True Image versus the competition

Let's see if I have this right: First, you can't understand why I have multiple imaging programs installed. Later, you wrote there's nothing wrong with using a second backup imaging program and recommend it to your friends.

Any program or device can fail, no matter how reliable it was in the past. I've never had a complete hard drive failure but I recognize it's a common event so I prepare for it. Under the assertion you originally advanced, I shouldn't need any backup imaging program since I have FD-ISR installed and there's a procedure I can follow (which I recently described in another thread) using FD-ISR to restore my system after a primary hard drive failure. Once, after trialing two different defragmentation programs, I experienced a catastrophic FD-ISR failure; FD-ISR wouldn't function after rebooting and it was impossible to uninstall. Paragon was no help since I'd just updated my Paragon backup images and they contained whatever error caused FD-ISR to fail. The only thing that saved my bacon was a single ATI image made days earlier. That event emphasized to me that any program can fail and the need for more hard drive space to store additional backup images.

As I already explained, I received free licenses for half of my backup imaging programs so why not use them so long as there are no conflicts? Some of the redundant backup programs I use (or used) have limitations. If I should ever have to reformat my PCs, I'll lose the full versions of Macrium Reflect because I received the licenses from giveawayoftheday.com. For DiscWizard to work, there must be a Seagate hard drive installed or connected to the PC. So it would only function on my Vista PC when I connected a Seagate external drive to it, even if the image I wanted to restore was located on my second internal drive. One of the advantages of an external drive is the ability to store it at a different location so your backups are protected in case your PC is stolen or destroyed. But if my Seagate drive wasn't handy or it failed then I wouldn't have been able to use DiscWizard. That, along with the ability to make scheduled backups, is why I eventually purchased ATI v2009.

I have multiple programs of various types (CD/DVD burning, secure file erasing, tuneup utilities, digital image editing, etc.) on my PCs which you might not approve of. Some perform similar tasks as other programs and some have specific features I like. While several of my programs are redundant and aren't essential, I configure my PCs to suit myself, not pandlouk.

I agree with bgoodman4 on this.

 

I did not say that you should buy another aconis or symantec. I only said that if you decide in the future buy another version of either company go for their pro versions. They are much more reliable than their home versions.

As example I'll give you paragon.
Paragon Drive Backup 9.0 Personal Edition
Paragon Drive Backup 9.0 Enterprise Server Edition
As you can see both home and enterprise are based at the same core engine build. 8667_001
The companies pay more attention on their enterprise versions, since they are intended for corporate use, and that market does not accept reliability problems. A corrupt image can mean a great loss of time and money.

Paragon, StorageCraft and other companies use the same core engine on their personal and professional versions.

And this is the main reason that their home versions are more reliable, than those of acronis and symantec.They pass through a more thorough testing (a bug in the interface or the schedule is not important; the imaging part of the app is the one should be bug free)

Panagiotis

 

As I said:

because they have a high probability to need their alternative backups.

Imaging applications should never fail restoring an image, when they have taken and verified it succesfully. If you cannot understand it then you should not talk about reliability... People depend on those programs for not loosing their data, family digital memories and their documents. where exactly is failing to deliver what they promise is acceptable?

Panagiotis

 

Having used three versions of ATI on two PCs for over three years, I've only contacted Acronis support regarding two issues (and the last one quickly turned out to be a Windows, not ATI, matter). During the same period, I had to contact Paragon support several times regarding a variety of problems. I like Paragon products (and Paragon support) or I wouldn't be using them on my PCs, but in my experience I haven't found Paragon's imaging software to be any more reliable than Acronis.

If for some inexplicable reason I was forced to choose only one backup imaging program (and money wasn't a factor) then I'd pick ShadowProtect based on reports by Peter2150 and other folks whose opinions I value. However, given the choice of just using SP or having multiple licenses for ATI, Paragon and/or Macrium Reflect, I'd select the latter option.

