I've not been happy with Macrium Reflect Free, and perhaps their paid versions..

[peter.s]

...are not that superior either?

This is a spin-off from http://www.donationcoder.com/forum/index.php?topic=40074.0 discussing MR update from 5 to 6.

"I'm a big fan of macrium reflect.  Very fast, very stable, no bloat."

MR seems to be the premier backup-and-recovery sw on the market as far as the paid version is concerned (which is discussed above).

As for their free version, though, I only can encourage possible users to refrain from it, not because it was really bad (in fact, I never knew and don't know), but because it does not seem to offer any functionality going beyond what less-renowned competitors offer, in their respective free versions, or more precisely, it does offer even less than they do.

In fact, I went back to Paragon Backup and Recovery Free, where I can start to reinstall of my backup from within running Windows (which for that is than ended, then Linux will loaded for the rewrite of c: (or whatever), and then Windows is loaded again) - why should I fiddle around with doing lots of things manually, with MR (Free) if I can have this repeated os swapping, both by Paragon or EaseUS (and perhaps by others), done automatically?

MR (Free), on the other hand, did the backup (onto my hdd), and when I tried to reinstall that backup (after some bad experiences, I do such tries immediately after the original backup now, not weeks or months afterwards and hoping for the best in-between), it told me I didn't have an external reinstall device (or whatever they call it) from which to run the backup.

After this quite negative experience with MR (Free), I'm musing, of course, why MR (paid) is touted the way it is, since from the moment on you're willing to pay, you'll get incremental/differential backup/restore, from their competitors, too (Paragon, EaseUS and also Acronis: this latter I never touched, having read about very bad experiences from other users, allegedly having lost data with Acronic, and with several versions that is).

Also, MR did not seem anything "fast" to me, not faster than Paragon or EaseUS anyway, and at least for Paragon, I can say it's perfectly stable (I once lost data with their partition tool, but that was my fault, triggered by quite awful, quite ambiguous visuals in the respective Paragon program: So today I use Paragon for backup and EaseUS for partitioning).

And as an aside, MR even has got its own wikipedia entry, of which the wikipedia staff is far from being happy (and they say so), and which contains some direct links to the MR site where you would have expected links to less seller-specific info.

And to say it all, MR, on their homepage, currently advises you to update from 4 to 5, whilst above, it's said that 6 is imminent (?), and that updating from 5 to 6 is NOT free for v. 5 owners.

All this makes me think that perhaps MR do some very good pr and are able to create some hype, whilst at the end of the day, it's just a very regular, decent product which succeeded in realizing higher prices than their competitors are able to realize, by that hype.

If MR (paid) really has some usp(s), please name them; their free version at least is a lesser thing than their contenders' free products.

[cranioscopical]

I have no wish to enter into a detailed analysis of what does or does not work in various pieces of backup software. My own experience with Macrium Reflect has been entirely satisfactory, and that's good enough for me. 

[40hz]

I have no wish to enter into a detailed analysis of what does or does not work in various pieces of backup software. My own experience with Macrium Reflect has been entirely satisfactory, and that's good enough for me.  

Same for me. And same here. I've not encountered any problems with Macrium Reflect. It's always worked as advertised for me.

[mouser]

Also, MR did not seem anything "fast" to me, not faster than Paragon or EaseUS anyway, and at least for Paragon, I can say it's perfectly stable (I once lost data with their partition tool, but that was my fault, triggered by quite awful, quite ambiguous visuals in the respective Paragon program: So today I use Paragon for backup and EaseUS for partitioning).

It's hard for normal users to compare these kinds of products because we don't use them often enough to compare (I can say that in the past I used Acronis True Image, which is now a bloated beast that I would avoid).

Easus and Paragon both make great hard disk tools, and I cannot say Macrium is any better than those in any respect.  All I can say is that Macrium free version seems to work well, is reasonably fast, does not attempt to install other junk, doesn't have annoying nags, seems to be lightweight and stay out of the way when not being used.  And it also seems to be updated frequently (which may partly be a reflection of their success in the commercial marketplace).

[40hz]

re: Paragon. They make a fine partitioning tool. I own a copy. But I still think GParted is the single most useful and reliable tool out there for general drive partitioning work. It's FOSS software, very actively maintained and regularly updated - and it's free. This is the partitioner every Linux distro installer uses, so it's been extensively field-tested for reliability. I've never encountered any issues when using GParted. YMMV.

[peter.s]

Thanks for your points of view.

I

My point was not that MR is any bad, my point was, it's generally considered somewhat "superior", and I don't really know why it should be considered "superior", in comparison with its contenders. Also, my point was, marketing-wise, they do lots of things-good-for-them, but that doesn't translate into any advantage for the user.

