Can Prgn. HD Mgr. '09 handle 3 TB xtrl drvs?

Should Paragon HD Manager Suite 2009 be able to communicate 3 terabyte external NTFS drives? XP recognizes the HD but Paragon doesn't. The error message is "I/O error on hard disk drive (#) has occurred. What would you like to do?". The options are "retry the operation" & "ignore the error" but when I click either one, the screen comes up again with the same 2 options.

 

I have seen explicit references to "2TB+" disks support only in the latest 2011 releases.

 

I don't know for certain but I'd be surprised if it did. Why not try the trial?

 

Robin,

Thanks for telling me about that.

 

I've held off on upgrading because I've successfully used the 2009 version of HD Manager to restore my C drive several times & I didn't know whether the subsequent versions would be as reliable or whether they'd introduce unnecessary bells & whistles while possibly becoming less reliable. If you know anything about the 2010 version of either Paragon HDM or Backup & Recovery, what's your view of its reliability? (I know that the 2011 version of HDM is available now but I prefer to wait till programs have been out for a while before trying them so I can read some reviews before deciding whether or not they're worth trying.)

 

Have you tried partitioning the 3 TB drive into a couple of partitions using Windows Disk Management?

I'm a new Paragon user but have used other products for some time. I have the free Paragon backup and recovery 2011 on 3 PCs and a paid version of 2010 on another PC. I do basic full imaging (no incrementals or differentials) manually, not scheduled and the programs have worked perfectly. My friend downloaded the free 2011 version and it worked on his machines just fine but one machine did get a VSS error of some kind but he just switched it over to the Paragon live-imaging method and it is fine.

I agree with you that if it isn't broke there is no need to jump to the presumably latest and greatest but it does seem you have a problem.

Relying on other user's experience with imaging programs isn't quite as reliable as in the case of say a word-processing program. This is because the live imaging gets down into the guts of the disk sub-system but probably moreso because the recovery environment is often Linux. Linux in spite of its positive points tends not to have the same level of driver support that Windows has and ufortunately users only find this out when they attempt a recovery after a disk failure and are stuck. Rule 1 for any backup program is to ensure you can recover before you really need to recover! The paid version of backup and recovery also allows you to make a WinPE recovery disk and since this is Windows it gets around Linux hardware driver/compatibility issues for the most part. Paragon also allows "driver injection" if the stock drivers aren't suitable.

So what does all this really mean? It means the only way you know if it will work is to try it on your system because that's where it has to work. Just because it is great on my systems doesn't mean it will work on yours. It is real handy to have a spare HD to test it in case it doesn't work but you are pretty safe since you know you can use the 2009 version to restore in case of failure.

I will add that companies producing imaging programs tend to have the basic imaging technology well tested and locked down. It is the features that tend to be problematic.

 

Images created with HDM 2011 cannot be restored with previous versions of Paragon programs. HDM 2011 can restore images created with previous versions.

 

Yes, I should have been more specific and careful with my wording. I meant you can always use Paragon 2009 to create an archive which you can restore with 2009 should the new version fail.

 

No, I haven't tried partitioning the 3 TB drive. Do you think it's likely that Paragon would be able to see the different partitions then? I normally don't partition my external drives but I agree that it's worth a try.

What other programs have you used besides Paragon? One thing I don't like about HDM 2009 is that file backup doesn't work, even though I normally clone images. It seems to me that if you pay for a product that's claims to have certain features, those features should be available in case someone wants to use them.

I also do full backups. Otherwise, if the initial full backup get corrupted, how useful are the incremental or differential backups going to be?

I'm not sure what you're referring to by Paragon's live-imaging but I assume I'll find out if or when I upgrade.

Thanks for the info. about the WinPE recovery disk. I've been using the Linux recovery disc for a few years now & so far, it's worked (almost) flawlessly every time. The exception was once when I rebooted after restoring the C drive & Paragon's backup program started running before I got into XP, backing up the C drive to another drive. I still don't know what caused that to happen as Paragon was not scheduled to run at that time but those sectors on the external drive got corrupted & I had to run Chkdsk to fix them.

Good point. Thanks for your suggestions & comments.

 

Robin,

Thanks a lot for clarifying that.

 

Remember, I'm a new Paragon user but yes, it certainly should be able to see them; only one way to find out. Be sure to give the partitions meaningful labels - they can help to make sure you are dealing with the correct partitions when in the recovery environment. Linux drive letters may not agree with the Windows assignments but this is taken care of when Windows restarts.

I've used Acronis True Image for making images. I only do full, manual images and do not use any of the bells and whistles. The totally screwy user- interface in the current version and what seems to be shoddy QA (an on-going issue) made me decide to try something different.

Yes, the file backup should work if they say it is present. My personal preference for data file backups is to use a different product than either Acronis or Paragon. I have to be careful here because I don't know how Paragon handles non-image files and folders backups but in the Acronis case they get placed into the same type of file as an image. This means all your files and folders are placed into a proprietary container file and if anything goes wrong with it you may well not recover anything. I have seen cases on the Acronis forum where entire collections of photos and music have been lost because of this. It may also be more of a hassle extracting the files but maybe not. I use SyncBack and there are others as well such as Karen's Replicator etc. and they usually have free versions. These programs create a file and folder structure the same as your original one on the backup drive so the files are directly examined by Windows Explorer and if there is a problem with a file it can't impact on any other file.

If the full is corrupted nothing is useful. A chain of incrementals is only useful until the first bad incremental in the chain is encountered - any incremental after that is worthless.

I mean the mechanism used for making an image while Windows is running; I may have used an Acronis term. In Paragon they use one of two methods, first is Windows Volume Shadow Services (VSS) and the second is Paragon's own mechanism which I called live-imaging. These mechanisms are required to keep track of any changes Windows is making to the disk while the imaging is happening so the image is a proper snapshot of the disk when the imaging started.

You're welcome.