HDM 12 Suite

The math on the relative sizes of incremental and differentials is correct but the way they are used is not. With an incremental you need to restore the base and all the incrementals with the differential you need to restore the base and the last differential. This means you do not have to keep all of the intermediate differentails. So for the differential and 800MB of changes you only need the base +800MB. However, this eliminates your ability to restore to an intermediate time instead of the time of the last differential.

Basic rule: Incremental - fast to create, slow to restore since you have to go down the chain.

Differential: slow to do but faster to restore.

FWIW, I only do manual full for my C partition. I use a different program for scheduled incrementals on my data files that directly updates the file and folder structure so it is current - not chains of container files.

 

Raza0007,

I use a laptop also. .... I understand what you said, but I am thinking that you must still have to backup your laptop, at a certain interval, to an external backup drive (or external backup service), just in case your 1 internal hard drive fails.
... If so, then how often do you typically backup to another drive, for extra protection ?

Just curious, what made you decide to finally go with Macrium verses Shadowprotect ?

 

Thanks to all who brought light into this.

Now I more confused than ever or well let us say less,
since I now know that I will continue my Ghost 15.1 since it is licenced anyway and as long as there is no Ghost 16 or so I will get all updates, if there are any

Acronis might be a thought but if you go into their forum you see that you can stop thinking about Acronis right now since it may work now but for certain it will not do so without any hassle in the future

I did not know that Macrium does incrementals. Well, I might have a look or wait until Paragon R&B gots incrementals that really work - and more over a GUI and browse container function that is ergonomical. This thread is called HDM 12 and --- have confidence in me --- I thought HDM 12 would have now incremental ability for partition backups?

 

Seekforever,

Interesting, so, does that mean that you keep your data in a separate data partition or does it still reside in the c: system partition ?

 

It is kept in a separate partition. Actually it's kept on a separate PC but a separate partition on the same one will do fine.

This makes disk management a lot easier since I can blow away the C partition at any time without worrying about important data files. I have my own data structure setup in my data partition but there apparently are ways to move the My Documents, My Pictures or whatever they're called now to a different partition. I just use these areas as setup by Windows on the C drive as scratch storage areas where I don't care if the files stored there are lost.

The other advantage of splitting out the data files from C is that it keeps the size of the C partition smaller and thus imaging is faster.

I use SyncBack for the data file backup but there are lots of others such as Karen's Replicator. Just Google something like file backup, data replicator, file synchronization if you are interested. There are often free versions.

HTH

 

True. But as I already mentioned, I need the ability to be able to restore back to at least 7 days. So, I need to keep the differentials or the incrementals. When I used to use Paragon, I had configured it to do a full backup every Sunday and differentials every other day and it was configured to keep one set (full+7 differentials) at a given time and delete the older sets.

What used to happen was that I would have one full backup and its differentials for one week. Next week it would make an other full backup and the differentials associated with it. Third week when it would make the third full backup, it would delete the first whole set, but keep the second set. This used to keep on going. So, you can guess the amount of space needed on my local partition to accommodate two full backups and their associated differentials.

I do the same with Macrium and its incrementals, but since they are incrementals, so the space requirements are modest.

Again true. But experience has taught me that you backup quite often, but restore occasionally. So, you need a strategy that would cause the backups to run quickly, while the occasional restore can take its sweet time. Incrementals are the only way to go in such a strategy.

 

I do not put my important stuff on my laptop. I only keep my everyday stuff on the laptop, so if I do have a hard drive failure, I will just go buy a new hard drive, reinstall windows and start fresh. It will cause a little inconvenience but nothing else.

One of the reasons I use a backup utility is so I can tinker with my windows, test new software and even see what a particular virus or malware does. It is just a hobby of mine, I like to occasionally infect my system with viruses. In such a case, all I have to do then is to simple restore back to a clean state. It takes only 20 minutes to restore my C: partition.

Various reasons, first was of course cost to benefit ratio. Shadowprotect charges you too much for similar benefits that you can get from macrium. Shadowprotect has a very strict license check and activation system that sometimes causes problems even if you are legitimate owners.

However, what finally decided for me was that shadowprotect has four processes running on your system all the time, as it tracks changes made to your system in real time. This is the reason the incrementals are lighting fast, as it already knows all the changes, and all it has to do is to back them up. The problem is that if you do a hard reboot or a forced shut down, it loses its track of changes, so the next incremental takes even longer than the full backup to run and takes a lot of cpu power.

Since, I end up doing a hard reboot 4-5 times a week so this was a problem. Macrium does not have this issue. It has just one process running on your system but even that is optional and can be set to manually launch from services. With the price tag it suits my needs just fine.

It may not suite everybody's requirements, so I always advise others to extensively test the software they plan on buying.

 

I do not know why paragon is not adding the ability to make sector based incrementals. Even if they do not believe in that strategy they should at least give it as an option for the users. It is not included in the HDM 12 suite, so if they do include it, it would be next year in HDM 13.

 

I normally just do complete partition images.

I have only done a couple with HDM12 , but I would say it is double the speed of the previous versions.

I imaged a 20gb partition (15.5gb used ) in 3 minutes.

On this machine, that is unbelievable.