II

As for speed, I'm positive, Macrium is NOT faster for creating full backups (since I did this consecutively and paid attention to that), and it even was (only) slightly slower; can't say for recreation of the backup since, as said, was not able to reinstall it.

As for the "as advertized" aspect, well, had I known the backup (from external hdd = second device anyway: I learned from bad experience) needed a special boot device (possibly even the backup itself, or then with lots of fuss getting to the backup, on a third device, incl. the comp itself), I would not have installed Macrium to begin with, and I didn't learn this very important detail neither from their site (could be "hidden" somewhere over there, probably, though), neither from quite numerous recommandations of Macrium where Macrium gets high (but quite unspecific) praise in web articles like "what is the best free backup-and-restore sw". Worse, Macrium did NOT tell me my backup would then, afterwards, been useless: It wrote the backup, but in the whole process of WRITING the backup, I did not get ANY info I also would have to create a boot device - they just told me so when I then wanted to use the backup, and this is unacceptable - thank god I wasn't in real need of that backup since it was a trial of mine only, also, as said, from bad experience beforehand.

III

GParted mentioned by 40hz is freeware; may consider to replace my EaseUS with it since EaseUS works faultless (did some real work with it), but is a little bit on the bloatware side - in fact, for Backup and Restore, I went back from EaseUS to Paragon (as said, both free versions) for that reason.

Also, Paragon leaves you alone with nagging for buying paid versions, which I think is really kind of them; whilst both EaseUS and Macrium DID nag me; on the other hand, it's clear as day they are entitled to some nagging after all since they make available really USEFUL sw for free.

IV

Re both speed and possible ease of use once it's all "running". Fact is, I only know the free versions where Macrium is inferior, not superior, by my standards (explained above, and without any new info why I perhaps could be wrong about that, so far). The irony in this is, would I KNOW the paid versions (again, Macrium is more expensive, also compare prices for more than one pc), I would very probably be willing to pay (perhaps even for Macrium), since it's in incremental / differential backup where possibly big differences between these contenders would appear, and which could perhaps even justify a price difference, but at the very least could ease up your choice between them. But it seems there is no valid comparison between those paid versions yet.

And even if Macrium-paid is superior, which is far from being established, saying Macrium-free is superior (and all the more so against the above evidence), would be called successful image transfer (Mercedes Benz S vs. A for a better known example), but smart people as we are should not fall for that.

[MilesAhead]

I learned the hard way that the "best" backup imaging program is the one that works on the system you bought it for.  I won't go into all the details but as I moved from XP to Vista to Vista x64 to Windows 7 then Windows 8.0 I found that I needed to change from Paragon to Macrium to EaseUS ToDo then back to Macrium, to get the correct hardware support for my systems.

I think most of the advanced features are important to System Administrators who run Servers and need to automate the backup processes.  For me having a PC or 2 I will run manual complete backups.  I don't even need incremental backup capability as I keep a small system partition.  Large data like movie images were kept on bare drives in drawers and inserted in USB docks when needed.

Right now with the transition to GPT and UEFI I feel that support is most important if you have system(s) that utilize those technologies.  If you have verified that a set of competing products do the basic job correctly then a feature comparison is relevant.  But it doesn't matter which bells and whistles are included if the basic backup/restore is not reliable and robust.


If you haven't already, take a look on TheFreeCountry as there is a page full of free imaging and cloning tools for the PC.

[wraith808]

If you haven't already, take a look on TheFreeCountry as there is a page full of free imaging and cloning tools for the PC.

Thanks for that link!

[Steven Avery]

I suggest always backing up two images from two different programs.  Also maybe using two different externals. If it is mission-critical, something off-site. And I only do images occasionally, once I have some from an early fairly clean install.

My fav is Macrium Reflect and Aomei Backupper. When I see a sale, I will likely buy a Pro version of Macrium.  Aomei has more features in the free and has made a big splash, without hiccups. I've been successful every time with Macrium and the interface is sweet, so they are my #1, and I've never felt nagged (if there is something there, it is not annoying.) Easeus has a few more failure reports, but that could be a big installed base. DriveImage XML (probably the highest % of problems of the software mentioned here) and Paragon and a couple of others should be fine.  The tech support of Paragon has occasionally been lauded (last I checked a while back.)

Unless you are doing software testing where you reload the OS frequently, I have never understood the emphasis on whether it takes 15 or 25 minutes.  After all, you are not being chained to the puter for a once in a blue moon install.  Play with the second puter. See how the Chromebook works. Play with the tablet.

