Acronis TI or ShadowProtect

I am checking both programs and also reading the threads in this chapter and in the one related to TI, before opting for one of them.
Having a look at the TI forum threads It seems that there is many reported problems using this program, but on the other hand I have not seen a forum for ShadowProtect reported problems, except here. SP has the HIR feature, which may be useful
when upgrading the computer (components prices are getting down every couple of months).

Please your advice based on working experience with both programs.

Thanks

 

Samy I have used Acronis since version 6 and never had any problems. I only used Acronis to make and restore full images of C: Windows Xp and programs and to make images of D: data.

Today though I use Shadow Protect simply because it is that bit faster. I know that you can download a run a 2 week ? trial of SP desktop so I would start there and see if it works with your hardware. Nothing that anyone writes about how either program did or did not work is really of much use to you. All programs are hardware dependant and if you have the wrong mouse, or the wrong drive....... you will have a problem. Give them both a trial and go with the one that works best for you.

 

SP every time. I own both but never use TI after many problems. SP just works. SP has its own forum on the official website which may be worth checking out. Test them both if you're not sure but be warned - they won't play nice together and TI is a pain to get rid of totally.

 

Good point. The solution here might be to install SP and make an image. Then install Acronis and if you decide on SP you can restore to the pre-Acronis Image.

 

Norton Ghost. No one ever mentions it and based on my experience its better than both SP and ATI.

 

In what way better ? I have no loyalty to any program and will switch if it is better ? what would be the advantage ?

Edit : Have downloaded the trial of Ghost 14 and it is not for me.
(1) Had to install Net Framework 2 88 mg of unnecessary program
(2) Norton Ghost seems a bitbig at 139 mg
(3) It worked but took 2 min 23 to do what Shadow Protect does in 1 min 49 - I know the figs are small but taking 31% longer is hardly a good thing.
(4) I'm sure it has lots of additional "benefits" but basic fast reliable imaging is what I look for.

 

file backup in addition to imaging and just like windows servers if you right click a folder you have previous versions of that folder you can explore and restore the files.
very easy to setup and use.
thats one of the advantages.
im sure there are others.

 

Why dont you try DriveClone Pro 5?

I have licence for Ghost and TI and im using Drive Clone.

 

I still use Acronis TI 9 with my XP computer, and ShadowProtect with Vista. There is a big difference in speed, SP backs up 40 GB in 18 minutes, ATI takes almost 40 minutes to do 20 GB (both systems using the recovery CD to backup outside Windows).

As far as Norton Ghost goes, they use the same technology from ShadowProtect, hence the advantages are probably what the program might offer extra from the routine operations. I have Ghost 9, and it has never worked properly on my XP system, I made a mistake then as I bought the program in a shop, and therefore didn't give it a test run.

I'd say that apart from the price, ShadowProtect is faster and more reliable than Acronis.

 

Many thanks to you all for your time and for this very instructive post.
An experience PC technician who is providing full computer support to our offices also recommended me SP for being (in his opinion) more reliable and far more faster than the new Acronis versions (after the V9 which he liked very much).
Of course the HIR feature become very valuable 'when needed'.

I reviewed the technical guide of DriveClone Pro and it seems to be a very interesting program with all the possibilities of the last Acronis program (except the Differential backup) and includes the Universal Restore.
I couldn't find an open forum to 'evaluate' the reported problems.

 

While it's true that Symantec Ghost/LiveState/V2i/DriveImage/etc use StorageCraft's snapshot driver to capture images of live/running systems, their version lacks all of the bug fixes, enhancements, and optimizations that we've made to this driver over the last 4.5 years. In other words, in my opinion the snapshot driver that we (StorageCraft) ship in our product (ShadowProtect) is a significantly better version than the one which Symantec ships in their product.

In my mind, it boils down to the question of who you want to get your technology from. The guys who actually invented the core technology (and actively maintain it), that group being StorageCraft, or an alternative (Symantec) which ships an outdated version of that driver, which lacks all of the updates made by StorageCraft during the past five years.