When did I ever suggest it was acceptable for imaging applications to fail when restoring an image? Why are ATI critics so keen to attribute remarks to me which I never made or ludicrous beliefs which I've never held?

FD-ISR failed on one of my PCs as a consequence of some bizarre problem evidently caused by one or two disk defragmentation programs I'd just tried. From a conflict with other software or a hardware incompatibility or a score of other reasons any type of software can experience a failure. If you think users have never experienced failures with SP then you've never visited their forum.

I've never had an unsuccessful image restoration with ATI, Paragon or Macrium Reflect. If I ever do experience such a failure with ATI, I'll make sure and tell you and RAD. In the meantime, kindly cease making fallacious comments about what I understand or don't understand about "reliability" since you obviously haven't got a clue.

 

Can you imagine what can happen after a backup is made.even it verified good at the time,i guess you know the answer.
I myself have multiple copies of the same backup/image on different media.
If in case i have to restore an image but it proof to be corrupt then i can get his ''twin'' to restore from a different media. I never ran in problems rest. an image but better safe then sorrow.

 

Then what do you meant with this?

And for your information I'm not an ATI crtitic. Their true image pro and enterprise versions are as good as their competitors apps. Their home version is not.

And yes, I had failures with paragon 7, 8 and 8.5 versions and did not reccommended them either. Actually I reccommended Acronis true image home 8 and 9 at the time.
But now paragon 2009 version is far more reliable than the last ATI home editions.

Sorry Huppi but is not about imagining what could happen. When I test an imaging app. I perform at least 30 backups/verifications which are tested right away after they are created.
And with ATI home I had 6 failures. 2 in full backups and 4 in incrementals.(made in normal conditions)

With ATI Echo workstation I only had 1 failure on an incremental (under heavy disk activity). According to you, do they have the same reliability?

Panagiotis

 

I meant exactly what I wrote; that's a bad habit of mine. I believe any reasonable, objective person will recognize my statement is perfectly true. Do you have a problem comprehending English? Can you cite any program or piece of hardware which has never failed for some user?

It's precisely because I recognize software and hardware can fail that I have FD-ISR and three backup imaging programs on my PCs and use internal and external hard drives to store backup images and archive snapshots. Recognizing the objective reality that any program/device may fail is not remotely akin to your specious, unfounded assertion I regarded unsuccessful image restorations to be acceptable. Nothing could be further from the truth and I never stated or implied any such thing. It was reprehensible for you to make such a ridiculous allegation.

I must be doing something wrong. Not only have I never experienced image restoration failures with three versions of ATI, I've never had such failures with Paragon v8 SE, v8.5 SE or v8.51 Pro. There's probably some connection between this lack of image restoration failures and why I got the notion the programs might be reliable.

Wait a minute! You experienced a failure with ATI Echo workstation yet still recommend it? Are you the same pandlouk who wrote, "Imaging applications should never fail restoring an image"? Yet you recommend a program even after you suffered a failure with it? As they say in the UK, I'm gobsmacked.

 

One advice Paniagotis and Karen : PM eachother !!

I you like going to war do it behind the scenes !

 

No problem in comprehending english.
I guess you have a big problem comprehending and testing applications. For your information Image for Dos and Drivesnapshot never fail to restore a succefully taken and verified image. Paragon 2009, shadowprotect, drive image xml, nero backitup never fail to restore an image.

Ok, I think everyone understood that you are an FD-ISR user. No reason to repeat it.
We also understood, that you expect your imaging applications may fail restoring and image and that is not acceptable to you either; good for you. And this is the reason that you use multiple imaging apps.

Nothing wrong. it depends on how you use your pc, what kind of disk activity has during the backup procedure, if you use full backups,differential or incrementals, etc. If you only use full backups you would have about 5-10% of probabilities of getting the verification bug.

A failure of an incremental taken, under heavy disk activity, is not a big deal. The restoration went through but the system partition was damaged. I could still open the image and get most of the recently created files.
And, well how should I put it... you should be gobsmacked not by my statement, but by your ignorance...