Or sip some tea. Or take a walk...outside!

Aomei has a forum of sorts:
http://www.aomeitech.com/forum/discussions

Macrium has a strong forum.
http://support.macrium.com/

Paragon on Wilders - Official Paragon Support Forum
http://www.wilderssecurity.com/categories/official-paragon-support-forum.107/

EaseUS forum - backup
http://forum.easeus.com/viewforum.php?f=14

DriveImage XML, no native forum, lots of helpful discussion on tech forums.

And I suggest the frequent backups should simply be data backups, using a flexible data backup-program like:

Personal Backup 5
http://personal-backup.rathlev-home.de/index-e.html

Ascomp
http://www.backupmaker.com
English Forum
https://www.ascomp.de/forum/index.php?showforum=52

There is no need to do a full image just to have a small amount of data backup. Data backup is easy enough to do in the cloud as well. Those two look especially noteworthy (Personal Backup lacks the forum, yet it looks nicer) although I have used Backup4All paid, Cobian free, and some others.  

If the use is for business, then there is additional checking about licensing. Also your point:

"Macrium is more expensive, also compare prices for more than one pc"

What you really want is something like the security software, a special for a pro version on 3+ puters.  If you aren't simply happy with the free versions. I think the Aomei having extra features in the free should be noted.

Steven

[superboyac]

I suggest always backing up two images from two different programs.  Also maybe using two different externals. If it is mission-critical, something off-site. And I only do images occasionally, once I have some from an early fairly clean install.

never considered that.  I think that's a good idea to use different programs.  I definitely have in the past had an image that didn't work for some reason.  Reminds me of mouser's backup strategy document.

[tomos]

^ I've done images for two different programmes for a while (well one is via the Windows OS) - mainly because I havent tested either and would simply hope that at least one would work if a restore had to be made.
(FWIW I'm more careful with data backup - but that's easier to restore...)

[Steven Avery]

A bit more.

Just a note, I am really talking here about the home systems, usually one to five PCs floating around or with friends, each one different than the other.  You are using an image largely for malware and sluggish slowdown and disk fail (buying a replacement) and OS corruption protection.  There are other applications with cloning and biz use that are different.

================================

On most systems, one major limitation of the free version in restoring on the same computer, with an attempted restore after you change the partition size. My understanding: even if the partition could fit, a free version will plead ignorance and not try.

Here Aomei is said to be an exception:
"[2014-11-27] New Features in AOMEI Backupper 2.1 ...      Support for restoring system to a smaller partition."
http://www.backup-utility.com/new-features.html

This is one reason I would make Aomei one of the versions, if you using free versions.  
Note: I would still make a new image right after any partition changes.  The partition changes often have to do with a Linux multi-boot, or special partitions for data or whatevers.

================================

Another concern would be restoring an image on a totally different system. I think this is a sophisticated usage, and even when it is supported, it can be problematic.  As long as you do the data backup independently of the image, I think this can be bypassed as a consideration.

Do the data backups!

Do not rely fully on images for mission-critical, unless you have personally confirmed that the image can also be seen and restored file-by-file and is recent enough. For my take, I don't bother with that type of ongoing image check, my ongoing backups will be data file-by-file.  I like DriveHQ for remote because of a strong file manager and some support for mapping. Locally I have a Western Digital MyBook Essentials and some others.  

================================

Another element is creating a Windows PE disk, which I have found problematic.
Here Aomei says why they encourage this:
http://www.backup-utility.com/features/create-bootable-disc.html
Since the purpose of the created CD in my case is simply to restore a partition(s), I don't see any need for Windows PE.
It is good to have a stash of rescue CDs, even if you could conceivably create them on another puter in an emergency.

==================================

Those are my thoughts on this, with no special expertise.

Steven

[MilesAhead]

There's an advantage if you have several identical systems such as in a business environment.  You can assume if one software backs up and restores on one machine it will do the same on the others.  But for home use most people buy a new PC and try to get some bang for the buck with off the shelf systems that are on sale at Best Buy or whatnot.  There tends to be a few years between purchases.  This means the new PC will likely have some hardware or controllers a bit different than the old.

I made the mistake of assuming that if my backup imaging program worked on an HP desktop running Vista 32 bit it should not have a problem with the new system, an HP desktop running Vista x64.  But for some reason I still don't understand, the new system had a raid controller set to run in non-raid mode.  Why put it on and disable it I have no clue.  But the imaging software, when it came time to restore(I was trying out the new Windows 7) would only use "compatibility mode."  I was lucky it worked at all.  I got my Vista OS back.  But it had to run for 9 hours to do it. The Windows 7 install was flawed.  Leaving it on was not an option.

