If I may be permitted, sort of a poll

Ok, if you were looking for a disk imaging program to use on a single computer with three hard drives, two internal and one external, this computer not networked IN ANY WAY with another computer just all by itself, and you only had TWO CHOICES, Paragon Drive Backup 8.5 or ShadowProtect, which would YOU choose, and most important, WHY?

WindowsXP Home, 1gig ram

Thank you!!

Acadia

 

I would choose ShadowProtect handd down. Did dabble a bit with another Paragon product. Reasons for my choice,

1. Speed of imaging in Windows.

2. Rock solid reliability.

3. Recovery disk compatable with wide variety of hardware.

4. Compression of images outstanding.

5. Basically it seems to work in all areas pretty much as advertised.

Hope it helps.

Gary

 

Very interesting ...

Acadia

 

heh, with apologies to acadia
cant let this go by,.....without...
TERABYTE tools being in the mix.
Has worked flawlessly well for me and comes with all the other useful tools and can run from PE if req.
Also able to save and manipulate the mbr, boot options, partitions etc etc.
Cheap.

HAving said that, I will be looking at SPv3 when it's out.

 

Yes, familiar with Terabyte somewhat, I have studied the manual and/or help screens ... TOO GEEKY, plus I believe that I read somewhere, probably HERE, that Terebyte does not restore track 0 and the mbr, or something like that, I probably did not get that quite right. I want a program that would simply give me my entire old system back, all snapshots, track 0, mbr, exactly as if nothing had ever happened.

But THANKS for the suggestion!

Acadia

 

LOL, me
Thankyou, I think
cant ever really be too geeky
(just off to get new propeller for hat, new flip up sunglasses, and new supply of heavy water just in case).
Regards.

PS get BING just for partition management. Easy, and I have shifted things around here dozens of times with NO data loss.

 

I'll play blacksheep here and take exception to ShadowProtect by posting a preference for PARAGON DRIVE BACKUP PRO 8.5 due to it's reliability in all areas huntnyc pointed out with the exception of #1 (speed), but for many that alone will not justify it when doing a price comparison between them. PARAGON also saves the MBR btw and the images are pristine and a quite stable mirror image of what was copied. The restores are routine as expected from my experience.

Now for me if theres some real advantage to be gained by ShadowProtect it's that they offer Universal Restore and the SPEED is faster of course.

There are various other features in BOTH that stand out as very useful points worth making. My decision comes from the fact that PARAGON also benefits from a long-time experience in this market & field that ShadowProtect founders can't possibly equal, but they have made great enough strides now in putting themselves firmly on track as a chief player in this market.

With that being said i bite the bit right now and hold my breath to see what the retail offering price is going to be for version 3 which everyone is anticipating including myself with high expectations.

 

Hmm now that is impressive
no issues with the file indexing or mbr changes in a 'one click' manouvre : cool
How does it go the other way: ie Rollback installed and imaged and restored

(I think you did post that somewhere else )

I know that Terabyte does have issues with Rollback indexing when imaging.

 

Pete,

What is a "half size image"? I have never heard that term before.

Silver

 

Shadow Protect for all the positive reasons given by others. Paragon worked for me when tested but was too slow, images too big, messed up drive labels on restore and the emergency disk wouldn't work with my wireless mouse.

 

Thank you all for your replies, looks like I've got to choose between two good programs, kind of like choosing between NOD and KAV.

I've already got two disk imaging programs, but one of them is so old that the company no longer exists, remember PowerQuest? So along with Acronis 9, which I will of course be keeping, I hope to be replacing the PowerQuest with either Paragon or ShadowProtect, now I wonder, which one?

Acadia

 

If you have Acronis 9 why bother with either ? unless you just enjoy trying out new programs for fun.

 

I just don't believe in putting all of my eggs in one basket, especially when I have the hard drive and storage space for both. Thanks.

Acadia

 

I hope I get my license key of ShadowProtect BEFORE the trial period is finished. I'm waiting 10 days already. Pffft.

