drive imaging programs list

As there are so much drive imaging programs in the market,
can everyone let us know which one they use and why?and the drawbacks of that program(if there are any like uninstall problem etc).
with bootable media or without,doesnt matter.
freeware or shareware doesnt matter.

 

norton ghost
Pros:
easy to use
Reliable
vistape recovery cd.
fast imcremental images.
cons:
installs symantec live update.

paragon drive snapshot
Pros:
easy to use
Reliable
three different types of recovery cd,
bartpe
vistape
linux
first class support if need any questions answered.
Cons:
slower than others at making images.

acronis true image:
Pros:
easy to use
incremental image support.
Cons:
can be unreliable at making images your milage may vary.
not a clean uninstall aka sometimes leaves drivers and services behind.

Drive snapshot
Pros:
mostly easy to use.
no need to install
very reliable
Cons:
need to create your own recovery cd best way is to use this link use reccomended settings. and then point to drivesnapshot.exe and do the restore from there.

shadow protect desktop
Pros:
fastest imaging by far
easy to use
reliable.
vistape recovery cd.
has a few nice extra tools on recovery cd.
Cons:
cant really think of any cons.

i cannot reccomend acronis true image but i can reccomend the others.

those are the main ones.

 

The main problem as far as I'm concerned that there is now way of knowing whether or not any of the available imaging programs will suit without trying them.

Lodore is unable to recommend Acronis but is able to recommend Paragon. I have never had any problem with any version of Acronis but couldn't get Paragon to restore properly. Others rave about Image for dos and image for windows. For me it is so slow as to be unusable.


If I had to recommend only one it would probably be Shadow Protect. For small
images it is no better(faster), for me, than Acronis 10. Acronis 11 does seem to have more than its fair share of complaints so Shadow Protect might be safer. The only disadvantage is that it costs more.

 

I have been testing Paragon Drive Backup Personal 8.51 under windows Vista Home Premium; AMD Athlon 64X2 5400+, 2.8 GHz dual core; ASUS A8M2N-LA motherboard.

I have created, and verified full disk images under Vista, then deliberately deleted some info on the imaged disk and restored the image using the bootable rescue CD. All works exactly as advertized.

I also tested Paragon's Total Defrag: Completely defragged system hard drive; then defragged the Master File Table, and then shrank the Master File Table. All worked exactly as advertised.

Both tests performed on a Samsung 250 GB SATA drive, with image stored on and restored from a Western Digital Mybook 250 GB external USB drive.

All reboot directly to Vista with no repair and all installed programs contuinue to run normally. Both Paragon programs seen to function completely transparently.

 

The apps I've used for image backup/recovery are the IFW/IFD combo by Terabyte and Acronis TI10 - primarily for OS partition backup recovery.

Currently using Acronis TI10, which has been very reliable and features a superior GUI.

Never a failed image recovery for either product.

 

@sach... undoubtedly, this will only result in your getting the favorite of each responder. while lodor's list is a good attempt, I do want to make one point about the all important recovery (boot) disks. some (notably recent versions of Ghost) do not permit creating an image from the recovery disk, only recovering an image. imho that's a major shortcoming and those products should avoided because there are times when backing up from outside of Windows is necessary!

fwiw, my favorite is Drive Snapshot as the executable can be run from just about anywhere and it is extremely reliable.

 

MSFN has a list of Imaging programs here.

Ive only tried True Image and Paragon. Both work for me and I can recommend either.

 

Cons:

- Can,t restore image on smaller partition
- can,t do reboot n restore with out CD like ATI

 

ok, thank you for all the replies.
All i want to know right now is which one can image the system drive and make bootable cd/dvd easily? i know acronis can do that but it has many problems with my system, im looking for a program which can backup and when i restore there will be no trace of that program or it will be easy to uninstall that program.
as far as ATI concerned it makes many services running and many times it didnt uninstalled fully(there were too many registry entry left.)however it never failed to restore.
all im looking for is a clean easy system drive imaging program.

 

ShadowProtect has a bootable disc as does Paragon.

 

shedhlp.exe
TimounterMonitor.exe
RueImageMonitor.exe

can all be set to manual. No need for any services running if you just want to make and restore full images. even so it is debatable whether you will notice any speed difference.

 

last time when i tested ati 11 it launched 5 services everytime. so can you please suggest which ones to disable so that i can just run it manually to backup, and any suggestion how to remove context menu items and uninstall

 

ShadowProtect is all the rage right now and rightfully so "BUT", Paragon is PROVEN itself very reliable for me for years "BUT", with that confidence safely at disposal when needed at any time, DriveSnapshot is a Brilliant small back up app that is not failed me once!

I use it to image and more importantly, restore across partitions or drives in a dual boot set up, and it cannot fail unless some other app might clash like a security program or ISR, for me it's failsafe each and every time.

My limitation lies in the DOS side of imaging/restoring externally out of windows, and one day i'll get that all down under my belt too.

A nice DOS front end for DS would be of great help for such practice if one ever becomes available to us. In the meantime some members here are quite sharp at already fashioning neccessary code to make DS simple to operate in DOS from a floppy/CD.

 

Recently I purchased some external hard drives from Apricorn and they included
their imaging software, EZ Gig II. Has anyone had experience with this one? I also have True Image 10 and would appreciate a comparison between the two if possible.

Thanks,

Paul

 

EASTER,

Have you seen these posts? Post #47 onwards.

https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=200199&page=2#47

Markymoo is making restores from DOS very easy. And his method improves with every post.

 

Drive Snapshot would seem to fit the bill here - you don't have to install anything, just run the snapshot.exe file with administrator access. It creates no services, just loads a driver for the duration of the backup (and removes it afterwards).

The downside is that it is pricier than most of the others.

 

Yes indeed.

....and those guides from experience & positive results are of great help with DS.

I just seem to have a hard time getting my brain around all of those ideal configs long enough to fashion some recovery discs for the time being, hence my mention of a nice DOS for DS front end.

 

It looks ATI, just rebranded. Not sure which version?