Windows Restore replacement in Backup & Recovery

Discussion in 'Paragon Drive Backup Product Line' started by Aeneas, Mar 21, 2013.

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  1. Aeneas

    Aeneas Registered Member

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    How can the amount of data saved by Backup & Recovery product be limited
    to only the data necessary to restore Windows 7, after a virus or malware attack ?
    I tried the product recently and it stored 263 GBytes on another partition
    after I told it to Exclude numerous extensions.
     
  2. seekforever

    seekforever Registered Member

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    I never fool with exclusions etc. but IMO, the smart way to use an imaging program is to have one partition for the OS&Applications and a different one or more for the data.

    This way you can make faster images and blow away the OS&Applications partition at any time without worry about losing anything.
     
  3. Aeneas

    Aeneas Registered Member

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    Throwing away 285 GBytes and a whole partition for this program ?
    That is absurd.
    The Windows Registry and device drivers should not consume more than 1 GByte.
    And the user should be able to periodically perform the save of these 1 GByte or less contents along with the date of save, whenever he chooses, such as just before installing some recently downloaded suspicious program.

    If this Backup & Recovery program is not capable of this saving and restore,
    which other products are capable of replacement of Windows Restore ?
     
    Last edited: Mar 21, 2013
  4. seekforever

    seekforever Registered Member

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    Who's throwing it away? You just back up the data independently of the OS or you can even back it all up together. Having said that, you can investigate the incremental or differential backup features of Paragon.

    Paragon is a backup program not a change-tracker. These do exist as a replacement for Windows Restore.
     
  5. Aeneas

    Aeneas Registered Member

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    I do not see anywhere in the user interface of Backup & Recovery any evidence that the developers know specifically which files in Windows constitute the Registry or that they show knowledge of how to reinstate the Registry and device driver context in the PC to Restore the PC to the operational state it was in at the time of the Save (i.e. before some sort of Malware/Virus attack).

    Any user can hook up an external USB drive and use dual Windows Explorer windows to copy all of their files to a separate drive for safekeeping, themselves, without using this program.
    The value-added which must be produced by this program must be that it knows how to Restore the Windows OS functionality the user Saved.
    Otherwise, the program is valueless.
     
  6. wptski

    wptski Registered Member

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    Are you trying to say that it "won't" fully restore a PC to the state it was in at the time that the archive was created?
     
  7. Aeneas

    Aeneas Registered Member

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    That is unproven. The issue before that is the huge amount of data which this program wants to consume in the backup process.
    My first experience with it is that it stored 280 GBytes.
    It should store less than 1 GByte, to store the Registry and other trinkets necessary for the reestablishment of Windows functionality to an earlier Saved state.
    And storing that 280 GBytes wasted around 11 hours.
     
  8. wptski

    wptski Registered Member

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    11 hourso_O Are you making a clone/copy or archive?

    My 750GB with 160GB which I haven't timed but it less than a hour for sure. I had some nasty malware, three system restore points failed and my 12 days HDM12S restored it. The only thing that gets lost is the Windows Update list which may have been discussed here at one time.

    I was doing a repair install of W7 over a period of about a week where I backed up and restored four times at different stages as I reinstalled software.
     
    Last edited: Mar 22, 2013
  9. seekforever

    seekforever Registered Member

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    Yes, they certainly can do file backups and then they can spend a lot of time trying get it to boot.

    The intent of a program like Paragon is to make an image of your disk, partition or partitions and then be able to restore it if something goes wrong. In the case of a totally dead disk it allows restoring the complete system to a new bare-metal disk.

    If I had a virus I'd sooner reload a clean image than assume that a few selected files took care of the total problem. The same goes for software testing.

    If this isn't what you want then look elsewhere, for those of us who use it, it is what we want.
     
  10. Aeneas

    Aeneas Registered Member

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    The methodology you describe sounds like would destroy any numerous good files you created between the last save and the restore. It is true that without destroying all intervening files, the new virus might remain on your system, in its pre-actuated state -- i.e. before you ran the downloaded program containing the virus.
    However, that gives the user a chance to figure out what caused the virus, which is not always obvious, and to not run that downloaded program again.

    Reinstalling Windows and then reinstalling all the applications you have paid for is a major undertaking and can take a whole day to find all items with their Keys/Codes and reinstall them and then subsequently download and install all of the updates those applications and the Windows Operating System may have had since the original installation.
    The primary purpose of programs like this is to limit the need to reinstall everything on your system.
    Just to clarify: if the user is forced to reinstall Windows, then he is forced to reinstall every single application and device driver which he had installed on top of the original Windows.
     
    Last edited: Mar 22, 2013
  11. Aeneas

    Aeneas Registered Member

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    The drive partition I chose to back up was 900 GBytes, of which around 420 GBytes was used.
    Running on a Q6600 quad processor 2.4 GHz.
    It took around 11 hours to save all the data.
    You are saying Windows Update configuration files are destroyed by this backup/restore capability, preventing Windows Update from working in the future ?
     
  12. wptski

    wptski Registered Member

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    No you don't lose that at all. I may have put my foot in my mouth here! Sure, you would lose the installed WUP installed as you revert back to an earlier date but Windows just shows them as uninstalled and you reinstall. IIRC and maybe I don't that there was some issue minor issue with WUP but maybe I'm wrong.

    I had no problem, WUP ran and reinstalled every update on the 12 day old backup that I restored.

    Intel Core i7 at 2.9GHz but that's to a USB 3.0 HD. That 11 hours sounds like a way too long time.
     
    Last edited: Mar 22, 2013
  13. seekforever

    seekforever Registered Member

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    Yes it would but that is why I put the OS/Apps on a separate partition and keep any important data files elsewhere. If you have to revert to a few weeks old image of Windows as a rule the only thing you are missing are the Windows Updates and maybe an app or two. Personal data files are a different matter and they are the most important files to backup because you can't get them anywhere else. My data files are backed up by a different program every night. Note that some people schedule Paragon to image their drives and use it as a primary backup for all their files but I don't.

    That is why we image. You don't have to reinstall anything other than what was not current in the archive. I'm not sure of exactly what you are saying but if you are saying you have to reinstall Windows and then the applications etc, that is not correct. Everything is in the image and in fact formatting the drive before restoring is even a waste of time.

    A bit about the Windows Update file that is not preserved in an image. It has no ill-effect on Windows Update. Update finds which updates are not present and installs them - it doesn't try to reinstall all of them, just the ones that came out after the image was made.
     
  14. Aeneas

    Aeneas Registered Member

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    I told it around 10 Excluded extensions, trying to reduce the total data copied. Maybe it takes a long time processing exclusions. Around 2,000,000 files total.
    To support Windows OS restore, there should be known targeted files within Windows OS, its Registry and device drivers which this program should know about, and only those files should be saved.
    Such saves should take 10 minutes at the most.
    This system and its hard disk drives transfer sustained around 30-40 MBytes/second or approx 110 GBytes/hour, from one drive to another, depending on the sizes of the files.
     
    Last edited: Mar 22, 2013
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