I changed to another software and it worked normally.  This is why I say the best is the one that works on your hardware.  If you have disparate machines I advise downloading the trial versions and actually doing restores before you buy.  Of course this in itself is risky since presumably none of these machines are "guinea pig" PCs and hosing the OS is not good.  So now we are back at the crux of the problem.  How do you know you can restore if the first backup image restore you try hoses things?  Maybe sector by sector image to an identical HD before you start?  I dunno'.  

I guess those more hardware oriented than I would know enough to check out all the ins and outs of the HD controller before buying the machine.

[Steven Avery]

Hi,

If you are backing up and restoring on one puter ...

And if you do it with multiple programs on multiple backup medium and have the appropriate rescue CD and the CD drive works (maybe USB is an alternate)

It would be hard to hose the system or even to have a fail on the partition restore.  No matter what you do e.g. to the c:\.  I think you would have to hose the master boot record, MBR, which may or may not be handled by the backup or a fix-MBR program.

The solution then would be either:
 a) installing OS CDs that came with the system
 b) burning OS CDs, since (a) may not occur anymore, which are installed
     or the puter may have a special partition for this
 c) having it done at a store with OS install equipment .. mine says they charge about $80 (assuming it is a legal PC.)
     granted .. I have tech-savvy stores here in Queens that are easy to work with

It is fun and a learning experience to do an OS install from scratch .... once.

Steven

[MilesAhead]

Hi,

If you are backing up and restoring on one puter ...

And if you do it with multiple programs on multiple backup medium and have the appropriate rescue CD and the CD drive works (maybe USB is an alternate)

It would be hard to hose the system or even to have a fail on the partition restore.  No matter what you do e.g. to the c:\.  I think you would have to hose the master boot record, MBR, which may or may not be handled by the backup or a fix-MBR program.

What I'm saying is that it is not always trivial to get to the position of having multiple backups with multiple products.  During times of transition, such as USB 3.0 coming on or various HD controllers, the backup products introduce support for the new hardware and often the support has bugs.  You don't know you have anything to rely on until you do that first backup and restore.

Another change that gave me headaches was the changes made by Vista and later to NTFS partitions.  I used Paragon Drive Backup in XP and it worked gangbusters.  But when I moved to Vista, it claimed to now support Vista NTFS partitions.  It seemed to.  But after making a backup capsule come to find out it slightly hosed the MBR to where the system would still boot, but the partition info was not quite right.  These kinds of issues limit the ability to use the shotgun approach.  Once you have a reliable backup that restores then you can experiment with others.  During periods of stable hardware across the majority of PC makers it's much easier.

[peter.s]

Very interesting insight and speaking from experience, thank you so much again!

As said, Paragon never let me down, but then, my 3 pc's are XP (cf. MilesAhead's post immediately preceding). EaseUS "let me down", but that was a hardware problem (see below). (And yes, I was speaking of home systems (without clarifying), but particularly appreciate the insight into some more elaborate scenarios.)

Above, the "I suggest always backing up two images from two different programs." (Steven Avery) - I think that's a tremendously worthwile idea, and which is absolutely to be followed. (The idea to use two different backup hdd's is quite widespread, for both variants, concurrently and alternatively, but to use several programs for it, on top of that, is as original as it seems to be a real step further.)

My main system got unusable some months ago, and I spent about 60 hours (! I more or less counted them) in order to re-install it all, together with all the settings and all that, so better backup strategies do interest me now.

I lost my (EaseUS) back-up (thus needing this complete re-install) due to a defective (and quite new) external hdd, and/or to many defective sectors over there, right within the backup (which by this went unusable IN FULL, whilst file-by-file backups, on the same hdd, were mostly fine (and the rest of them was fine on my internal hdd).

Why? Well, notebooks lack up usb jacks, so in those times (= would never do that again) I connected the external hdd to a usb hub; can't say/remember if I had been crazy enough to do the last backup that way, the hdd connected to the hub, and even the previous backup, some months (!) before, on the same hdd (! ("!" standing for "don't this this!)) was as unusable - I think for backups, I had connected the hdd "directly", not via hub, but why not imagine those sectors had been damaged at other occasions, "over" the hub?

