The alternatives

I'm currently using ATI 9 (along with FD-ISR and Rx Rollback on my XP system) and I was thinking about upgrading to 10. But I read alot about other alternatives such as ShadowProtect and ParagonDrive backup. Whats the pros (and cons) to these other products? I briefly tested them and couldn't see much difference but I'm sure I'm missing some killer features...

 

I think both Shadowprotect and Paragon can backup & restore the MBR alone. Not sure if the latest version of Acronis offers this yet.

 

Probably being a bit dim here but whats the benefit of backing up the MBR alone?

 

Just in case you mess it up, especially when you don't have a OS CD (like moi).

When I first messed the MBR (can't remember how) it took days to sort out (could have done it within a few minutes if I had a Win XP cd), now I have paragon.

 

I don't think trueimage 10 can backup just the MBR alone. However i know v10 can restore just the MBR alone from an image.

I've tried shadowprotect and i have paragon hard disk manager 8 but i find trueimage 10 to be the best for imaging. Its fast and has always been reliable on my system.

 

if acronis true image 9 works for you i say keep it.
the only reason i went for paragon was because acronis didnt work on my PC.
true image 10 just has the options to backup settings for indivitial applications which IMHO its pointless and just bloat.
and windows vista support.

the advantage of shadow protect desktop is the windows based recovery cd and the fact its faster. rather than the linux based recovery cd of acronis.
paragon has both linux and windows based recovery cd's thou.
paragon uninstalls cleanly and so does shadow protect desktop.
you can get free trials of both.
so you can try them and see what you think.
lodore