Experience with imaging programs

Hello everyone,

i would be interested in practical experience of using one of the following softwares and your final comments about reliabilty and stability of the software.

So I'm especiall interested about how reliable did restores of an Image of a Systempartition, use of the the bootmedia, creation of incremental images of Systempartition (something like: one Full then 6 incr. then one full etc.), sheduled cleaning out of old Images after definded criteria was in the practical experience price of software is irrelevant compared to aforementioned.

The Programs i would be interested:

TeraByte Image for Windows
Macrium Image
Keriver Image
Acronis True Image Home
(AX64) a little bit of lesser importance for me now since its still in testing


Greetings to this awesome Forum

 

My opinion:
TeraByte Image for Windows (good boot disk options DOS/IFL/WINPE) My pirmary imaging.
Macrium Image (I have the PRO version) seems to work; sometimes you get a message VSS error, Lacking Linux cold image creation, Winpe is good, few options compared to IFW.
Acronis True image; bloated in windows if you install it; good Linux CD recovery and image creation; Winpe is only 32bit
Stay away from Paragon if you dual boot;

Chris

 

Oh i can fully relate to that. Paragon epically failed on my system. Installed it a week ago created an image of C for testing purposes, restored it and found out: it deleted three(!!) other partitions unrelated to C.... Really the first easy test screwed it up completely...

Since i used Acronis for some time now i would be interested how you compare IFW with Acronis since you have experience with both...

 

WC999.. just so you know, "A64 Time Machine" is now a released product. I find it not only an excellent disk imaging product, but its ability to move seemlessly between snapshots has completely replaced my need for "Rollback RX," a snapshot product I've been using for appx. 3-yrs.

 

Oh sorry for my wrong statement then... I really have it on my watchlist...

But I'm more interested in Imaging than a more "snapshot like experience" (every night i run a script to do that). My focus is definitely more on "complex imaging shemes" like create one full than 6 incr. then start over and automatically delete the chains older than the last 7 chains or so...

I use it more as hedge against disaster than to quickly deploy a snapshot and i'm not sure if its best for this scenario...

I'm not sure if its the right program for that.. And since testing always takes a lot of time i would like to focus first on the program where chances are highest for the mentioned task that its good.. If you know what i mean..

But it looks really interesting though..

 

I have Ti 2013 My son has older images which are created with TI; New images are created with IFW. I find that there about same speed and image size; they have both do a great job; IFW/IFL
The selling point IFW for me was that I can restore in automatic mode; it will find the partition based on ID and restore my image;
IFW has a really small foot print when installed, compared to TI2013
IFW can mount images view images while in winodws / or Cold PE, the benefits of that I can restore just on file or folder, with out restoring the whole image. TI2013 lacks that on the recovery.
IFW comes in Image for dos, image for Linux, WINPE , also it works with Windows 8 / server 2008r2 , 2012.
If you get a chance check out Acronis forums you will see why I moved to IFW.

Also IFL supports Trucrypt


Chris

 

Image for Windows.

 

Hi routerguy99,

Thanks for you detailed answer. But what do you mean with "supports Truecrypt" (i use the program myself). My experience with TIH 2011 is that you make an image of one complete Harddisk and restore it in Full the Truecrypt volumes work fine. I mean its doing an sector by sector image why would the Trucrypt volume not work.. Or do you mean something different?

How many times did you do a restore with an image of an Systempartition with IFW. Did something unexpected happen? oddities?

I totally agree with you that Acronis has lots of bugs, and support sucks REALLY BAD (= to no support at all). But in the end the restores never led me down. And perfect results...

Greetings!

 

Truecrypt
terabyteunlimited.com/kb/article.php?id=462

I have restored well over a dozen times; no problems what so ever.
When restoring with IFW/ILF/IFD there are lots of options, I just use the defaults with restore Windows partitions/Disk;
I had to modify defaults to restore Grub,
I tried make partitions smaller bigger,
copy disk, restore disk smaller bigger it just works.
it will not let you down, oh pick up the bundle if you do, it comes with Bootit , if any case you can use it to manage partitions/disk.

Chris

 

I have tried all of your mentioned imaging programs.

I have found that ShadowProtect Desktop to be the fastest imaging program and absolutely reliable over the 5 to 6 years that I have been using it. I am also using RollbackRx for snapshots.

I have been trying to test AXTM64, to replace the above programs, but it will not backup. I get an error every time I push the Make Backup Now button, so I can't comment on its speed.

UPDATE: I uninstalled ShadowProtect and AXTM64 works. It is as faster or faster than ShadowProtect on backups. Includes a snap-shotter to replace RollbackRx, although slightly slower.

 

Hi folks,

cool discussion going on here. No one having an opinion on macrium or Keriver?

P.S. one thing coming to my mind which i didn't write in the first post: how much do the mentioned Programs slow down the computer while not using them?

 

+1 here for Image for Windows.

fast, small and rock solid.

very generous pricing from the developer as well.

there's a 30 days trial available.

 

When Macrium isn't used nothing of it bloats RAM, so no impact.

