What are the differences of Data Backup/Recovery softwares?

Hi,

I am just curious to know the differences between some of the
well known Data Backup/Recovery softwares.
(e.g ShadowProtect, True Image, Paragon Drive Backup)

I'm not asking to clarify the best (a vs b) product,
I just want to know the differences..

Perhaps the main difference is the Speed?
Or the compression rate?

Thanks!

 

well i couldnt reccomend acronis because 1. it never created a success full backup on my pc.
2. the images arent backwards compatible with new versions and have to create a new linux based recovery cd every time you update it. linux recovery cd's dont have very good driver support for windows machine. 3.leaves alot behind when uninstalling. 4.has alot of not needed features.

i would reccomend eiether paragon drive backup pro or shadow protect desktop.
i always reccomend drive backup pro due to the windows based recovery cd.
both have windows based recovery cd's and both are ultra reliable.
shadow protect is faster and can do incremental images up to every 15mins.
both do pretty miuch the same job.
also concider image for windows

 

Wikipedia will provide plenty of info Ohmy.

S

 

I agreed!!! Paragon Backup did very well in backup and recovery with my P35 chipset while Acronis's TrueImage has made my drive unbootable after recovery!!!

 

My experience with True Image is nothing but problems. It would create an image and verify it was OK but when it was time to restore ATI said the image was corrupt. I switched to ShadowProtect Desktop and its operation has been flawless.

 

Hey Guys!

Here's some experience with various backup tool. Let's start with Norton 8 and 9.

Very powerfull backup engine and tool great for recovery now let's fast forward to version 10,11,12 etc... At this stage they lost me completely the backup process started to be a pain and I got rid of all of them.

I tried Acronis True image and unlike the posters above me, I've had no problems either creating a backup on DVD and including the full software of for Acronis True image on my 6 DVD backup of my system. Restored time about 35minutes. Now on the other end I've made a backup to a seperate HD with incrementals backup period again no problem there either.

A bit of backgroun on the syste, I run. Intel Dual Core 2 2.6ghz, 2GB of OCZ HighPerformance ram 6400. Hitachi HD SATA II 320gb 7200RPM running windows XP SP3 64bit and let's skip the rest of the information which is useless here.

All in all. I give my thumbs up to Arconis True image, never had any trouble and thank you to the guys for providing me a fully licensed copy of both software for testing.

Cheers,
fluxgfx

 

The last 2 months I thoroughly tested most of the well known image apps on three different systems (an athlon xp 3200 machine, an intell quad core 6600/ p35 machine and a laptop acer duo core 7300). Here is what I found:

-Reliability: The winners in this section are drive snapshot, image for windows, paragon and shadowprotect. (all of them restored all of the 10 images I took on each machine)

-Speed: drive snapshot, shadowprotect and symantec backup exec.

-Compression: paragon (in it's highest settings provides the smaller images).

-Speed/compression: drive snapshot and shadow protect. (in their default settings those two provide the most balanced compression and speed).

-Differential backups: drive snapshot, paragon, shadow protect and image for windows.

-Incremental backups: shadowprotect. (in this section shadow protect is really impressive. It is like speedy gonzales in taking the incrementals and it never failed to restore anyone of them.) [Acronis and symantec failed in restoring the incrementals that I took during heavy disk activity]

-Restore without the need of external source(cd/dvd or usb drive): acronis, paragon and symantec.

-No services or startup entries: drive snapshot and paragon.

-no drivers installed: drive snapshot

-most features included in the product: acronis

-files backup: acronis, paragon and symantec.

-indepentent hardware restore: ? (I have not tested this one but from what I read around both acronis and storagecraft shadowprotect should perform very well in this field).

hope it helps,

Panagiotis

 

excellent answer , the one i wanted

 

pandlouk: Nice post! Appreciate the info.

 

You're welcome.

Panagiotis

 

Your post got me excited. "i always recommend drive backup pro due to the windows based recovery cd." This sounds great but its not windows based.
"Recovery CD. Linux environment." scroll down to the lower left screen shot.
http://www.paragon-software.com/home/db-professional/screenshots.html
Edit: After more digging Pro has several recovery environments on the Recovery CD Linux/DOS/WinPE.
I wonder if its XP or Vista based?

As far as backup and recovery programs go, IMHO non of them will work on all hardware configs. The True Image BartPE plugin works on almost all hardware. Maybe all hardware with the use of driver packs. Mustangs True Image plugin for VistaPE works on most hardware also. Trouble being VistaPE even if made from a Vista DVD source does not contain all the drivers included in Vista. So the only way to know if a given program will work on your hardware is to fully test it on said hardware.

 

Thinking about actively usin Paragon and have HDM 8.5 but would like to upgrade. What is the difference between the imaging part on HDM 2008 and Drive Backup Pro 9. Would like to stay with HDM but looking to see if 2009 version will also come out combininb Partition Manger 9 and Drive Backup Pro 9. Thanks for your input.

