best paid backup and recovery software

sp is faster imo but ifw is for sure no slouch it is not that great of a difference a lot depends on the compression type used

 

You restored an IFW image with IFL.
Is restoring an image with IFW not as fast as with IFL?

 

I have no idea. To do that you need to create a WinPE CD with IFW on it. IFL and IFD come with IFW as a means to do cold imaging or restore images from IFW. A lot of people on here use a custom WinPE CD and might be better able to answer that. For me, IFL has been the fastest solution I have used.

 

I recently tested IFW, IFD and IFL and found IFW to be not only faster than its two siblings but much easier to use. In order to 'cold-boot' IFW I asked Brian K (a Terabyte-savvy user) how to add IFW to my WinPE boot disk and here are the instructions I received from him (which worked perfectly):

I have not tested IFW vs SP because I don't have an SP boot disk, but even if it turns out that SP is somewhat faster than IFW (and I don't know that it is) is it worth triple the cost of IFW?

Aaron

 

If you add your IFW.ini file to the above group, you will now have all your favorite options that have been set as DEFAULT in the Windows-based IFW.

 

so wait you add the ifw files to run ifw from the active@ boot disk?? can you explain...

 

Actually, after setting up IFW on my boot-disc (per Brian's instructions), the first time I used IFW I told it to save my preferences and it automatically created and saved the ifw.ini file onto my boot-disc!

Aaron

 

zfactor, read Brian's instructions which I quoted in post #29 above...

Aaron

 

Clearly you must be using an Active@ Boot PenDrive... the creator don't do dat on CD-Rs

 

Frog, you are right again!

 

Well, after my experience with Macrium's support department, this is not the best solution if you EVER need their help. They tend to be very selective about repyling to issues. Very!! I would seriously reconsider using Reflect if you think you may EVER need after sales support. My experience is that they are pathetic. And, that's being nice.

 

Support is something everyone should consider for a purchase. I admit I don't weigh it too much, but when you need it it's good to have.

 

its a good job i dont use macrium cuz if they ignored my support tickets then i would knock their door down! the developers work a few miles away from me

 

Based on my experience they did a good job hiding a real phone number that a human answers. UK Company records have a phone number that is answered by a modem of some sort. Even the phone number on their WHOIS registration is wrong. I suspect if you went banging on their door no one would answer. Or, maybe that's not even their real address in Manchester.

Chris Bamford @ Macrium answered me once and thanked me for reporting a bug. After that I found what I suspected was another bug and I had a couple questions on automating a VBS. Never heard back even after trying them a few times.

I was about to buy the program, but after the blow off, NEVER!

 

+1

 

Many good options mentioned..
I know the thrust of the thread is "imaging" but remember when u get The Terabyte bundle u get BOOTIT BM...
http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/bootit-bare-metal.htm
one of the very bestest tools ever.

After recent multiple simultaneous HD failures I trust nuffin...


I have got copies of SP and Terabyte, and have updated my HW redundancy/recovery plan

I can assure anyone reading that the $90 for SP might look like a lot but that sigh of relief knowing all that "stuff" ie: hours of time and effort and data: is safe somewhere is worth every cent.

Remember..if you want data security only, and sometimes, that is really what we are talking about, beyond system imaging .... just get any of the very reliable sync tools to an external HD (or two !!) and/or even any of the cloud options.
Regards.

 

After very extensive use and testing of different products, I conclude, at least from my experience, that ShadowProtect is the best - paid or free - image/restore product.

The most disappointing for me, by far, is IFW from Windows, and IFD or BootIt BM (with IFD included in the disk) recovery disks. I have encountered horrible transfer problems over my USB connection to/from my external SATA drive with this latter product, resulting in "Invalid image" and "The image stream is corrupt. Please reboot" error messages. Using latest version, btw. No such issues with SP, Clonezilla, Acronis, Macrium free, Windows7 built-in. This is garbage.

 

Sorry you had a bad experience with it (IFW, etc.)...it's the first time I've ever heard of anyone having issues like that. Did you run it by support? While I would still recommend it, SP is a great choice if the price is no issue...it will work great.

 

That's what makes the issues even more frustrating, is that numerous credible members in this forum such as yourself and BrianK, to name but a few, have had truly positive results with the product. Maybe it doesn't like something about the hardware? The FAQ's came up with the possibility of the USB cable being too long/not high speed capable or memory issues, citing possibility of overclocking issues. My system is overclocked slightly in CPU and DRAM frequencies and RAM voltage increase, but it is most definitely capable of this, and of course these issues don't occur with my external drive using the other products i mentioned. I should not and will not remove overclocking just to try to get it to work.

SP is expensive and the licensing scheme is rather restrictive with number of activations allowed, but it unquestionably has been the most reliable, feature-rich and efficient solution for me.

 

I use SP too sometimes and it's never given me a problem. Like I said, if you found something that works and you like it, use it. There are plenty of SP users on here. I like the boot CD too...very easy to add drivers, etc.

 

Yes, the SP boot CD is excellent, and it's all I really ever use for backing up/restoring images. The reason I've tried other products, including IFW/IFD is because I enjoy this aspect of computer maintenance, seeing it as almost a hobby.

 

I enjoy that myself as well, and have tried a ton of imagers. IFW/IFL, SP, and Drive Snapshot are in my top three.

 

So which of these softwares have the best type of licencing?.For example I purchased shadow protect many years ago ,and on occasion forgot to deactivate when I reinstalled from scratch.This resulted in me having to contact storagecraft ,who in all fairness reset the activation for me.I also have the full version of macrium reflect.Yesterday i found out that the 2 macrium images that i had taken over the last few weeks both contained a windows error of somesort as WMP would not run or open or be fixed.I spent hours googling ,trying this that and the other trying to get WMP to run ,but to no avail.In the end i thought ,time for a fresh reinstall of windows 7.And of course i forgot to deactivate macrium ,with the result that ive run out of activations again.I dont know why as its the same laptop.Anyhow i got so mad that ive just installed the free version.So are there any decent backup softwares without the activation problems that is reliable and can do a full back up (i dont care about incrementals).My main concern is that i dont want software that i have to contact support to reactivate all the time.

 

IFW/IFL/IFD, DS, and O&O don't have these activation limitations...I am sure there are plenty more too that other people will point out.