I'm positive about hubs being able to damage external data: The same hub (quite expensive, 30-dollar-range, not 5 bucks) had also damaged a usb stick, with other data, to the point of me being forced to try almost 20 different data recovery tools

HDD Recovery Pro did NOT do it, for example. Little, free/cheap tools like Recuva et al. (Puran, Pandora, Glary, EaseUS, NTFS Undelete and many more) do NOT it, they are just handy for retrieving (not-yet-overwritten) files that ain't any more in your paper basket. TestDisk is pure hype, as far as I'm concerned: It's free, it's much "advertized", so I spent about 10 hours with it, but it did nothing for me, and there is a "forum", with no help when it comes to real problems. Stellar Phoenix (preposterous name if there is one) did nothing for me (not even Prof. for 99$), but I have to admit that at least, those trial versions show you BEFORE buying they're not able to do it - it's just that for 100 bucks, I would think they DID it. (Recuva is free, after all, so where's the price difference to be found again in delivery?)

Now for that data on my usb stick, how did I get the data back? (I had my data on that usb stick, and, most of it broken, on that backup hdd (in file-by-file synch backup), so I HAD to get to that stick data!)

- Ontrack Easy Recovery (as said above in another context, very successful image transfer: prof. data recovery service, and hence totally overpriced (it's just for a year!) do-it-yourself recovery sw... but which (very probably, I could of course not really try without buying, just saw it rebuilding the directories) delivers

- RecoverMyFiles (as the tool before, this tool as well showed it would do it, and the price is absolutely acceptable, NB: RMF is not UndeleteMyFiles which did not do it)

- Get Data Back (similar to RecoverMyFiles) - I finally did it with GDB (which did an image of the "broken" stick to my hdd (no, not the broken one), so that I kept the broken stick (which is always broken; GDB could very probably have repaired it, but:) in order to test any other data recovery tool, in similar/identical conditions.

So for similar situations, I highly recommend Get Data Back, and also RecoverMyFiles (whilst the Ontrack tool is simply not necessary and will possibly fail whenever the two other tools fail? Of course it may have some hidden capabilities not needed in my particular case?)

After this diversion, back to usb hubs: So my ("active") hub obviously did damage the usb stick (the web is "full" of similar experiences) and very probably my hdd, too, and of course, NO backup whatsoever should be made via a hub. (Well, there are hubs in the 300 dollar range, but I had thought that spending 30 Euro on a hub would get me "quality"... and to say it all, it even was my second such 30 Euro hub, the first losing connection again and again, by this not damaging the sticks and hdds, but the data to be written (but in those situations, I had been notified at least...).

From the above, you can deduct some other advice:

- Don't assume your data is safe if you have a usb stick as working repository and a (single) hdd as backup: If you're unlucky, the stick gets "broken" (and there is no guarantee the next stick "broken" in that way will be able to read from by the above-mentioned three programs), and then your backup (be it file-by-file or in just-one-big-file form: from which many of the above-mentioned backup programs, in their respective paid versions, can derive single files indeed) IS BROKEN, TOO.

- Whenever such a situation arises, working file broken, backup medium/file broken, too, you will be happy to have got a second backup, but which for most people (= for the very few people who have GOT such a second backup, to begin with) will be a more or less ANCIENT version, i.e. in regular backup scenarios, it's very difficult to assure you will have got TWO RECENT file backups; bear in mind, in this respect, that even better synch tools that do "versioning", will normally put less recent versions into neighboring folders of the "most recent version", which means, if the hardware in question "breaks", you will have to be "happy" with a quite old version somewhere else, if there is any. In other words, it's necessary to do file (= not: c: system) backups CONCURRENTLY and on TWO different DEVICES: I'll have a look if

- The problem here is, you would not really want to have hdd's running all day (which also will put them into any danger the pc itself is possibly exposed to), just for 80 sec. of backup in the evening, and to turn them on just for 80 sec. will wear them out in a similar way as if they had been running all day); this would indicate to do your "multiple daily" file backups on two different sticks, and have two concurrent weekly backups, at (almost) the same time, onto two different hdd's you connect just for this.

- If there is a space problem, well, it just occurs to me that you will want, in case, VERY RECENT backup files, but not necessarily within all their file system sub-structures: You could rebuilt that from your weekly, "fully-comparative" file backup. What you really need is a daily replication of all NEW and CHANGED files, and why not into some "DUMP" folder, considering that in 9 years out of 10, you will never need those dumped files again?

At this very moment, I have got my work files on another external hdd (c: being for system files / applications), and I do a weekly backup onto another external hdd, but a daily backup is blatantly absent in my current workflow: Why not "synch new files, and files changed today, to a stick (with automatic rename in case of two eponymous files)"? That should be perfectly possible to automate (since it's not done otherwise) with Syncovery (with which I'm happy indeed: as explained, it was my wrong strategy that caused desaster), and even a quite approximative daily backup that you will really do is so much better than a more elaborate scenario but that is not regularly done, right?

