Casper v8

Hi,

I'd love to get some feedback from Casper v8 users - how is this product compared to IFW, Acronis etc? Does it support UEFI Secure boot? Is is reliable?

Any feedback would be greatly appreciated.

 

I don't knew this soft, I found this info:
http://www.fssdev.com/products/casper/updates/default.aspx

 

Hi, I've been using Casper 7 for a long time and used the earlier versions when it first was released. Casper is a drive cloner (not imager) that makes a copy (an accessible bootable copy) of your hardrive (files, folders, everything). It can clone your drive whilst you are still using Windows. If you want a boot disk to run your clone operation from cd it's a separate extra small cost. Casper has a "SmartStart" which allows you to just copy changes that have occured since last clone which saves time. You can do this after your first full clone operation.
So you can do a full clone or "SmartStart". I have two drives in PC of exactly the same size and clone one to the other...and I have a usb drive which I also clone to but keep outside the pc. I've never had to use the CD...it's optional. With very old pcs and drives you would maybe have to change jumpers to use your clone etc but with sata etc you can boot from any drive. So if one fouled up....just reboot to to the other and clone the first from that if your drive isn't damaged. You can also clone to a smaller drive as long as it has space for the clone.
I find it reliable. It's similar to xxclone
I used to use Acronis Migrate Easy 6 and 7 which were extremely reliable compared to Trueimage etc but I'm happy now with Casper. I use casper happily alongside Shadow Defender and Sandboxie. Just don't run Casper to clone whilst in Shadow Mode.
If you wanted to image as well as clone you could probably run Image for Windows or Drive Snapshot to your cloned drive.
I've not tried it though, so not entirely sure.
I haven't tried Casper version 8 but (from what I read) it's ready for modern drives.

 

sdmod,

One thing that concerns me about these cloning apps is you only have one backup. For example, say your OS becomes infected with malware and you don't become aware or the damage for a few days. By this stage your clone is infected too. How can you recover to a clean OS? With images you can restore an image taken months ago (or yesterday), if you like.

 

Casper v8 now allows imaging of a point in time but I believe it's only of the FULL variety, basically a baseline each time you use it... no INCREMENTAL or DIFFERENTIAL options.

 

Many thanks all for your feed back. I only intend to do full imaging of a drive instead of cloning. I'll still give it a shot in the near future.

 

I have a routine when downloading anything to my pc...I'll be in Shadow Defender shadow mode (my browsers are sandboxed in Sandboxie) and every download will be sandboxed with Sandboxie too. I use Avast pro (running) and Malwarebytes (on demand) to check any files in the Sandbox before 'quick recovery' in Sandboxie. Then I can run the program in Shadow Defender shadow mode to see if I like it or check if it might be glitchy. If it is clean and I like it. I can right click the install file in Windows Explorer and 'commit by Shadow Defender to save for a fresh installation after I've rebooted into non Shadow Mode. So it's a way of filtering before I make my clones...also I don't clone too often but I clone at regular intervals. I clone to my second drive and to an external drive. There is no reason why I couldn't clone at an early stage when I first install Windows and keep a copy externally if was absolutely sure my system was clean. I think that clean routines and habits are necessary when online.
As I mentioned earlier I think that I could image to external and save with DriveSnapshot or Image for Windows too if I wanted. I always have a few drives lying about with clones on that I believe are safe, just in case.
I do like the idea of rollback and multiple snapshot type programs but they've always eventually mangled my system. I think that CHKDSK is your worst enemy with these types of programs if anything goes wrong. I always turn CHKDSK off. When CHKDSK jumps in automatically, it's re-arranging can mangle and leave you with no way out. I find it more trouble than it's worth. Having said that there have been a couple of times in my computing 'career' when it has been useful, but more often than not it's just been a nuisance and at times a danger.

 

Oliverjia, if imaging is your only interest, there are many other tried and true apps to perform that, most including both INCREMENTAL and DIFFERENTIAL options to keep the workload to a minimum.

Casper's forte is the SMART CLONING capability which it does not do with its imaging, only with its cloning operation. But with its new FULL imaging capability, it can at least backup your system well and surely recover from the incidents Brian mentions above. If your MAIN and CLONE both get infected, a clean image restore followed by a SMART CLONE operation will return everything to normal. But, as I said, the cloning is what it's really good at... if you feel you need that type of instant recovery (BOOT/SWAP the clone).

 

Dear Froggie,
Many thanks for the detailed and accurate assessment. It makes a lot of sense to me. I also checked out Casper's website a few days ago and what you said is exactly what they described in their site regarding the strength of this product. I might try its cloning function later on since it's really what it is supposed to be good at.

Best Regards,
oliverjia

 

i was honestly not very impressed by casper. after seeing your post i decided to try the new version out. its still ehh. as said if you want to swap drives or for some reason always make a full backup every time its not bad but there are FAR better programs out there to do the same job and a lot more which makes me not really see a need for it honestly. it did do a full backup and restore it well enough without much issue except the wanting to run chkdsk after the next boot up which is what some other's do also like active@ disk image and easeus many times. after testing all these i always end up back with ifw in the end. it works and works EVERY time its even what i personally use to make a backup of a clients system before starting over when they want me to do so. and for me to say that about any software mean i like it THAT much.