HDM 12 Suite

As I understand it (subject to correction by other Winbuilder gurus more knowledgeable than I) the ShutdownPE script is just an option that provides a few "bells and whistles" like disc ejection. It isn't really essential just to perform a normal reboot/shutdown operation.

Anyhow, I've now uploaded my own script for including HDM 12 in winbuilder PE project builds. It's avilable at http://reboot.pro/16187/ if anyone wants to "road test" it.

I have no idea either why we'd be seeing such different HDM 12 performance unless your "Pro" version got something special in the engine department. I'm not terribly concerned about it. Just a bit puzzled.

 

The last version of Ghost I used was 14 and it allows you to choose either incremental or differential backups when taking what Paragon users seem to refer to as sector backups. I've referred to this type of backup in the past as an "image backup" as opposed to a "file backup." I doubt this would have changed with v15, but I can't confirm for sure.

Fwiw I'm currently using ATIH (2011) and am sick of it. I've been looking for a replacement for quite some time now. I'd hate to go back to Symantec due to too many issues, but know their next version is due to be released soon. I keep watching Paragon, but as I've described elsewhere it won't "natively" do what I need. So I'm fence sitting, ultimately hoping some HDM version (though I've been waiting since v10) will add the capabilities I need.

 

1. I agree , speed of backup is not the most important thing to me either.

However, for many people it is the single most important factor when choosing an imaging app.


2. Regarding winbuilder shutdown/reboot - I will need to ask Chris R about it, I expect it.

It is odd, because as far as I know, a 3rd party tool such as rebootrace, or pecmd , etc has always been needed in pe.

If he has found a way of making shutdown/reboot buttons work in pe without any 3rd party tools - it is quite a breakthrough.

 

Don't know about that. Gena (another Winbuilder project I use for PE1 builds) has no add-on tool at all, not even as an option. AFAIK, it just uses the regular Windoze reboot and shutdown.

Anyhow, Chris will certainly know about his own PE3 project. Tell him "bonjour" for me.

 

I did some additional tests with HDM 12 Suite, to complement the results previously posted. My conclusion is still the same: when working from WinPE, 12 is not faster than 11. Besides, ShadowProtect is faster then both.

I created and verified an image of the system partition (Windows 7 x64). I used an external USB 3.0 disk (WD SATA installed in a Vantec enclosure), connected to a USB 3.0 port (PCIe EVGA USB 3.0 card), and worked from the WinPE media supplied with the programs (with added USB 3.0 drivers).

Image creation:

SP: 12.4 GB image, 4:35 min.
HDM 11 Pro: 12.6 GB image, 5:36 min.
HDM 12 Suite: 12.6 GB image, 5:46 min.

Image verify:

SP: 2:38 min.
HDM 11 Pro: 3:17 min.
HDM 12 Suite: 3:13 min.

Note: in all cases, I used the default configurations when creating the images. In Paragon programs, this includes "Control archive integrity".

 

It may be the control archive integrity that is the issue.

It warns that will slow it down .

I never use it.

 

But this is important and is included by default for other backup utilities like Shadowprotect and Macrium. So, if you are comparing speeds, you would have to check it and then do the comparison.

By the way, this option is there to unsure the backups are reliable. Did you ever encounter problems with this unchecked?

 

Have you checked the speeds without winpe. For example, when you backup from within windows and initiate a restore from within windows as well. The restore will cause your system to reboot and then paragon will load and do the restore. There may be a difference in speeds in the two cases.

 

I do not know a lot about Ghost. I tried it long ago when it was v14. They may have added incremental imaging in v15, but only someone currently using Ghost can say better.

Have you considered Shadowprotect or Macrium? Both offer incremental imaging and are very reliable. Macrium is more cost effective in my opinion. I switched from Paragon to Macrium about 1.5 years ago and I am extremely satisfied with it.

I still use Paragon partition manager, which is still the best partition manager around, so I like to keep myself updated with what paragon is doing in the backup dept.

 

I don't think it is important. I have never used it in several years of using Paragon apps.

Never had a problem with a paragon image.

Splitting the image into 4gb chunks is also a default setting - I have no idea why.

It is ok to have as an option - no point in having it as a default setting - hardly anybody backs up to dvd these days.

How do you know macrium does the same ? I am pretty sure macrium does something quite different.

I have used several imaging apps, however, I have never used Shadowprotect.

I have been using macrium alongside paragon for about the last 3 years.

I prefer Paragon.

Macrium used to have the advantage of being a lot quicker - so in some situations that was handy - that is not the case any more.

 

Yes, of course there may be a difference. Perhaps the "asynchronous writing" that Paragon mentions doesn´t work in WinPE. I was interested in checking the WinPE operation because I always work from WinPE to backup and restore images. I don´t have any imaging program installed.

 

Isn't that option used to write certain bits in the archive during its creation so that Paragon can later verify that the archive is good and error free?

Macrium also offers archive verification, if you choose to avail it, so I assumed it adds those bits into all its archives by default.

By the way, one of the reasons I stopped using Paragon was a situation that when I backed up my C: partition from within windows, using VSS as the default hot processing technology, after restoring, my windows update history used to be missing. Can you check that in paragon HDM 12? First make sure you have a windows updates history, then backup and restore from Paragon and see if the update history is still there?

 

I will have a look at that for you when I have a moment.

BTW - re the speed.

I have done it both ways- from within windows and from winpe.

I get very fast results in both cases.

I think it must be the "control archive integrity" option that makes the difference.

 

Well, that cerainly explains most, if not all, of the performance difference between what you are seeing and what Robin and I are seeing. When I disable that default integrity checking option can I also get something very close to your results: about 3.6 GB/minute for internal SATA-to-SATA.

