Paragon Drive backup 8.5 Questions

I am looking for reliable backup software to use with my wife's PC. I use ShadowProtect on my PC and it works flawlessly but am looking for something less expensive here. I have seen an occasional reference to Paragon here and wondered if it is reliable with Vista. At $29.95 the price is right.

 

I use Paragon Drive Backup Personal 8.51 successfully on my HP Pavillion dv6000 running Windows Vista Home Premium SP1.

 

sorry to hijack a thread, but i also have a question.

i installed the trial but could not see the "manage backup capsule" anywhere.........

so i uninstalled.

where is it supposed to be?

 

I have no idea. Since my pc is a notebook, with only one drive, it did not make sense to me to create a hidden partition. Instead, I bought a second hard drive so I can swap them. I backup to an external USB drive and restore to the extra, swapped-in, hard drive.

From the vendor's website and the help built into the product I found this:

http://www.paragon-software.com/home/db-personal/backup_capsule.html

However, should the user not have a local network and/or it is inconvenient to record data onto external media, then the backup images can be stored in a specially secured place on the hard disk. This place is referred to as the backup capsule, which has an independent system layout (e.g. a separate partition) that will stay operable should the active file system be damaged. To avoid an accidental removing or unauthorized access of the backup data, this partition is hidden and thus cannot be mounted in the operating system. A single hard disk may contain only one backup capsule Backup Capsule is a specially secured place on the hard disk which is used to store backup images. The backup capsule has an independent system layout (e.g. a separate partition) and is even operable when the active file system is damaged. To avoid a removal or unauthorized access to the data, this partition is hidden and cannot be mounted in the operating system. The content of the backup capsule is only available for browsing when using special software.. However, the user can attach another hard disk with an existing backup capsule to the computer and restore from that as well without any problems.

It is only possible to browse the contents of the backup capsule by using special software. The system of wizards that is implemented into the program is designed to work with the backup capsule. Thus, by storing disk images in the backup capsule the user obtains a reliable level of data protection.

 

on the top menu from left to right you have
tools,changes,wizards,hard drive,partition,archives,view,help
click on wizards and on the drop down menu you will find manage backup capsule.

 

yeah, that part i know.

but where is it located on the program?

i wanted to create that capsule and put my image in there, but no point creating the image without it as i use acronis.

if that capsule would have worked, or even if i could at least locate it, its worth looking into, as not everything on my acronis is working on my new laptop.

 

cheers, i shall look into it once again.

i did notice the compression is only 300mb higher than acronis on the highest settings, so not too bad.

 

My wife's HD is beginning to fail. Can Drive Backup restore an image on to a brand new drive or will I have to do other steps first?

 

why not plug both hard drives in and use the copy function?
then unplug disk one and plug disk in disk two using the same jumper settings as disk one was using. its alot quicker

 

It is a laptop and I don't have an adapter to use a second HD in the optical drive bay. So, I was hoping to backup to a USB HD and then restore once I installed the new HD. Will that work OK?

 

ah right that should work fine.
make sure the recovery cd can see the usb drive you are using.

 

Great...thanks!!!

 

I just got this program myself and am liking it a lot. In learning on how to operate it, I purposely formatted my laptop's C: drive to EXT3 (from a Ubuntu disk) and was able to recover from it.

 

I got an image backup created and I verified that I can boot with the recovery media and see the USB HD. Is it necessary to verify archives or do they always just work?

 

well can restore any archive i make with paragon. and with all the software testing i do i restore tons of em. never a single failure.
but it never hurts to use the verify function.

 

@Lodore,

Just a side question of interest, do you know if Paragon Drive backup would allow you to restore MBR and hiden track of HD if you are just restoring system drive from a multi-partition drive? I would love to know because I might start using Paragon down the road. I know you have options to do this if C is your only partition for the drive but just wondering. Thanks.

Gary

 

Hello Gary,
i think you can
check out my screenshot of my two hard drives.
i agree with brian acaully why would you need to?

 

Gary,

Could I ask why you would need to restore the MBR and Track 0 if you were restoring the OS partition to the same HD? The MBR and Track 0 are already present. They are not part of the OS partition.

 

For me, Paragon Drive Backup has been totally reliable under VISTA, and has saved my system numerous times already; especially during my difficulties in trying to install VISTA SP1.

I have restored images both ways: including entire disk and MBR; and just the op-system partition. Works flawlessly either way.

 

"Manage Backup Capsule" is right on the main program menu selections, along the left-hand side of the window. Just carefully read each line.

How do I post a screen shot ?

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Anyway, I don't use the backup capsule. I save to other drives and DVDs.

 

@Brian and Lodore,

I restore MBR and first track because I use ShadowDefender and sometimes either Returnil or DeepFreeze. Just to make sure no problems with these type of prgrams, I restore those parts. Does this make any sense to anyone?

Gary

 

I replaced the HD on my wife's laptop and restored without any problem. Paragon Drive Backup works very well but it is a bit slow. It took about 3.5 hours to restore 53GB. Is this normal? Maybe I am just spoiled by ShadowProtect taking about 1/4 of the time.

 

Was the Paragon recovery CD you used the Linux or WinPE version? Linux is quite slow on my machine. Even with WinPE Paragon would probably be somewhat slower the SP.

Gary

 

I am using the trial version of Paragon Drive Backup and used the recovery media builder to create the CD - DOS I believe. Are there other options?

 

Paragon is very slow, that is normal. Originally I was going to get Paragon to replace True Image but the slow speed was a deal breaker for me. Thats why I still use True image even with it's "occasional" problems it's still a speed demon compared to Paragon.