Paragon Software has put several of their products on sale at 50% off until December 15, after which they will go to 40% off until December 22, and 30% off until December 31.
http://www.paragon-s...09-Xmas-offer-3.htmlIn particular, Hard Disk Manager Suite 2010 (with free upgrade to HDM Suite 2011) for $24.99 and Hard Disk Manager Pro 2010 for $49.99.
Paragon Hard Disk Manager Pro has become my first choice for backups because it combines the functionality of many programs (backup & recovery, disk partitioning, virtualization etc.), although their interface doesn't always make it easy to find some of the more advanced features. I have found it to be far more reliable and stable than other backup and imaging programs I have used, notably Acronis True Image.
The Suite has most of the features of Pro but does not include virtualization management. See
http://www.paragon-s...onal/comparison.html for details.
Since HDM Pro makes it trivially easy to convert any Paragon backup disk image into a VM for VMware Workstation, VirtualBox or Virtual PC, I consider it to be the better deal, even at full price. You can buy the virtualization manager separately, and it is great for P2V or V2P, but it's as a combination with backup imaging that it really shines, allowing you to make working VMs from your backups much faster and more reliably than the utilities provided for that purpose by VMware and other virtualization systems.