- I've also got to admit that in thunderbolts, IF the lightning was not just over me, I had a tendency to not cut off my pc, and over many years, this did not cause my any problem, but who knows? It's unanimously discouraged to do so, and I consider myself a fool to have taken those risks, since after all, that careless behavior could have been the culprit, too, or then, perhaps the stick was damaged by the hub, and the hdd by it being connected to the pc in a situation where not even the pc should have been running anymore?! (If you call this idiotic, you're right.)

[Steven Avery]

Here is another question,

On the simpler backup, the data and config files and documents and stuff like that.  A backup that you independently design and it may be a small quantity of data. (If you have huge volume, like with email, it may get its own special time and method attention.)

There are two main backup places:

a) local drive - Mybook, USB, local server etc.
b) cloud drive - (gazillion spots)

For the local drives, you have inexpensive hardware and solid software easily available, such as:

Personal Backup
Ascomp (nag screen to professional on startup)
Cobian free

And many others.  This allows flexibility (Preference, I would like one allows flexibility in the drive assignment of the target drive, to be overridden at the time of backup.)  Since the quantity of data here is often small you have lots of flexibility in timing, target folder, multiple sets, etc.  In many cases, you can even bypass incremental and simply do full backups of this volatile data.

=================

What about the cloud?  In earlier days we talked a lot about drive mapping, WebDav and tools like ExpanDrive and similar tools.  Now I want to ferget about all those.  Services don't see mapped drives anyway, some of the tools are quirky, some are $$ for multiple puters, etc.  Today, with the cloud sophistication, those could be more pain than gain for the home user.

Let's just find the best tool for user-defined backup to the cloud that has:

a) Good file-by-file backup software design (like Cobian, Backup4All, etc) with include/omits, specified files, folders, scheduling (can be triggered externally) etc.
b) Total Commander style file manager for looking at the target location and the home base.

DriveHQ definitely has (b).  
Question: what web backup has the strongest combination of (a) and (b)?  A is more critical, since it actually gets the data there.

Does not have to be free.  Especially since this is being used for smaller volumes of data.
Does not have to synch in any way, but it can be a synch tool used in backup mode.

In the basic iteration of this question, you are including all Windows Desktop programs. e.g. DriveHQ's excellent file manager is
a Windows download and install.

In another iteration of this question, you wonder if there are any cloud-based tools that can do even a decent job.  

The main purpose of mapping would be allow the desktop tools to be used to the external cloud.  The question here is,
what is the next best way, without the mapping complexities and costs and another set of problems.

Steven

[tomos]

^ I was going to say quite off-topic *and* well worth a new thread, but the thread seems to be already fairly off-topic, so I'll follow suit:

For small amounts of data, I would love what I would call a manual sync programme - i.e. one that would compare source and dest. and allow you lots of flexibility in what you choose to do/copy/sync, maybe even an option to auto-rename older files. Not sure does Beyond Compare go there (they offer folder compare and sync but I havent tried it).

Preference, I would like one allows flexibility in the drive assignment of the target drive, to be overridden at the time of backup.

yes,
that would be very nice for quick and dirty backups to USB sticks. I dont think Syncovery (my backup programme) offers this.

[Ath]

^ I was going to say quite off-topic *and* well worth a new thread, but the thread seems to be already fairly off-topic

+1, combined with the rewritten title and small-essay size post made me TL;DR; (again)

[peter.s]

tomos and Ath,

I'm very sorry.

I misunderstood your posts as a "why this thread to begin with?!!!"

Just a language problem, mixed up with bad experience from another forum where a bunch of mean idiots perennially howl for the one and only "meat" contributions being discarded, and this mix having made me make a bad judgment. Sorry.

[superboyac]

peter.s...you're comment on drive hubs caught my eye.  I think I have to agree with you.  I have found hubs to often cause problems with hard drives.  I've had several situations where I had an extenral hub working fine on one computer, and when I moved it to another, a lot of the data got corrupted.  In these situations, there were a variety of issues at play.  One problem was the reliability of different connectors, like esata vs. usb 3.0.  Also a problem are drives larger than 2 TB, depending on the machine you are connecting to.  I've had problems where the drive connects/disconnects while large transfers are taking place.

I just got one of those docking stations to try, you know the dual duplicator type.  I wonder how reliable it will be.  It had good reviews, but my trust in them is only so so.  This one I'm trying is from Inateck.

Anyway, I'm always a little timid when it comes to these external hubs.

The one I've been using that I like best is from Datoptic (recommended here).  It has also had issues, but I think it more had to do with the machine and large drive than the datoptic enclosure.

