Partition Mgr 10 vs. Drive Backup vs HDM

Folks,

As an owner of Partition Magic (Symantec's version 8.0) and Acronis's True Image Home (v10); as I head down the path to Windows 7 I'm looking at either upgrading or outright replacing these products. Partition Magic has served me well in the XP world, and its seen its most frequent usage in resizing/moving partitions to reallocate disk space. But, Partition Magic has run its lifetime and I need to move on. Acronis True Image Home has been (mostly) good to me. I've used it primarily for disk image backups and the odd time for migrating hard drives. Yes, I've had the need to restore disk images when s/w installs have caused issues and Acronis has worked well in that function. One time with it's disk clone facility when upgrading to a larger HDD it did change a 2-digit partition identifier for one of the partitions (why I don't know, but I fixed it with an independent disk editor) but for the most part it's been OK.

But with moving to Windows 7 and putting in a home NAS (D-Link DNS-323), I'm reviewing my s/w stack.

I'm particularly interested in Paragon's Partition Manager 10 Pro (PM 10 Pro) and Drive Backup 10 Pro (DB 10 Pro). And I'm trying to determine the significant differences between the two. They do offer a lot of common functionality.

From what I gather PM 10 Pro is very much a partitioning tool with backup/restore capabilities limited to full sector-based disk/partition images. Whereas DB 10 Pro is more a backup tool (supporting differential, incremental and sector/file backup strategies plus scheduling) with limited partitioning capabilities. BOTH have features that I like. It also appears that the Hard Disk Manager 2009 Pro packages the capabilities of both products together. Anyone care to comment?

I do have some specific questions as well:

(1) Is there functionality of either the PM 10 Pro and DB 10 Pro that is NOT available in the Hard Disk Manager Pro (excluding the support for Win 7 which I'm assuming will come with the Hard Disk Manager Pro 2010 version)?

(2) Is the Hard Disk Manager Pro 2010 just a convienence packaging of the PM 10 Pro and DB 10 Pro, plus some simple add-ons? Or does anyone know if Paragon is looking to discontinue the two separate products and only market the Hard Disk Manager?

(3) Price-wise, purchasing PM 10 Pro and DB 10 Pro at this time is slightly cheaper than purchasing Hard Disk Manager 2009 Pro. While Hard Disk Manager includes a disk wiping feature, I have h/w vendor supplied and independent products that also do that, so unless it gives me something else I'm more inclined to lean towards separate products and install both. It gives me immediate support for Windows 7. Because they are so similar and offer the same functionality, aside from the incovienence of two installs and then multiple boot CD's to support both full functionality, would I have issues installing and running BOTH products?

(4) The "File backup to a sector image" capability (offered in both Hard Disk Manager and DB10 Pro) appears to perform file-based incremental backups following a sector-based full image backup. The question is; how is this backup capability impacted if my original disk sectors get shuffled about because I run a background disk defrag like Diskeeper?

(5) Finally, I'm setting up this weekend my D-Link DNS-323 NAS. I noticed from other forums that the Acronis products have had some issues with this box. Has anyone had any issues with the Paragon products? I'll be setting it up as a Raid 1 configuration. I believe the DNS-323 only supporrts Ext2/Ext3 file systems.

Thanks in advance.

... Bill

 

Hi Bill ,

I can't answer your questions 4 and 5 , not having experienced those myself.

However, I have both products ( in fact several ) installed - with absolutely no conflicts.

For some time Paragon have had the 3 core items PM , DB and HDM.

HDM has always included all the functions of PM and DB - and as you noted some extra functionality as well.

I would be astonished if they were to discontinue the PM and DB - having multiple products to cover the entire market seems to be the Paragon way.

I expect HDM 2010 Pro and up will include the Virtualization management functions in the windows GUI - ( not included in PM 10 pro or DB10 Pro ), as well as the Disk Wiping function you mention.

Usually , it is a little cheaper to get the HDM than the other two. The discrepancy you see is due ( I assume ) to repositioning of the new range.

HDM 2010 should be out in a month or so - I am looking forward to it.

Hope it helps.

 

Paragon is currently offering a 20% discount on HDM for the 2009 Suite + Adaptive restore and a free upgrade for the 2010 Suite when it comes out. Back in December the same deal was offered for 40%.

Al