 

I can't comment about acronis because I haven't tested 2013 version.

The rest are very reliable.

the cycling backup that you described can be done easily with Image for windows (they already provide a similar script for differentials).
The best thing to do is to try them and choose the one you prefer.

Maybe you were unlucky.
The rare times that IFW had reliability issues was when they released an update that broke something but when that happened they fixed it in 1-3 days and released an updated alpha version.
http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/upgradehist-image-for-windows.htm

Panagiotis

 

@Pandlouk Your comment made me luckily reread my comment to TheKid7.

@TheKid7: SORRY I MADE A BIG MISTAKE - I WAS PRETTY TIRED WHEN I READ YOUR COMMENT AND I MISREAD AS THE TOOL FROM WINDOWS TO MAKE SNAPSHOTS. THAT I FOUND TO BE PRETTY UNRELIABLE NOT IFW FROM TERRABYTE. I NEVER TRIED IFW FROM TERRABYTE.

THAT NOBODY THAT READS THAT THREAD WILL GET AN WRONG IMPRESSION I WILL TRY TO DELETE THAT SECTION OF MY POST. HOPE EVERYONE IS OK WITH IT.

 

AXTM does what you want.

It is first and foremost an imaging program, which saves your images on a separate partition and/or disk.

Then it takes incremental images.

However, here it differs significantly from other imaging program. Other imaging programs when you try to restore an incremental image, they restore the original image with chain of incremental images. They take a lot of unnecessary time.

Where as with AXTM it restores in Windows the incremental image only, the one you choose, taking no time and then it reboots.

However, if your hard drive fails to reboot, or you want to restore from Recovery Environment (CD/DVD/USB), then it restores like a imaging program, restoring the original image with the chain of incremental images.

Try if free for 30 days, if you like it, as Wilder's member you get 25% off.

Best regards,

 

Hi Aladdin,

I don't want to change the subject of the thread - but since you brought it up:

HonestlyI don't understand this. I read about this in other treads here too so. I must say i never used rollback rx.

In my thinking you make an incremental you first need to recover full and then it goes through the list applies all the changes from one to the next incremental.

Can you explain to to me the technology AXTM uses to do this? Does AXTM really make incremental images or does it have some kind of permanent tracking of the changes done to the system, saves that as a database and that can be used as a kind of incremental image? Or does it always do both one incremental image and this tracking database? Because how can you restore one incr. without the previous one?

 

It is the comparison of AXTM with Rollback Rx that confuses everyone. Just for a minutes let us forget Rollback Rx as Rollback Rx is not an imaging program, it is a snapshot program.

What does a normal imaging program does?

1. It takes an initial full image.
2. It can either take an incremental image, depending on the imaging program.
3. It can either take a differential image, depending on the imaging program.

Since, AXTM is a imaging program, therefore it can do the following:

1. It takes an initial full image.
2. It takes incremental images, either manual or automatic based on schedule.
3. It consolidates the automatic incremental images.

Your needs:

1. One initial full image.
2. Six incremental images from A to F.

Now in your scenario, if you want to restore the incremental image "D", the imaging program will restore the initial full image plus the incremental images from "A" to "D". This will take a long time.

With AXTM you can do the same thing and will take a long time too. Thus, AXTM is an imaging program.

But the beauty of AXTM is that it can also work like a snapshot program too. Suppose, instead of recovering the whole initial full and incremental images "A" to "D", you just want to recover incremental image "D" only, you can do that within seconds or minutes, very fast within Windows and then reboot.

Therefore, AXTM is two program into one.

1. A full pledged imaging program with incremental imaging plus consolidations of incremental imaging.
2. A snapshot program like Rollback Rx. With Rollback Rx one needs imaging program in case of hard disk failure.

Best regards,

 

Being a long time user of Image for Windows, I can recommend it without reservation. I image daily and have yet to have a problem with it. Simple, flawless, and reliable. You can't get better than that for an imager.

SourMilk out

 

@Aladdin: thanks for your well written answer. i know what imaging programs does and how restoring works. But I would very curious to know more about "2."

Since you seem to know the program very well: how exactly does the snapshot function work? Which technology is used where are the files stored? The more details the better - since information on website is very scarce und a manual absent.

And i don't like to use things i don't understand.

Thanks man!

 

Hi there,

I believe, Isso the owner of the AXTM program has answered your questions already in the AXTM thread.

If you are imaging the "C" partition/drive, then you can keep the imaging data on the same drive but on different partitions like any imaging program. Or you can also use different local drive(s), USB drive(s) and/or network drive(s).

For network drive, you have to give it a "drive letter" for AXTM to recognizance it as a drive. The imaging data to network drive is considerably slower in comparison to local partition/drive.

Best regards,

 

Just to add to what has been said here you failed to state version of Windows and this makes a big difference.
I have blown out 2 systems in Windows 8 with Uefi bios and Acronis 2013 and will never use that again. My savior was Macrium Reflect which works perfectly though I am using free version right now so I cannot comment about incremental and differential use.