[wraith808]

Ath, you are a "supporting member", whatever that means in dollars; my AHK intro alone did get almost 14,000 reads, and is third on Google for "autohotkey tutorial", so we can assume 12,000 or more hits on that came from the outside, i.e. I, here and there, bring quite some "traffic" and "coverage" to this forum. "Too long - didn't read" - perfect, but then, isn't there good practice to only be allowed to write wherever you first will have done some reading, to begin with?

I'm worth more than your possible 5 "supporting" crap dollars, Ath, so refrain from worthless meta communications and get back to our basics, which is about sharing experience, insight and ideas. And if you're up to spread fascism, outlinersoftware.com would be your ideal forum.

Tomos, "but the thread seems to be already fairly off-topic" - what did you mean? A thread originally about MR, and which then originated much more valid info, of which in part I'm thankful, and which in part I contributed myself? No problem, right?

Or did you want to express that I should not have created this thread to begin with, and/or should not have been ALLOWED to create this thread, i.e. it being off-topic for this forum? Whatever, from Ath's post citing yours, you very well see how dangerous it is to not speak plain English and hope people will CORRECTLY read between your lines.

Anyway, "the rewritten title" is not correct, "a rewritten title" might be subject to discussion in case.

That's a bit... less about the way that this community is structured, i.e. direct attacks aren't really a thing here.  Your opinion is of course yours to say whatever with... as is his.  But attacking the messenger is definitely a no-no around here.  Structure your arguments to support your point, and let your content speak for itself.

And if you're talking about the relative use of what is 'normal' to see the value of content... that doesn't really fly around here.  14k hits... for what?  No ads, no redirects, struggles to keep the lights on because of that lack.  Everyone is considered equally valuable around here.  And any titles are for a thanks for help more than a value statement of their membership.

(an other vein... it seems rather strange that you became so vitriolic, when they were talking about steven's post, not yours)

[mouser]

ditto what wraith said.

[peter.s]

superboyac,

Thank you for the confirmation. My first "expensive" (as said, 30 euro instead of the usual 5 or 6, not 200) hub was unreliable, BEFORE my stupid continuing by lightning and thunder, and my second one is unreliable, too

(just today, my mouse stopped working, worked again switched to the comp directly, stopped working when switched to the hub, works fine again since switched to the comp now: Now imagine this with usb sticks or worse, with external hdd's...),

but as said, with some lightning-and-thunder experience of my hardware, so I'm not really in my right to blame hardware for any hardware probs I might have.

As for your Datoptic recommendation, Continental Europa is treated like third world, and I often read reviews of hardware in the usual U.S. technics' review site, which is simply not available in Europe, and which will never even become available in Europe: Some (= several) hardware, of big interest for me, had fine reviews years ago, and now is defunct, respectively (= as said, several such occasions, not just one), i.e. not even available in the States anymore, and without ever having been imported into Europe in-between.

This is true for hardware with exotic functionality, i.e. special laptops, or special usb laptop screens (of which only some less interesting makes had made it to the Continent, before becoming unavailable, too), but especially, this is true for accessories of all sorts, and my personal conclusions from what I've seen in this respect is perhaps a little bit out-of-the-way but not entirely illogical:

In fact, I seriously assume that for accessories and such, it's the LESSER-quality things that get imported to Europe by preference (and no Datoptic hub, "of course"). At first sight, this would seem devoid of sense, but it is not: Importers ain't interested in quality, but in profit margin, and so it's quite natural even, on second thought, that crap "imports" much easier than quality stuff:

You've got some quality stuff which would cost the importer 15 euro (incl. VAT on importion; any further margin incl. about 20 p.c. of additional VAT on that margin (that's why it's called "value ADDED tax" as we all know), too). He resells it to some sellers, for 25 (= not enough margin if you ask him); they sell it for 35 (= not enough margin if you ask them); of course, for quality stuff, SOME users (me included) would be willing to pay 50 euro, but it's obvious that at 50 euro, sales numbers would fall to perhaps 30 p.c. (or even less) of what they are at 30 euro.

Now for some crap. Cost for the importer, vat included, 8 euro. We poor "end-users" then pay 30 euro plus postage for that crap, and importer and reseller have got their margins... AND their numbers.

And this explains a lot, as for what we have to live with, over here. (The irony being that more than just some of this stuff is not even built in the U.S., but in China... but even then, the same rule applies. Cf. Apple products / iPhone and their respective sale prices in the U.S. and in Europe: As said, we're treated like we liked to treat the Third World in the Fifties...)



wraith808 and mouser,

I'm not into unnecessary fights, and it's probably a big miunderstanding, not only about which user's post Ath's post was. Cf. current FF thread.