And for being even more gobsmacked, I'll tell you that under heavy activity Acronis Echo is inferior only to Symantec backup Exec and Storagecraft ShadowProtect.

Panagiotis

 

I was accused on a public forum of saying things I never said and holding a belief I never held; an opinion directly opposite to my actual belief. I regret you think it's inappropriate for me to respond on the same forum in which my remarks and opinions were deliberately distorted. Evidently, you and I have a different reaction to lies being posted about us. If you dislike the content of my posts then my "advice" to you is to ignore them.

So when you falsely accused me of saying things I never said and holding a belief exactly the opposite of my real one it was an intentional, malicious act on your part and not a problem with English comprehension? Thanks for explaining that.

Your "guess" is wrong. At least you're consistent.

Never? Oh, please. Kindly spend some time reviewing posts in the SP forum then get back to me with your apology. At the risk of repeating myself, any program can fail.

http://forum.storagecraft.com/Community/forums/8.aspx

Edit to add: I just reviewed the Paragon and Nero Backitup forums and found no shortage of problems reported, including failed image restorations which you assert never happen. I'm still looking for a dedicated support forum for drive image xml.

Then why did you previously, baselessly, accuse me of thinking failed image restorations are somehow "acceptable"?

A failure which resulted in a damaged system partition is "not a big deal" in your opinion? OK, if you say so.

Is that the same ShadowProtect which you claimed never fails to restore an image despite numerous posts by users in the SP forum detailing failures which you asserted never occur?

My "ignorance" (which you predictably neglected to elaborate) doesn't extend to falsely attributing statements and opinions to other people they've never expressed or held; claiming programs never experience failures when their own support forums prove otherwise; and, after stating a failed image restoration is never acceptable to later assert such an event is "not a big deal" when it suits your purpose.

 

Please evaluate Drive snapshotand Image for windows both (esp DS) of which i consider to be the best softwares for imaging.Ds is the least bloated of imaging apps.Any bartpe and any boot disk can work with DS.

Out of 100 times i restored ,it has not failed even once.

As for the previous discusiion ,i feel a drive imaging app can never be perfect , but it should have acceptable failure rate like 5 in 1000 restores.

 

Agree 100%.

What's the bottom line ?

When all the companies would have dedicated support forums, then we will really know with how many problems they are faced to.

Except Acronis, no other company have their own forum, and especially hosted on some site like Wilders, Gladiator, Castlecops and e.t.c.

Does Paragon have their forum, RAD? Can you point to their support forum?

The problems that people have with other imaging application are almost never posted, except in such threads and when the posts are full with tensibility.


What is the purpose of the support forums.

Go to forums for other group of software and you will see the same situation.
Go to Antivirus forums : BitDefender, Avast, Kaspersky.
Go to Firewall forums : Outpost, Comodo, Online Armour.

In every dedicated support forum for every single product you will see the same "image":
There are people who are posting only their problems or in some situations particular questions.

In 90% of the posts for all the software that is out there in the world you will see only postings for problems.
So for an "Average Joe" user, who just discovered some program and visited some forum it would be shock to see how many problem there are.

Only 10% of the people, and if not less are giving positive feedback.

They are probably many users out there which are quite satisfied that are using some particular software i.e. e.g. (Kaspersky, Dr.Web, Avast), but those to go to the particular forum to give gratitude, positive feedback, appreciation is ranging from 1 to 10 % from all the users.


There are 2 groups of people:

1. For first group ATI is working perfectly almost all the time. ( Or they just have pure luck).

2. Second group of people are those who have bad experience with ATI, and by some reason including hardware or software incompatibility, ATI doesn't works.

First group know that every product (Paragon, ATI, IFW) that can work for someone or can make problems for others.

Second group can't understand how others aren't understanding that ATI sucks.
I mean probably the moderators aren't responding to Acronis forum or to e-mails because they have better job to do.

