total backup solution?

hi
looking for a professional total backup&restore solution. wanna backup the entire system and restore it easily. what do you recommend? acronis, norton ghost, shadowprotector, paragon, or something else that you think is a better solution?
thanks

 

There's a million posts on this - and many people have very different opinions.

I use Shadow Protect - it is stable , predictable , fast , and expensive

I don't have the expertise others have to do some special requirements using some other products such as Acronis - like creating a Bart PE disk (whatever that is ).

 

+1 for Shadow Protect, really great and stable app.

 

ShadowProtect can be scheduled to image your system.
It sure is a great program, but also expensive.
Another program I can recommend is Macrium Reflect.
There is a free and a paid version for $30. The paid version has an option for scheduled backups.

 

Paragon Drive Backup has been working flawlessly for me for years now.
Acronis did nt work at all.
I am not qualified to speak about the others.
Just make sure you test the full backup solution, including RESTORE, before thinking you are protected

 

Pete - If you have a single partition system - wouldn't the incremental run a long time - even if the size of the incremental file turns out to be relatively small?

I only do full backups, but it was my understanding that incrementals save disk space but not time.

 

I use Image for Windows(IFW)/Image for DOS(IFD).

Simple and Reliable. I especially like the simple bootable Restore DVD(s).

 

I use a 3 prong approach consisting of continuous backups and image files.

For the first I use RollBack RX. Its real fast (snapshots - which can be set to occur hourly) take apx 3 seconds and a complete restore takes 3 or 4 min. In the vast majority of cases this program will deal with any problem quickly, effectively, and reliably. The only area it will not help is if there is a HD failure.

For this you will need an imaging program. A number of good ones have been mentioned above so take your pick. There is an imaging program associated with RollBack Rx called Drive Cloner and it has 1 advantage over the others and that is it understands Rollbacks format. The others do not although there has been some talk on the forum that if you do sector by sector backups using something other than Drive Cloner you will get the Rx data as well as the regular data.

There is one missing link in a TOTAL solution yet to be considered. That is the issue of a fire or robbery where your PC is located. It does you no good to have backups of your data/system if those backups are destroyed or stolen along with the hardware containing them. I address this issue in 2 ways. First I use an on-line backup service to automatically backup my critical files as they are modified. For this I use a service called IDrive. The 2nd component is to keep images of the system on a portable drive off-site. I update these images weekly.

If you implement the above you will have achieved as close to complete protection as you can possibly get.

I hope this helps.

 

btw IFL is faster found out when i tryed it the other day.

 

Another vote for ShadowProtect, for the very reasons already mentioned on this thread. I'd like to comment about the price, which with the yearly maintenance comes just under 100 $, expensive compared to the others, but considering the frequency of upgrades say for example with Acronis (I have TI 9 with my XP machine) if I had had to pay for the TI 10, TI 11, in the end there wouldn't have been much difference in price.

I wish ShadowProtect would allow 2 computers with 1 license.

 

For me it's Drive Snapshot (full images only) transfered to a 16gb flash drive, bootable DVD with Ultimate Boot CD for Windows, and uploaded to Mozy for good measure. That way I'm sure to have an image when I need it.

 

I tested Ghost, Acronis and Shadowprotect. Shadowprotect for me is the best: never had a single problem. Moreover I totally agree with Osaban concerning the upgrades frequency (also for Ghost).

 

I have shadowprotect on my desktop pc and concur that its a very reliable piece of software.I contacted storage craft to see whether there were any discounts or offers available to purchase another license for my laptop as it is very expensive,but there weren't any, and storagecraft doesn't seem to offer any discounts when asked, like some other software vendors might.Because of this i purchased macrium reflect instead for my laptop.Making the recovery boot disk is very easy ,as is backup and restore.I tried the restore today ,which went without any problems.If money is no object then i would go for shadowprotect,if it is then certainly look at macrium reflect.
ellison

 

No, ShadowProtect incrementals are very fast. The snapshot is often less than 10 seconds and the incremental can be written to an internal disk in about 40 seconds, depending on how much data was changed. The only sectors backed up are those that are changed from the previous backup. If you backup every 30-60 minutes the number of changes are relatively small (as long as you don't defrag between them!).

 

They do offer a package of 3 licenses, which is something they did not have previously. Still not cheap, but it's fast and reliable and no need to create BartPE CDs.

 

Could I trouble you to explain this? I took a look at the website for the program and they talk about automatically deleting incrementals (or was it differentials) but nothing about collapsing. To me collapsing means, in effect, consolidating. From the description on the website it sounds like there are similarities between this program and RollBack Rx with the exception that you can store these images to an external drive whereas with Rx you cannot. Also, it sounds like the snapshots take a bit longer to create with Shadow Protect than with Rx and restores are more involved.

PS: is it possible to do a restore from within Windows or do you have to use the restore disk? Also you mention that it takes apx 7 seconds to create an incremental image of a 28 gig drive, does this interfere with the PCs ability to function while using resource intense programs such as PhotoShop or CAD programs?

 

+1 Another vote for Shadow Protect here !

 

Thank you for the info,,,,,I like the sound of this program,,,the thing I like about Rx is its ability to protect on a continuous basis (almost) I chose it as a replacement for Roxio/Norton GoBack, which really did provide for continuous backup of all files versions albeit for a limited time and at some cost to the PC) and its worked well but I would like snaps at shorter intervals. It sounds like ShadowProtect will give me a better capability in this respect. I also really like the idea of collapsing images. Now I am in effect doing this manually with Rx and it would be great to have it happen automatically to the time frame I set. I will give this program a try on a new PC I will be having built. Thanks again.

 

What image size does your 28Gb partition create ?

 

@guest:
https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=240063
plus the info re Shadowprotect = a guided tour of options.
(only a) few supporters for Acronis or Ghost there