 

Hmm, concerning long-time experience in this market, you may find it interesting to learn these facts about StorageCraft, makers of ShadowProtect:

StorageCraft's current CTO used to work for PowerQuest where he was the architect of PowerQuest's DriveImage and V2i Protector image based backup products (which were rebranded as Ghost/LiveStateRecovery/BackupExecSystemRecovery by Symantec after Symantec acquired PowerQuest) at the time that they were transformed from DOS-based backup apps to truly enterprise-ready snapshot-based image backup apps. This functionality was so compelling that it was the primary reason that Symantec acquired PowerQuest (I know this because I was in the acquisition party when the Symantec VP announced this fact). But StorageCraft's CTO's pedigree in snapshot-based technologies goes back further than that - prior to working for PowerQuest he worked for Vinca (which was acquired by Legato, which was then acquired by EMC), where snapshot technology was initially invented - and therefore I think it's safe to say that he worked with snapshot technology long before anyone at Paragon. As far as the engineering goes, PowerQuest actually licensed (and to this day the Symantec Ghost products still include) the StorageCraft snapshot device driver, arguably the most important component in a hot image backup app. I too worked at PowerQuest (on the DriveImage and V2i projects) where I was responsible for core aspects of those products. I also worked at Legato on similar projects. When you dig into the history, the folks at StorageCraft have been involved with image-based backup, snapshot, etc, for quite some time. For many years StorageCraft was a tools vender, licensing technologies to other companies (which would wrap them up in product form). For this reason StorageCraft drivers, etc, are found in many products (under the hood), yet StorageCraft doesn't get much recognition for this fact. In the last few years StorageCraft has been transforming itself into a products company, but please don't mistake this to mean that StorageCraft is new to this game. We're not.

 

I haven't been monitoring these forums much in the last couple of weeks (was on vacation and have been busy writing code). What's the problem? Did you buy product and haven't been issued a license key? Please PM me the details, and your personal contact information (email, phone, etc) so that I can get this resolved. Thanks!

 

i would choose paragon.
it works flawlessly for me.
the images with paragon are smaller than the ones created with shadow protect desktop.
trial both and see which one you like best.
lodore

 

Acadia, I coudn't agree more about not putting all your backup eggs in the same basket, but I would suggest something different than another disk-imaging program.

Since you already have ATI 9, a good disk-imaging program imho (and I presume it's been good for you), rather than getting another disk-imaging program, why not get yourself a really good file-by-file backup program to complement ATI 9. By doing that, you add even better protection in the event your motherboard goes 'belly-up' and you have to replace it. If that happens, and it can happen to any of us, I believe you will find it easier to restore much of your system with a quality file-by-file backup program than with disk-imaging software.

Just my 2-cents worth.

 

I didn't mean to rub anyone the wrong way but you must also admit that StorageCraft over the years hasn't wore out any shoes to push THAT information to the surface for the general public unless some of us simply been asleep at the wheel.

So i can stand corrected as to do with individuals who make up some of the development team there but PARAGON GROUP obviously is overshadowed StorageCraft in the PR department as well as Imaging Solutions as a whole, and that's basically what comparison i was driving at, and not so much developer's experience; but whichever is more attractive/beneficial over the years for users i might agree with that view from the mix of Symantec and PowerQuest originators.

ShadowSurfer/User was really my first introduction to anything ShadowStar/Craft to begin with from those virtualization apps.

After very sad experiences with BOTH Acronis & Ghost (Symantec) PARAGON was highly recommended to me as reliable, and that's exactly what i found in them compared to all others.

 

Gotta go with Paragon. I was a longtime user of PowerQuest Drive Image before the Symantec buy-out. I loved the program. That's interesting about the connections with some of the people at StorageCraft, but honestly, I find Paragon more like the old PowerQuest than the Shadow Protect application. It wins for ease-of-use as well (at least for me). I tried both extensively (along with IFW) and found Paragon a solid, reliable program that confirmed their reputation. It is one of my five or six "must-have" applications that make my computing experience much smoother.

Genady