Probably Acronis staff is registered as normal members and they are wasting their time convincing the people that they are normal people (not ATI stuff) and that ATI products doesn't have any problems and that they are working perfectly.

Yea, you know, it's just propaganda . Not marketing or PR .


Sure that there are better programs than ATI, as stated before, including if the price is not the problem.

 

Ah, I understand,,,that makes a lot of sense. Thanks.

 

WOW, some heat being generated here. I would request of everyone that a bit of latitude be allowed each other. Its far too easy to take things to heart and then have an escalation. Everyone is entitled to their opinion and if we do not allow that then there is no room for discussion. After all the forum is all about sharing information and opinions. If you disagree with someones opinion thats fine,,,even good, but nobody should feel that a disagreement in opinion is equivalent to a personal attack. If you do and you respond harshly then actual personal attacks are likely to follow. In this case, as in most where I see this sort of thing happening, I don't think either party is right or wrong, its simply a matter that you have different points of view.

Now with all that said there are times when people do cross the line. When that happens its easier and more constructive to just drop out of the discussion rather than foster ill will that may persist across threads.

Anyway, thats my opinion and I hope it does not offend anyone.

 

Are you serious? Plenty of software firms have their own support forums. Karen76 posted a link to ShadowProtect's forum.

I'm not RAD (and I derive considerable comfort from that fact), but, yes, Paragon does have their own support forum. Here's the link:

http://support.paragon-software.com/

What absolute nonsense! This blatant falsehood should offend the sensibilities of any reasonable person. So all the folks who post problems they've encountered using those imaging programs in their respective support forums are all liars? I'm sure my brother-in-law who recently experienced an image restoration failure with Paragon 2009 will be relieved to learn that no less an authority than pandlouk has established (without bothering to furnish an iota of proof) such failures never happen.

pandlouk concocted an outlandish notion (that it was fine for imaging programs to suffer image restoration failures) then tried to foist it as being Karen76's belief when she never suggested any such thing, just the opposite. If that's not despicable behavior, what do you call it?

Karen76 wrote, "Any program or device can fail, no matter how reliable it was in the past." I concur. IMHO that should be obvious but pandlouk couldn't accept her simple statement of fact.

He listed several imaging programs which he claimed never failed — despite irrefutable evidence to the contrary which any interested party can read for themselves. He falsely argued Karen76 thought image restoration failures were "acceptable" (something she never said) then endorsed a program with which he'd experienced an image restoration failure — then dismissed it as "not a big deal."

Accusing a person of saying something they never said (or even thought), rather than using facts and reason to defend a position, goes far beyond simply holding a different point of view. It's morally wrong. So is making outrageous claims which are demonstrably false.

 

O.K. I understand you.

Probably i did not express my self correctly.

I know that most of the companies have their forums, but they aren't exposed so much.

Look at the Acronis Forum. There are 1047 pages with 30 threads per page = 31410 threads.

At Paragon forum i can see around 1000 Threads (not counting for german language) .

The number of threads by itself doesn't tell anything, but i'm pretty damn sure if someone visit all the imaging forums it wouldn't find so many threads and posts like at Acronis forum.

With so many threads, and most of the them are critics(problems), yes, someone can conclude that ATI is bad.

Thanks for the link. I wasn't aware of their forum.

 

That was the case.

I'm glad I bought ATI v9 a week or so before I discovered the Acronis forum here on Wilders. Had I previously read the mostly unfavorable (I'm being polite here) comments directed against ATI, I never would have touched it ... and that would have been my loss.

While I realize many people have experienced problems with ATI, it's worked fine for me. I deplore Acronis's history of bringing out new versions which contain bugs but I skip most of the difficulties by waiting until newer builds are released before I purchase the latest version.

