Need opinons on some lesser knows imaging tools...

Hello all..

I am a bit of an imaging freak. I own the following tools and have used them all at one point or another: ShadowProtect, Paragon, Acronis, Farstone, Macrium, R-Drive Image, O&O DiskImage, Drive Snapshot, and IFW/IFL/IFD (Right now, IFL from Terabyte is my primary tool as I always prefer to do offline images and this is strictly an offline tool). That being said, I was wondering if anyone here has used either Eazy Image (http://www.eazsolution.com/en/easyimage.php) or Todo Backup (Workstation or Free) and what their opinion of them is? Curious, especially about Eazy Image. Thanks! I should mention...Eazy Image is the same product as Drive Cloner RX from Horizon Datasys...they are sister companies with EazSolutions.

 

Well I bought Easeus Workstation ($39)...it was a good buy but I ran into a restore issue that bums me out a bit, and support has more or less said that's just the way it works. I have a Windows 7 machine (100mb Sys Reserved, C:, and D...they imaged fine and when I restored I told it not to resize any partitions...just drop the image back on the way it was backed up. It worked fine (booted up and is stable), but consistently restores the 100mb partition as 86mb and moved the remaining 14mb to the end of disk after my D: partition. Support confirmed this and just said that's how it is, and they use some special algorithim that is doing it, etc. In any event, ANY imaging tool at the most basic level should always at the bare minimum restore the disk the way it was backed up, so while not a huge deal, I'm the type that would be bothered knowing the restored partition was off.

As for Eazy Image, I was surprised by this one (this is Drive Cloner RX and also Keriver)...the boot disk worked fine, backed up, and the restore is really cool with the partition resizing...one of the better resize interfaces I've seen. No issues at all. It "lacks" the more polished look of some of the other products, and I was bummed you can't check the image integrity using the boot CD. It also lacks the ability to add drivers on the boot disk and any sort of HIR option, but for $19.99 it's fine for a basic imaging tool.

 

You are buying too much.

ShadowProtect or Paragon or IFW/IFL/IFD are already enough for you as they both have such HIR, P2P or TBOSDT respectively.

 

No, it's my hobby. I own just about every imaging tool and use them. I enjoy playing with them, testing them. Sure it costs money but a lot cheaper than some other hobbies I could have...like fixing cars or something. If you enjoy it, it's a small price to pay.

 

Imaging is a great hobby.

I like IFL too and I'd just like to mention some interesting features. You can initiate a backup or restore from Windows. Double click a batch file and Windows restarts into IFL and the procedure runs automatically.

Also you can initiate a backup or restore of another computer, from your computer, over the network . Wired or wireless network. And with Wireless N, wireless restores are feasible. Double click a batch file on your computer, a PsExec file is sent to the other computer which restarts into IFL, connects to your computer and uses an image stored on your computer to restore the remote computer.

 

Thanks Brian. I heard something about IFL being able to do this, but your details are great. I was not aware of the remote backup. I wouldn't mind trying to to, well, just say I did.

 

napoleon1815,

It is all based on this...

http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/howto/howto-ifl-bootfile.htm

The networking part is complex and is a niche feature.