 

And how are the restores? Hopefully it restores as reliably as before.

 

Yes, the restore took almost exactly the same time. Very quick.

I tested the restore from within windows - letting Paragon reboot the machine and do it in "boot time" mode.

 

I did some tests of HDM 12 Suite working from the WinPE boot disk, and found no great differences in "speed" (times) with respect to version 11.

I created an image of the system partition in a external USB disk connected to a USB 2.0 port, and then verified it. The results were:

WinPE with HDM 11 Pro: 12.54 GB image, created in 8:54 min, verified in 6:32 min.

WinPE with HDM 12 Suite: 12.59 GB image (basically the same size, there is one new file), 8:25 min to create it (5.5% less), the same time (6:32 min) to verify it.

I also found that the new WinPE still doesn´t have drivers for USB 3.0. The drivers must be added manually, as before.

 

You may have been throttled by the USB 2 speed.

 

For me, working with an external USB 2.0 disk is the normal way to work, the results obtained reflect the normal use of the program.

The average effective speed (throughput) in the creation of the images was 24.5 MB/s. Using a WinPE with ShadowProtect, the reported USB 2.0 throughput is about 44 MB/s. So it seems that the throttling factor is the Paragon program.

I will test using a USB 3.0 connection later.

 

I am surprised you don't see any speed increase.

The difference is dramatic for me.

 

My results with HDM 12 are quite similar to Robin's when booted into WinPE and backing up to an eSATA drive. The new release seems a bit faster than HDM 11, but nothing like the dramatic improvement seen by SIW2.

I also tried backing up to an internal SATA drive without any significant difference in the total time required for complete system backups. For me speed is not a major concern, but I wonder what could possibly account for the very different performance results.

 

That is curious.

You could try a different test.

Macrium has always claimed to be the fastest.

d/l the free macrium and do as accurate a comparison as you can. Try it's top speed and medium compression (those are the default settings)

Previous generations of Paragon have always been much slower than macrium. ( Speed isn't everything, of course - but it is what we are discussing here ).

I found HDM12 a little faster than macrium - 5-10% quicker, although the compression is a bit less than macrium.

I saw a couple of reviews that came to pretty much the same conclusion.

That is a vast increase on previous Paragon apps.

Do you get the same results?

I am using HDM12 Pro - don't know why that would be any different from the Suite.

 

While I have your attention - do you know how they got the shutdown and restart buttons working in the winbuilder project you use?

I use pecmd for my builds - not clear to me how winbuilder is doing it.

At first I thought it was SPEHook.dll - but it still seems to work without that.

 

I've not actually run any accurate timing comparisons with any other backup software. It was just a subjective reaction to your observation about it being "double the speed of the previous versions." My three OS system drives are all 250 GB SATAs with actual usage ranging from about 20 to 30 GB each. Compared with your 15.5 GB in 3 minutes, I'm seeing more like 10 to 20 minutes for any of those. I do still have an Acronis TI 2012 on my WinPE "rescue disc" and could give you some more exact comparative timings with that if it would really be useful.

Various Winbuilder projects use a number of different reboot/shutdown methods. (They tend to be as idiosyncratic as their authors.) I'll find you the one that is used in the Win7PE project and post a follow-up later today.

__
UPDATE: The Win7PE Winbuilder project uses something called ShutdownPE. You can read all the gory details and download a copy of the script for yourself at http://reboot.pro/10012/ Let me know if you need the executable file that is embedded in that script and I'll extract it for you.

 

Thanks for the link Rich.

That what is puzzling:

I don't have spehook.dll ( shutdownpe hook) I don't have shutdownpe, I don't have pecmd , I don't have rebootrace - none of those in this particular build.

The shutdown and restart buttons work fine .

How?

 

I'm not sure that I understand exactly where you're at with your own PE development project. Are you still working with Microsoft's own recovery PE as its basis, or have you begun to incorporate some Winbuilder project elements?

I'm working on a revision to my own script for including HDM 12 in Winbuilder projects and expect to post an update for that at reboot.pro within the next day or two if that's any possible help. But I want to test thoroughly first.

 

Following your suggestion, I ran w7pese 16022012 version.

Just used winbuilder and the win7 dvd - however, I did not include shutdownpe ( I unticked that option. )

That is the one with the mystery working shutdown and restart options.

 

BTW - I just retested HDM12.


Using HDM12 Pro from within wcpx86.

13.5gb used space on the wcpx86 partition.

Backup:

The preparing to Backup phase was a bit longer - almost exactly 1 min.

Creating the image took 2m22s

Total of 3m22s - that is still about 4gb per min.

Restore:

Again from within wcpx86 - paragon needs to reboot to do that of course.

There is no Paragon entry on the boot menu - just select win8 partition from the boot menu - the little fish appears for a few seconds- then you get the message Paragon is loading.

The restore took 3m44s.

Restarted back in to wcpx86 with no problem .

Perfect backup and restore.

If you are not getting speeds of 4gb/min or better, I don't know why.

 

What is "wcpx86"?

 

wcp is Windows Consumer Preview - the beta of windows 8 , if you like.

Sorry, I assumed everyone on computer forums was trying it out.