I'm frankly astonished by some of the comments I read on the Acronis forum. I can't fathom why people rail about not being able to install or use a program when they didn't even bother to try the trial version and see if it would work on their PC before they bought it. People complain about ATI not working on Windows 7. The final version of Windows 7 is months away from being released and Acronis can hardly be reasonably faulted for ATI not being compatible with an operating system which didn't even exist at the time ATI was programmed. Then there are members determined to use ATI in the most wacky manner possible then cry when things don't go right.

I only use ATI to make full, manual and scheduled backup images stored on hard drives other than my primary and it performs those tasks perfectly on my PCs. I don't want it to erase files, store images on DVDs, wash my truck or fetch my slippers.

You're very welcome.

 

You obviously don't care for the content of my posts or you wouldn't be objecting to them. It's a pity you evince no apparent concern against overt prevarications and other amoral statements, just my unwillingness to passively tolerate them even when they're directed at me.

I was libeled by pandlouk on a "public open forum", not in private. Did you express your opinion about my posts in a PM or on a "public open forum"? No, no hypocrisy there.

IMHO, "wrong or right" has meaning everywhere. I endeavor to do and say what I believe is right and to speak out against what I know to be wrong. You may add that to the list of differences between us.

When a person falsely accuses me of saying or thinking something, especially something absurd, I'm not going to roll over and play dead. When a person claims (without a shred of substantiation) several backup imaging programs never have image restoration failures when common sense and their own support forums refute such a ludicrous assertion, I'm going to point that out ... even if doing so annoys you.

 

The main reason for me for skipping to buy True Image is the stories I read about files that mysteriously disappear during backup/after restore. For a backup program this is the one thing that I NEVER wanna read in the problems people post.

 

I lost a partition after using Acronis TI 2 years back then i had use Acronids Disk director to get it back. Acronis products work really mysteriously.

 

I can of a way in which that might happen. Not exactly mysterious and could happen to any imaging program.

example - you attempt to restore a full image of C: from an external USB drive.
The first thing Acronis does is to delete the target. Then it restores the image.
A faulty USB cable is quite capable for producing what you experienced.

 

The only ONE reason why i comment is that almost all people visiting Wilders are in search or looking for knowledge to get around with their computer problems,in one way to declare inconsistencies in other person statements is good and this will benefit us all but endlessly continue in this endeavor and make it rather a personal fight is out of context as to the original purpose of this thread '' True Image versus the competition ''
Can you imagine that some people angry awaiting for a solution to fix their computer disaster are not relieved at all to follow this discussion,but then again you and i are entitled to spread our opinion about anything but it would be nice that this thread will continue along the lines of its original purpose and the very reason of existence of Wilders in general......spreading know how that will benefit anybody in search of this knowledge.

Note : my remarks are not about technical knowledge or lack of it but rather about emotions(how fair they maybe) that eventually are killing the thread and as such closing the door for people looking for solutions.

 

Actually, yes, they do have a support forum.
It is right here:
http://support.paragon-software.com/index.php?

Also, I made sure to contact their support personel during my evaluation period just to make sure they had real people and not just an automated email response. (They answer questions quickly and accurately.)

I recognize that it is true that support forums will inherently be full of PROBLEMS.
But any reasonable person can look at a forum and see if it has a few problems that are spanning a period of time, and if there seem to be reasonable answers to the problems, or if the board is flooded every day with a new group of problems and people complaining about nonexistant official product support.

Note, ONCE AGAIN that I will refuse to get into personal bickering and insults. I expressed my opinion, and now I just ONCE AGAIN ask people to look at and compare the Acronis forum with others. I trust that reasonable people can make reasonable judgements when allowed to be exposed to the facts.

BINGO !
The only reason for a backup prohgram is ACCURATE RELIABLE BACKUP SECURITY. That is its main reason for existence. If it doesn't do that reliably in the vast majority of cases, then it is a worthless piece of crap....no matter how "occassionally helpful" the support people are. Any program couold have a rare hiccup. But complaints of this nature should be EXTREMELY RARE. Visit the other backup programs forums and websites and make up your own mind.