I, too, am totally confused over how to use Paragon

Let me start by saying that what made my final decision for purchasing Paragon was the high marks given for their tech support. I'm finding that is NOT my feeling. I decided to come here and see if I could get better results. I am totally confused about many things, but for right now, there are just a couple of things I need to get clarified. I have the paid version of Paragon Backup & Recovery 10 Home.

I burned my WinPE CD. I put the CD in, opened the program and clicked on "Check revoery discs." It ran and reported no problems. So, can I trust that if I ever need this disc it will work? Or is there something further I should do?

I had made two FULL backups with Paragon and saved them to my external. I verified both. Then I wanted to make a Differential Backup. I used the wizard for that and also verified. When done the program window showed 3 items on the external, which made sense to me. But when I actually open my external that third item (Complex Archive) does not appear. However, both full backups now show that they were last modified on the date I made the differential. I guess I need someone to me what's going on. Please see the screenshot which shows what Paragon looked like after the differential, and at the bottom of the screenshot, what my external showed.

Also, I wanted to make the differential because I figured that would take less time than doing another FULL backup, but it didn't.

I'd sure appreciate any help anyone out there is willing to give.

 

For the Windows PE disc, make sure it at least boots up fine. You can try a few operations with it as well.

 

I think that a differential backup takes up less disk space but it's no faster to do. Since I use a seperate external hard drive for my backups and have lots of space, I just backup the entire internal drive.

You should try to boot from your WinPE disc just to make sure it boots correctly.

 

I'll check out the WinPE disc, but what about the rest, this business with the differential?

 

I'm in the same boat as you: I did a full backup and now when I just want to do a differential backup, it takes just as long and is the same size. I'm pretty sure this is not the way it should be as a differential should only backup files changed since the last backup.

Does anyone have any input who is experienced with Paragon B&R 2011 and differential backups?

 

It doesn't surprise me that differential backup takes long. It still has to check and compare files. What it does do is take less space and that is the idea. This from using both 2010 and 2011 version

 

Ok, the time I can understand, but the estimated size is also the same as the original full backup

 

Estimated size? What's the actual finished size with Windows Explorer?

 

I havent let it finish but I will try.
Do you select the folder or an individual file inside the folder as the original Archive?

 

Whatever it created at the time of your differential backup. I've noticed that "any" estimated file size is normally way off actual file size when completed.