from shadow protect IMO is the ability to tell shadow protect desktop to restore a system partition then it reboots and restores before windows loads reboot again then windows loads.
with shadow protect desktop you always have to the recovery cd.
intergrating the incremental imaging management in to the program would be nice rather than a seprate program.

your right about paragon very good program the only thing it lacks is the speed of shadow protect desktop and incremental imaging.

 

So... the winner is:

1st Acronis True Image - 41 votes
2nd Shadow Protect - 23 votes
3rd Paragon Drive Backup - 21 votes

very similar poll you can find on dslreports forum, but there no Shadow Protect.
(Backup & Imaging Software - 2008 Member Choice Poll)
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r19580526-Poll-Backup-Imaging-Software-2008-Member-Choice-Poll

 

You certaintly won't find a reprimand by us home end users on Paragon, thats for sure. I've used it since Windows 98 days and it's always been 99% reliable without fail or falter. But i see the point of enterprise servers, and that's a major task no doubt to have to deal with since those incrementals are made in short order.

DriveSnapshot on the other hand though is a horse of a different color for me, it's been reliable now standing at a firm 100% foolproof reliabilty on imaging and restoring but mainly because i take them manually because it's so fast and the images can be overwritten to any existing images, and frankly i put more trust in me overwriting as a generic type of incremental then depending on an automated incremental untill i can prove it can run on it's own ansd produce the same results i always get time and again. Perfect image restorations w/ nearly zero effort even though manually initiating it as opposed to unattended.

EASTER

 

The ratio of results is to those who are familar to image backup software and use this forum consistent it come's as no surprise. ShadowProtect showing a stronger following but obviously cannot beat Acronis as this is the support forum and is a very popular software.

Yes the multiple choice was a contradiction but i couldn't edit it so was a clot for making a bubu. I like to think mostly everybody stuck to the 1 choice vote .

 

Markymoo - thanks for an interesting poll! I'm just now trying to decide what software to purchase. From what I've read so far (prior to seeing this poll) I was leaning toward Acronis True Image or StorageCraft ShadowProtect. Still not sure which is 'best' - and 'easiest' for a newbie.
This is a bit off topic - but if someone could direct me to HOW TO - I'd appreciate it. I currently have NO backup system in place. (Duh - after losing all info from 3 computers biting the bullet you'd think that would have been the FIRST thing I did when I bought this laptop 2 years ago!)
I purchased WD Passport Elite - 320 GB - last month. Then realized I don't know what to do with it - or how to do it!
Toshiba Satellite A105 laptop; Intel core duo T2400; 5400; 120 GB SATA HDD; O/S: XP Pro SP 2; wireless; Motorola 3347; HP 2840 All in One (color laser); DSL (Qwest silver); email: q.com, gmail (Outlook 2003.)
So, now that I have Passport, and once I choose software - THEN WHAT??
I want to do automatic daily backups of my entire system. IF I have a crash, will I be able to just connect Passport and that will restore everything??
I've also seen mention of 'cases' for ext. hd's - is that something that's necessary and what function does a case serve? (Or is that for converting an int. hd to ext.?)
Again, I know this is off topic - since poll is asking which s/w is used - but I'mk a newbie and just finding my way around. Definitely would appreciate any feedback!

 

best is drive snapshot , by a great margin , acronis TI- i hate it

Shadow protect is excellent but still slow when compared to Drive Snapshot.

 

On vista 64bit Macrium Reflect free edition works well.
Paragon drive backup express let me down on this one.

 

Drive Backup 8 from BartPE and TI 11 from VistaPE alternately. I do not trust TI enough to use it and nothing else, because of the image corruption problem. I have never had a problem with Drive Backup.

 

The software in this thread refers to backup software that takes a complete snapshot of your entire drive(s). It backs up by saving the drive structure which the data sits on. This is better than a file backup which just backup the data and can restore the system fully. I suggest you take a full backup every week and a differential everyday with the disk imaging prefrebly to a external hard drive and use a file backup such as Second Copy to backup the email again regularly. I would recommmend ShadowProtect Desktop as my opinion that it is the stronger product between the 2 and has a friendly interface for the newbie.

 

My choice is Drive Snapshot-The Maradona of imaging apps.Others don't even comes close to it .

 

Actually, Terabyte's the developer of both Image for Dos and Image for Windows, which combine for 22 votes, so it squeaks into 3rd place. These products use the same .tbi files interchangeably as well. Would be interesting to see how results would differ if it targeted users of the vendors' latest versions (Acronis might drop a bit)

 

Macrium Reflect free 4.2(32bit)

 

Although I have had loads of problems wirh Acronis TrueImage over the years and never got any version to work properly and have seen lots of others have had problems on Internet forums etc,
I cannot say the same for Acronis MigrateEasy which is rock solid and user friendly.
My personal preference is MigrateEasy 6.0