Whether running in a WinPE environment or in Win7 itself doesn't seem to matter much. The integrity check appears to be the major factor and, as others have said, I would expect that most people will use that default option for any comparison they might make with competitive products. I certainly never thought to disable it myself until you mentioned it.

 

Yes, it seems a bit daft to have that checked by default - also the 4gb image splitting .

There is also the option to disable updating bcd after restore ( NOTE - only advanced users should consider that).

It is handy for me.

I like the way Paragon makes so many things optional.


Macrium does a few things that are inconvenient for me to say the least - I don't think there is any way of turning them off in macrium.

 

It must be one hell of a thorough integrity check, which is good in a way I suppose, but it adds a lot more time to the total process than the Acronis TI "archive validation" does.

Oh well, at least the mystery is no longer as mysterious. And now that we know the answer we can each make our own choices. Paragon really needs to do some work on its user interface and informational components.

 

Yes, it is pretty extreme.

Damaged images are very very rare.

If they do occur, it is almost always due to problem with drive itself - not the imaging app.

You can pretty much take the word "almost" out of that last sentence.

That is the case with all imaging apps really.

Paragon will check the drive anyway.

The other curious thing is the defrag option - I have no doubt it is thorough, to say the least.

No idea why they include it for the average user.

 

Macrium has the option, they call it disable updating mbr.

 

That is something completely different.

What they mean by that is a tiny bit of code at the beginning of the Hard Drive which reads the partition table and hands control to the bootcode on the active partition.

As far as I know virtually all imaging ( and partitioning ) apps. will have options for rewriting/updating or backing it up and restoring, or all of those options.

The bcd store is a registry hive containing all the data relating to your boot options.

 

The contents to check the archive integrity are the checksums. So there is a calculation required as well as just writing extra bits in the archive. I don't know what Paragon does but Acronis adds a checksum for every 256KB block or 4000 checksums per GB.

Do you need it? Good question but as best as I can tell you can't Verify the archive without it. I always verified my Acronis True Image archives because you could do it easily and I'd sooner have something that I knew was good when written rather than hope it was good when I needed it. The only problem I had was a marginal SATA cable that caused the True Image verify to fail - subsequent checking of the Windows event logs showed that there was a parity error and the recommendation was to change the cable.

If I disabled the verify data, I would enable it every now and then to make sure things looked good. They used to say that True Image was a good hardware checker because it would pick up undiscovered hardware errors because of the intensive data checking on the verify that would uncover disk and RAM problems.

 

That option was not there when I last used Paragon in 2009. They must have added it in later editions. Also, keep in mind it is unfair to compare Macrium with Paragon hard disk manager, as HDM contains a full partition manager and a lot more other tools that a simple backup utility may not have. It would be better to compare Paragon's exclusive backup program, whatever that is currently, used to be drive backup, with Macrium.

 

This is exactly what I thought that option did and since you can always verify the images created by Macrium or Shadowprotect, so I naturally assumed they added the checksums by default. They just do not give you the option to choose whether you want the checksums there or not. Paragon just gives you the option.

So, shouldn't the speed be compared with that option enabled in Paragon?

 

Not for me - I don't use it - so I am delighted that It is not forced on me.

Yes, the bcd thing is new - someone asked for it on this forum - can't recall where the post is.

@Arvy

You might be interested in this:

Paragon in Windows 8 PE

 

Paragon has also changed the help file slightly in the newer versions. See the attached pic below of the HDM pro 2009. There they explain what the "control archive integrity" option does a little better.

 

I was trying to say Ghost v14 utilized incremental (and differential - user's choice) imaging. So I would assume v15 does as well, unless they removed the option. However, I have v14 running on one of my XP machines and just took a look. It doesn't actually give you an option when you use what they call "recovery point sets." Their instructions indicate the recovery point set utilizes a base and incremental backups. Now whether or not they use the terminology for "incremental" (as opposed to differential) correctly, I'm not sure. But the following quote from the manual indicates that they may indeed use the terminology incorrectly and actually use differential backups: "A recovery point set can contain multiple recovery points created over time that you can delete to reclaim storage space. The Delete Points option lets you delete all of the recovery points created between the first recovery point and last recovery point in the set." I mean, unless the program compresses the changes in incrementals together during the process you'd never want to delete incrementals in a set between the initial base image and the last incremental backup... No wonder people get conufsed about Symantec's terminology or whatever.

These are both on my short list, and I have read through the manuals of both. I can't remember what it was about Macrium I didn't like, but there was something which prevented me from purchasing it. With Shadowprotect, I don't like it's limited file system support nor do I like the way it keeps track of changes to drives via monitoring, basically forcing the user to run a service on any drive the user wants to run incremental or differential backups on.

Paragon is currently my #1 choice, but without both incremental imaging and the ability to create "backup incremental/differential chains" with a native GUI-based way to delete old chains it's a no go for me. As I mentioned previously, I've been watching Paragon since version 10 hoping for these changes. If Ghost v16 comes out before a Paragon solution which addresses these needs (desires) of mine I'll probably, with a heavy sigh, look into it with hopes the many bugs/kinks in v14 were worked out. <cough>

As an aside, I did install the preview version of HDM12 (pro I think) and found that it didn't recognize my WD MyBook World Edition NAS or my homemade Linux file serve box as a destination point for my backups (images). I was also not able to see a way to be able to point the browser window within HDM12 direclty to the IP addresses for these devices. I should indicate, however, that I didn't spend much time troubleshooting because I had already made up my mind that without incremental imaging and backup chains w/ cleanup HDM wasn't ready for me.