Alternative to True Image (nervous nellie)

I just tried Paragon Drive Backup Pro v8.5. It takes about the same time to backup as Acronis and it has the ability to Restore from Windows (it reboots) without using a CD Recovery Drive.

This is great if Windows is working. However, if you need to use the Recovery Disk, the mouse does not work, and it will not restore my images, plus there are no directions on how to use.

Dumped it. Acronis True Image is still the best in my opinion.

 

No, ShadowProtect is the best choice, although I use ATI myself.
But being the best in the software world is a matter of dates, one day another one is the best.

 

I agree. Also it is a matter of how one's system is configured.

Shadow Protect does not support RAID. I have a RAID 0 system drive so it is a no go for me. I will, however, try it out on my laptop.

I use Acronis Workstation 9.1 b3887 w/Universal Restore. I know of no other imaging program with the Universal Restore feature.

Also, since I just upgraded to the latest build, yesterday I did a test Recovery from the Acronis Linux Boot Disk. I restored a 22 Gb System drive in six minutes. I was just amazed at the speed. Much faster than my previous builds.

 

Yes, ShadowProtect does in fact support RAID. In fact, it supports both hardware *and* software RAID, even within the recovery environment.

You can backup/restore any hardware RAID that's supported by Windows itself (extremely broad device coverage) as ShadowProtect's recovery environment is based on Microsoft's own Windows Preinstallation Environment (WinPE).

You can also backup and restore from/to a Microsoft-software-RAID5 dynamic disk volume (or any of the other MS-software-RAID flavors), even one that's spread across hardware RAID LUNs, and you can even do this within the recovery environment.

 

Probably because your in the fortunate group of users that hasn't dealt with corrupted images or such.

I was in that fortunate group too for 6 months, just thinking that other users just didn't know how to use it. When I use a piece of software, I do almost everything possible to break it, so I know what it's limits are. And it seemed very reliable and user-friendly. Then all of a sudden, my images became corrupted. I dumped it quick like a fat, ugly chick after a hangover. Over half of the new support posts here are about ATI on a regular basis. WTF is up with that? It's not so user-friendly when your images get jacked up for no reason.

IFD and Shadowprotect are the best in my opinion.

 

ive had some corropt images as well and hoping the next image i take with acronis is not corropt otherwise i will be forced to buy shadow protect desktop
lodore

 

Does it make a difference having raid=0 or no raid at all (like me) ?

 

Not really.

The only time it makes a difference is if you need to restore your system volume, in which case you will need to boot the recovery environment CD (based on WinPE). The recovery environment already has built-in support for most RAID and SCSI controllers, but in the event that your particular RAID or SCSI HBA driver isn't automatically supported, all you have to do is hit F6 at the start of the recovery environment CD boot process (when prompted), just as you would do at the start of a windows install (similar F6 option there) and feed in the appropriate driver for your hardware.

The currently-shipping version of the recovery environment has some problems with nForce. Unfortunately all true Microsoft WinPE distributions suffer from problems with nForce. Fortunately, we have resolved these issues for nForce (for both nForce storage and network adapter support) and will be releasing an update very soon (our next update to the IT Edition environment is on April 15, and generally we also refresh our Desktop/Server Edition CD environments at the same time that we refresh the IT Edition environment).

If you're machine has an nForce chipset, I'd hold off on purchasing ShadowProtect until mid-April.

 

Does the recovert CD work in Windows 2000?
My recollection is that WinPE requires at least Windows xP to be legit,

 

Well, there are two ways you can use the recovery CD. You can pop it in and run programs off of it from within your normal Windows environment (where you have booted Windows off of your hard disk). In this case, the tools on the Recovery Environment CD will not allow you to do backup, but IIRC you will be able to restore to volumes other than the system volume and volumes in the paging path (volumes which contain pagefile), as well as mount images.

However the more common use case is that you boot the recovery CD itself, in which case you will be able to backup/restore/mount any image to any volume (both basic and dynamic volumes). When you boot the CD, it doesn't matter at all what OS environment is on your machine. You could have Linux on your computer and you would still be able to make and restore backup images. Your computer could have no OS at all (new blank hard disk) and you can restore to it.

