Paragon Hard Drive Manager 9.5 SE OR Paragon Backup & Recovery 10.1 Free Edition

Hi,
I have re-installed Paragon Hard Drive Manager 9.5 SE recently with intentions of backing up the C: system partition on my laptop.
On the laptop's hard drive, there is the main C: partition, and also a much smaller D: "recovery" partition. When installing Paragon HDM 9.5 SE, a violet icon, labeled "RECOVERY" (Size: 4.40 MB, on disk: 4.47 MB 29 files, 0 folders), appeared in the D: partition. What is this? The backup "capsule"?
Also, when I look inside it, there's nothing there- 'This folder is empty'.
Yet "Properties" says "29 files, 0 folders".

Secondly, in terms of backing up my whole system, is this programme as good as "Paragon Backup & Recovery 10.1 Free Edition"?
Thank you.

 

That recovery partition, given its size, must only have the manufacturer's tools and no factory image. To ensure a complete backup and successful restore, I would select all the partitions on the hard drive to backup.

For complete system backup, Backup & Recovery 10 Free Edition has the updated engine and noticeable increase in performance.

Not to put HDM 9.5 down because backup and recovery is only part of its arsenal of partitioning, drive copy, disk wiper, and defragmentation utilities.

 

Thanks for the reply, Paragon Tommy.
You are right, the purple icon is the HP recovery facility. Last year, in spring, after months of problems, I had to do a complete system recovery. I made recovery discs. They worked, the partition didn't. Because of this, I was considering the possibility of reformatting the partition, and using it for some other purpose. However, I read this webpage -

"HP Recovery Manager
Every Windows Laptop from HP and Compaq comes with a handy recovery application called HP Recovery Manager which can be activated by simply pressing the F11 key (note: some notebooks may have a different key assignment) immediately after turning the notebook on. It’s a nice utility by which owners can restore their notebook to an earlier working state using Windows’ System Restore or reformat the laptop to its default factory settings without the hassle of re-downloading and re-installing device drivers.

It’s a useful ulitity in today’s malware-ridden world PC users.

However, there are instances where the HP Recovery Manager fails to load even after pressing the F11 key as I recently experienced with a friend’s HP Pavilion Notebook. After several hours of troubleshooting the problem, I found a work-around. I’m posting the solution below in case anyone experiences the same problem:

1. Boot Windows
2. Click Start > RUN >
3. Type compmgmt.msc then hit the ENTER key
4. Computer Management will load, choose Storage then Disk Management
5. Select the Recovery Partition (usually drive D by clicking on it
6. Make the Recovery Partition active by clicking on Action then All Tasks > Mark Partition as Active
7. Shut down PC

The next time you power on the computer, press F11. It will now load the HP Recovery Manager and will give you the option to restore or reformat your computer."
from- http://www.lylesantos.com/2009/01/tech-review/hp-recovery-manager/

This may be helpful to other HP users.
I will install the free edition Paragon BackUp software as well.
Thank you, Paragon Tommy.