Evaluating the Software

Hello,

I am evaluating this product and have a few questions.

I have used other drive imaging products but have been left wanting.

I am looking to use USB 3 because of its speed.

First of all is USB 3 supported?

Are there particular PCI cards for USB 3 that have a track record and are recommended?

I am looking to plug in to this PCI cards USB 3 port a hard drive docking station. Any recommendations in term in terms of a supported docking station?

Besides the above, I am looking for a product that has the ability to predefine restore tasks. I want to be able to have a drive image that is located on the local hard drive of the computer and plug-in a hard drive into the docking station that is connected to the PCI USB 3 port and click on a predefined restore task/job and have the restore run. I would like the software to be able to recognize the drive plugged in to the USB 3 port as the destination of the restore.

Is this something doable?

Thanks

Steven

 

If you are working from Windows and the computer has USB 3.0 ports (either a desktop with a USB 3.0 card installed or a laptop with USB ports), Paragon works well with them.

If you are working from a WinPE boot medium, it is necessary to add manually the 32-bit USB 3.0 drivers. Otherwise, the Paragon program wont´"see" the USB 3.0 ports. In a laptop with no USB 3.0 drivers added to the WinPE, the mouse works well from the USB 3.0 ports, but the Paragon program does not recognize them.

What I use:

An EVGA PCIe card with two USB 3.0 ports, installed in a desktop. It doesn´t need a connection to the power supply.

A Vantec USB 3.0 enclosure with a Western Digital 1 TB disk installed. It has its own power supply and works well with either USB 2.0 or 3.0 ports.

A WinPE boot USB key with Hard Disk Manager 11 and the USB 3.0 drivers added permanently to it (also a similar USB key with a different imaging program).

All of the above has worked well for me in desktops and laptops. When working from the WinPE media, the net USB 3.0 "speed" is at best no more than 3-3.5 times the USB 2.0 speed.

 

Thanks Robin for getting back,

The Information you gave me was very useful.

Part of what I want to do is be able to clone and do restores quickly without having to go through wizards. To have a preset task/job that could be run.

some software gave you the ability to have predefined backup/image tasks but not restore tasks? I am looking for restore tasks.

does paragon have that?

Steven

 

I use a Buffalo PCI card along with a Thermaltake BlacX docking station that handle 2.5/3.5 HDs. There was a problem back then trying to find seperate 32-bit drivers to load manually as Robin A. mentioned. Most all cards, etc. use the same chip set for USB 3.0.

 

Thanks all for the info.

I guess predefined restore tasks do not exist.

 

One thing I've learned from these forums is that not everybody has the same needs or likes to work the same way and what I think is a good or bad idea is irrelevant.

I wonder why spending a minute or less going through a wizard is going to be all that important when the restore these days is likely to take in excess of 15 minutes for just a single C partition. I do many, many more backups than restores so the time going through the restore wizard is even less of a time waster. I know some people like to clone disks as a backup (partition Copy in Paragon, I believe) so they have a disk to pop in when the other one fails to save time. In reality, the clone sits on the shelf and never gets used for years because even though we all are using Paragon in case the disk fails, the reality is that they don't really fail that frequently. Most times we need a file backup because we did something stupid all by ourselves.

The Paragon scripting language is available so it likely could be used to write some restore tasks from scratch or the tasks could be created by going through the actual restore sequence you want to do and just take the option to save the script before it is executed. I don't use the language but I think this is how it could be done.

 

The reason why I am looking for an automated streamlined recover is because I am not only using it as a way of of dealing with a hard drive issue or failure.
In my business I have indeed to have a bunch of different recoverable environments. I have a method in which hard drives do not have to be installed into the computer and when I want to replace or refreshing environment I want to make it as easy as possible.
This would mean that to click on a task to restore an environment into a drive and then take that drive use it in one of the dedicated computers.
This is something that happens often and being able to do this expeditiously is important.

I know I'm not explaining it out well, and I know this is not a typical scenario and user need but that's what I look for.


Steven