Gary

 

I was wondering the same although I usually use the OS install disk or the OS to partition and format.

 

Drive snapshot is the best of them all as far i know , it needs a good scheduler thats it.

Recovery cd for Drive snapshot

software name:Active@ boot disk -->make a usb or cd\dvd boot disk and use drive snapshot(portable would be better)

 

Hi:

Currently I have Paragon Drive backup personal edition version 8.51 and the same version for Paragon Partition Manager 8.51.

Now Paragon is offering for a price a build upgrade for the PDB 8.51. But version 9 is out and I'm trying to figure out if it would be smarter to put the money to the newer versions and get the 1 year support.

This may seem like a no brainer but if the new versions lack some of the functions or are buggy or my existing backup images are now unusable then it isn't quite so easy.

Since you did the tests I wonder what your thoughts and advice might be?

Thanks in advance

 

Hi Escalader,

I'm not sure that I understood correctly what do you mean with build upgrade. Build upgrade from 8.51 to 8.xx or to 9?

If it is for a 8.xx version I wouldn't even bother. I found that 9 is a faster performer and provides better compression than 8.5. Plus it gives you the ability to use file backups (incremental/differential).

If you do not care about file backup, download the 9 express which is free and save your money for the 9.5 or 10 release.
With some tweaks performs almost as good as the paid version (does not have the differential or the file backup). Tips for Drive Backup 9.0 Express

Panagiotis

 

Yes I could have been clearer! Paragon seems to have an update for me from 8.51 to 8.xx AND as you say 9.0 as well. I would like the ability to use file backups and hopefully recovery of files as well.! But no matter what I will not pay for 8.xx in any case. Do you know if the 8.51 backups can be used to restore with 9.0?

Sorry to bug you! Maybe I can help you on my areas of expertise someday, I hope so.

 

I do not know if 9 can restore images from 8.x. but you can download a trial and give it a try.

No problem, glad to help.


Panagiotis

 

Well here is an update. I now have 2 new V9 licenses for Paragon one for the backup and the second for partition manager.

Following their guidelines I took a full backup of my main HD and as well I took a second backup of my user data partition. Timing to do it was about 25 minutes for the drive and about 5 minutes for the partition.

When I went to look for my "old" 8.51 backup archives they do NOT show up in version 9 but I haven't asked this question on their support forum. ( I will when I have more time) but if there is no way to do that then all my off site backup dvd's are now useless.

I have posted the question on their support site, no answer as yet. After reboot I can see the older backup archives but as yet haven't had the courage to test one. If it did work on c drive it would restore the early versions of several peices of software. So I will need to re-restore my current c drive to prove this thing out, scary stuff

Comment?

 

FYI:

Paragon technical support confirms that version 9 can use version 8.5 archives.

Note I haven't tried to do this as it would restore my old DB 8.5 version! Can it then recover a version 9 archive to get version 9 back?

I could test just recovering a 8.5 data partition and then promptly put it back to newest. Is there is no easy 100% safe route to do this stuff?

 

Just perform a restore on a virtual pc. If it works there it will work on the real macine too.

Panagiotis

 

The linux boot disks are a weak spot but you do not need to make a new boot disk after updating the program as long as the boot disk you already have works on your hardware. Also each new version is able to restore images from the last version. AKA 11 can restore 10, 10 9, 9 8, 8 7 etc.
I'm not saying True Image is the best backup program but its not the worst either.

 

I am a very happy Norton Ghost 14 user. It has a time tested engine from their enterprise products and IMO the most user friendly UI. I have used it multiple times to restore my pc.

 

I am certainly no expert on this topic, but I can relate my own experiences. Acronis was a complete failure on my VISTA machine. So after struggling to try to make it work (which is how I found this forum) and seeing how many other unsatisfied customers they had, I went looking for another solution. Man, it is hard to reconstruct a full working system from the ancient OEM system recovery disks or partition !

Since I had now become very cautious about what software I would try, I did a lot of lurking at user forums. The prime criterion for backup software has to be reliability. In comparison to reliability, all other "features" or "benchmarks" are really irrelevant to me. I don't care if an image restoration takes 3 minutes or 3 hours, since I would only resort to restoring an image rarely.

I finally decided to try Paragon Drive Backup 8.5 and it has worked perfectly in every aspect. I recently bought another copy of version 9.0 for another new computer. It has saved my systems so many times now, from failed Microsoft "updates", bad software installation, etc that I have complete confidence in it.

Just yesterday I downloaded and tried out a computer game (free) that was BIIIG and then required me to also download a lot of extensions and drivers to make it work. In the end, I didn't really want to keep the game, so I just restored a pre-game image rather than trying to uninstall everything. It takes about 30 min to restore a 320 GB hard drive. So I just went off for a jog, and when I returned, the familiar VISTA login screen was waiting for me.