That being said, Symantec's products are decent, and I'm glad of it. It's good to have strong competition in the market - keeps us on our toes and provides the best value to the consumer. It's monopolies (and hence lack of competition) that must be avoided. If you're happy with Ghost, and it passes your rigorous tests, then by all means stick with Ghost. The initial answer on this thread is great advice - find the solution that works for you and use that solution.

True Image is also a decent solution. I don't recommend True Image if incremental backups are an important feature for your needs. For base images, it's generally fine.

ShadowProtect's only weakness, really, is its (in version 3.2) inability to restore an image to a volume which is smaller than the source volume. However, I recently added volume shrink functionality (to address this issue) which will release shortly in 3.3. We had a bit of feature creep occur right before we were going to ship 3.3 - we realized there was some stuff we should add to smoothly pave the way for releases that follow 3.3, and so that bumped our schedule by a few weeks, but it's nearly done now (I expect code complete by the end of the day tomorrow) and so I expect that we will release 3.3 for English/French/Japanese sometime next week (an earlier 3.3 build has already been released for German).

Note: We provide minor version updates (such as from 3.0 to any newer 3.x version) free of cost.

 

Acronis TI 11. Running easily, fastly, no problems. Don't know about Shadow Protect, but it's compression rate is weak.

 

Not sure what you mean by "compression rate is weak". Using both Acronis and SP I get very similar image size results with SP being faster for images over 3 to 4 gb

 

only two things put me off shadow protect desktop.
1. the cost.
2.matainance of incremental images.
if i could of got it cheaper i would of spent more time working out the maintanance of incremental images. can you please intergrate the image manager in later versions and make it easier to setup?

 

I agree that the cost is a little off-putting for me too.

I wish it was less costly OR offer installation on two pc's.

Most people I know have a desktop and a laptop..... so how about offering the ability for two installation licenses ?

Maybe even offer a "special" discount for all of us Wilder's Forum members....

Tim

 

It is great idea

 

Why all the hassle to install SP,imaging is all done from the Recovery CD,i image my C:/ partitions once in 2 weeks time.
Should add that i use also FDISR with freqently updated archives so recovery time is quite small to get my systems back to the current layout.

 

For me there are other reasons. The images and the recovery media cannot be on the same disc, and you are SOL without both. The recovery time is insane; it took me an hour and a half to restore an active image. That was more than enough tume to restore via IFW and then do a windows repair installation (when restoring to new hardware).

 

Hey pete,
thanks. i may get SP after i get a job lol.

 

Heres the link to shadowprotects forum. It's good to look there and see what problems are present on any program.
http://forum.storagecraft.com/Community/forums/8.aspx


I use true image version 10 and also tried the shadow protect demo. Both are very similar in appearance and have about the same speed to backup and restore. I didn't find anything worthwhile in shadowprotect to get me to switch.

No imagining program is perfect, as long as you know what problems you will encounter and how to fix them you should have good success. I also use easyimage (cost $20.00) and thats a barebones software that has been successful for me.

below are the utilitys you need to be succesful everytime.
With vista you need to have a "vista installation dvd" to perform a repair of the boot loader.
with xp you need to have a bartpe to edit registry/boot.ini and a "boot corrector" to change drive letters.

 

paragon corrects the vista bootloader and older windows bootloaders. the paid versions have a boot corrector as a separate tool on the recovery cd.
im sure shadow protect would sort out the bootloader.

 

For one thing if you like to restore your windows with SP,it has to be done from the recovery environment,Demo version is cripled in so far it has no option to make a recovery CD.To compare a full fledged ATI with the demo version of SP is not fair.IMO and personal experience backup/restore a system with SP is way faster(2x) then if done with ATI,also far more reliable(visit the Acronis forums and see for yourself the misery haunting their users)