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Author Topic: Information about Paragon Drive Backup  (Read 16324 times)

JeffK

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Information about Paragon Drive Backup
« on: April 17, 2005, 06:16 AM »
Just to fill in on the functionality of Paragon's Drive Backup as mentioned in the review.

To make a backup of a complete disk one chooses the menu item "Hard Disk"  One then has the option to make a copy of the hard disk to another hard disk, make a image of the hard disk to the same or another partion or disk (this image may be split into files of equal size for subsequent saving to CD or DVD media), or make an image of the hard disk directly to CD's or DVD's.

To browse a backup volume one right clicks on the archive in the lower panel and choose "Browse Archive".  One can review or restore a partition or files by doing this.

I agree with the reviewer that this latter function is certainly not as user friendly as it could be.  Also while I have not viewed Acronis Trueimage for a while I can imagine it is more user friendly than the Paragon product, especially for more inexperienced computer users.  The ability to view backups just like you can view original files and folders is a very good idea.

Jeff

mouser

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Re: Information about Paragon Drive Backup
« Reply #1 on: April 17, 2005, 06:29 AM »
thanks jeff, i will correct the review in terms of the backup of the entire hard disk; strange that you cant select it visually the way you can to backup individual partitions.

in terms of browsing archives - being able to mount and then search and view the contents of an image as if it was a normal hard drive is unbelievably useful when you actually have to find a file..  In this respect Acronis is just way beyond the competition.

JeffK

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Other commentary on incremental backup options
« Reply #2 on: April 17, 2005, 06:44 AM »
I found the commentary of Mark Taw on some file copy type programs useful.

http://www.marktaw.c...nds-FreeBackups.html

Jeff

mouser

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Re: Information about Paragon Drive Backup
« Reply #3 on: April 17, 2005, 06:53 AM »
i'll add a link to it from guide now.

mouser

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Re: Information about Paragon Drive Backup
« Reply #4 on: April 17, 2005, 07:19 AM »
i just went back and checked out paragon again - and it seems i was quite wrong about backing up the entire hard drive, in fact the gui works identically, its just a little hard to see that you can select the "enclosing" hard drive in order to back the whole thing up.  you can also select form the left hand tree as well.

i'm ammending the review to this effect and emphasizing the fact the i actually prefer this style of interface over the wizard interface of the others.  i think paragon may definitely be a contender for best drive imaging tool in the future.

mouser

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Re: Information about Paragon Drive Backup
« Reply #5 on: April 17, 2005, 07:43 AM »
in light of my mistake i went back and had another look at paragon, and decided to move it up on par with Acronis and DriveImage in the review.  i think it still needs some polish, but i'm liking Paragon more and more; with some continued improvement Paragon could be the one to beat in the future.

nudone

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Re: Information about Paragon Drive Backup
« Reply #6 on: July 28, 2005, 02:54 PM »
i'm sat here watching a very slow progress bar gradually make its way across the screen as 'Paragon Drive Backup' attempts to restore my main system partition.

this is the first time i've used the program in DOS (can't get into windows at the moment) and i have to say it will be the last time i use it.

it looks like it's going to take well over an hour to restore the 6 gig of system data - it doesn't take anywhere near that long when starting the program from within windows. from what i've seen 'Acronis True Image' doesn't take anywhere near this length of time when running from the boot CD either.

another complaint is that i've had to do this from floppy - there's no option to make a boot CD with Paragon. and to top it all off, the interface you are presented with when using the DOS version of the program is so ugly and 'DOS' like that i'm not even sure i've selected the correct options - i'm probably destroying the wrong partition because of this. brilliant.

whilst making the boot floppy it looked like you could make a script for some kind of auto backup/restore process. don't worry dear little Paragon, i won't be troubling myself any further with your horrible program.

(how did i get into this mess in the first place - i let 0&0 defrag my system partition on booting up. this seemed to totally wreck my ms office and adobe programs i tried to run - no problem i thought, i'll just put everything back using my backup image. yeah right. i coudn't even access my secondary hard drive. oh joy to the world.)
« Last Edit: July 28, 2005, 02:59 PM by nudone »

mouser

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Re: Information about Paragon Drive Backup
« Reply #7 on: July 28, 2005, 03:34 PM »
 >:(

damn i'm sorry.. sounds painful - these backup disasters can be so upsetting.

nudone

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Re: Information about Paragon Drive Backup
« Reply #8 on: July 28, 2005, 04:56 PM »
ha ha ha, it didn't even work.

windows now complains that i haven't got a registry and blue screens half way through boot up.

whilst waiting for all this to FAIL i see that Paragon have released Drive Backup 7. i suspect that will have an improved interface and CD support.

JeffK

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Re: Information about Paragon Drive Backup
« Reply #9 on: July 28, 2005, 05:08 PM »
nudone, you have made me very nervous.  Coincidentally I have just upgraded to ver. 7.

Jeff

nudone

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Re: Information about Paragon Drive Backup
« Reply #10 on: July 29, 2005, 03:40 AM »
had a bit of a brainwave before going to be bed and realised whilst doing the DOS based restore that i probably neglected to select part of the backup image as it's spread over 4 separate files.

just gone through the process again this morning and everything worked fine. so it was my error not the paragon program.

it's a bit rubbish, though, that the software didn't realise i had missed out part of the image file and it did take over an hour to perform the complete restore.

i had avoided using Acronis True Image as it seemed to need extra prompting on my system for it to get through the system reboot and restore process. after all this incredible waste of time i've had with Paragon Drive Backup i think i'll be making the switch over to Acronis - should have done it from the start.