 

It,s not WinPE, so totally legit as u are paying for it and even MS is getting the share from ur money!!

 

AFAIK, use of WinPE is not legit without a Win XP license.

 

It,s not that winPE dear!

 

Interesting observation Howard. I've been following this "ShadowProtect Thread" with interest and was going to ask the same thing about having to be a licensed XP/2003 user to make a WinPE or BartPE disk. My stumbling block to trying SP has been that I'm a w2k pro user.

According to Bart's PE Licensing issues:

http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/#licensing

I'm assuming the licensing for WinPE is the same.

So, am I doing something illegal if I use WinPE and how would I build a PE disk without XP?

 

Hey, did u people ever bothered to read my above posts and other posts about SP?

 

your paying for an already made PE disc thou with shadow protect desktop.
with bartpe you use you windows cd to create your own PE cd.
lodore

 

U did a better job to explain.

 

Hi Peter,

I just tested Shadow Protect again.

Shadow Protect does not support RAID unless you insert your OEM drivers into a floppy drive during boot from their Recovery Disk, at least on my system. I have an Nforce 4 board and I am using the Silcone Image 3114 Controller for my raid setup.

In addition, it took over 8.5 minutes to restore my system partition vs. 6 minutes with the Acronis Linux Boot Disk, and the Linux boot disk supports RAID without having to use a floppy. Incidentally, the Acronis BartPe boot disk v3887 took over 12 minutes on the Raid setup. I also tried the incremental backup with Shadow Protect. It took longer than the full backup. The incrementals in Acronis take seconds.

My recollection is that the Acronis BartPe boot disk is faster that the Linux on my laptop. Must be the difference in the system drives. As you know, on BartPe, you can insert your own RAID drivers to eliminate the floppy. You can't do this with Shadow Protect.

ATI also has the Universal Restore function which I really use about 4 or 5 times a year. Shadow Protect does not have this feature yet.

So, after additional testing, at least for my system, Acronis is still the best.

I have now thoroughly tested Paragon Drive Backup 8.5, Ghost 10, ShadowProtect, RollbackRx v8 Backup Snapshot, and Acronis.

I am sticking with Acronis and FDISR Archives until something much better comes up.

 

The problem is not with the nVidia drivers in my case. I am using the Silcone Image controller and not the nVidia controller for my RAID drives. It should be easy for StorageCraft to insert these drivers into their WinPE disk. It is easy with BartPE.

I will check out the next version when it comes out. Do you have any idea when this will be?

 

That's not correct.

StorageCraft is an authorized licensee and redistributor of Microsoft's Windows Preinstallation Environment (WinPE) with rights to redistribute WinPE. We pay Microsoft a royalty for each copy of WinPE that we distribute. The distributions of WinPE that are included with our product are fully legal and fully licensed versions of WinPE. They do not depend on any additional license of Windows.

You're probably mixing concepts about BartPE with WinPE, and on the licensing front they don't mix at all. BartPE is generally built based upon the user's own existing Windows install. Therefore the user must have an existing valid license to Windows to make a BartPE disc. WinPE is not based on the user's installed Windows OS. WinPE is stand-alone. It's already built for you. And the WinPE license is paid for as part of your purchase of ShadowProtect.

ShadowProtect users do not build their WinPE disc. We have built the WinPE disc for our users, and they receive it in the form of a downloadable .ISO file which they burn to CD-R. When you purchase ShadowProtect, the WinPE distro that you receive is fully licensed and legal. You do not need to own any existing licenses to any Windows operating systems in order for the WinPE distro that you receive from StorageCraft to be a legal copy.

 

That's my estimate on the release of the next recovery environment (which has a host of new features and improvements, including vastly improved hardware support as well as StorageCraft's own "Universal Restore" feature, which we call Hardware Independent Restore (HIR)).

But for the release of version 3 of the installable ShadowProtect product, well, we're still working on features. I can't say exactly when it'll be out.