First, and because of my style, I've got enemies, over here, perhaps less so, but in particular over there, and some users read and/or post here and there. It's not only one user who I could identify, it's also some more user(s) writing here and there, and which I could NOT yet "identify" (= in the sense of knowing this avatar here is that avatar there), and such a situation triggers paranoid (over-) reaction to some point.

Most readers from there will also read here, whilst only a minority of here's readers will also read over there I suppose, that's why I take the liberty to explain in 1, 2 sentences: World-wide, there is nobody who writes about outliner theory as I do, and far from it; I'm not alleging by that that I'm some unique "outliner thinker" or such, but then, other "outliner theoreticians" have ceased to publish their findings or musings years ago, i.e. in some cases, their respective blogs always exist, but with newest entry in 2010 or even former.

Now instead of doing some inspiring discussing over there, on that ONLY available specialized outliner forum, or then, instead of reading-or-not-reading my posts, some fascist assholes (I say it like it this, since their speciality is acclaim others when they start the stoning-of-the-month, and that's exactly Middle Ages fascism) over there attack me again and again, on a purely meta-communication basis, i.e. never ever some argument re facts/argumentation, but always in the line of "forum owner, please silence that asshole for good"; it's very intriguing (or how could I say that better?) that some of the users over there claim to have highest-brow professions, e.g. they pretend to be university professors, a profession I take in high respect, but at the same time, their "contributions" over there are totally devoid of any intelligence whatsoever, i.e. in 5, 6 or 7 years such self-proclaimed "university professors" did not publish a single smart idea - not one, in so many years - over there ("wsp" being a blatant example, among others with albeit lesser pretensions re their professed background). (The same cannot be said of this forum, where there's a good mix of easy-going things and more valuable insight graciously being shared.)

The culmination point in this fact-free permanent slander has been reached just some 2 weeks ago when some asshole over there dared tell me I had "obviously not thought much about outliners" (citing from memory), whilst just my posts in that forum (except for them being deleted by that forum's owner, but that he didn't do yet) easily belie that person. Thus, not only my developments (borne, as said, from my own outliner in the Nineties, some 70k of code lines) are met with silence (no problem), but people openly declare them non-existent.

So this is the background of my hyper-sensitiveness when it comes to people saying - perhaps even inadvertently - a thread of mine is "OT", i.e. should not even have been published to begin with. (Cf. funny cat pics in a programmers' and sw users' forum - you know I accepted these being OT.) Perhaps even they did NOT say it, but it was just me that READ that INTO it:

As for the "OT", please read again, above:

"^ I was going to say quite off-topic *and* well worth a new thread, but the thread seems to be already fairly off-topic

+1, combined with the rewritten title and small-essay size post made me TL;DR; (again) huh"

As implied above, I'm beyond any acceptance of such "+1" when it comes to requests to silence me or sayings that I should not have mentioned some subject (length criticism being another story). But tomos is a non-native speaker, as I am, and it all was a language problem (again, with the above, totally unbearable outliner forum background and non-knowing who are those "doubly-writers" there and here):

In correct English, it should very probably have read, "but the thread seems to have gone [and not: to be] already fairly off-topic" - the "already" should have told me better, but in light of the above, I overlooked that in spite of re-reading it thrice - I'm verry sorry ; obviously, from my outliner forum experience and from some people furtively writing there and here, I now see "enemies" where there are none.


Now for the "bringing in traffic".

As said, I had understood you in the line of "your thread should not have been created in the first place". Then for the absence of advertizing. Now let's get serious, please.

The very first element to advertizing is traffic: done. Second point to consider: qualified traffic. Do we need to discuss this, for DC? There are not THAT many such fora in the web, just some "general pc help" fora, and then those "technics" sites, often offsprings from pc magazines: No pc experience sharing.

I don't know what percentage of readers here do also write here, to some notable extent, but I bet you've (/ dare I say, we've?) got a LOT of readers, and they certainly come back with some regularity, because of the non-irrelevancy of our posts.

So what? Can't we all grasp that all prerequisites for good advertizing revenue are present? Or is general traffic only so-so? But why then is DC very high in google's list for every subject that's treated here? mouser, why not start a thread giving some statistics out? Thus, I convene, you first would need some figures, then only we could start discussing if it's worthwile to try to up those numbers, and in case, how to do that. Your next step would be, identify competing ad prices: How much "coverage" sw developers and such would get here, by advertizing here, and at which cost? In other words: Is DC's reach to small so that advertisers would either to have too high ad prices, or that advertising revenues would stay minimal anyway (i.e. by applying prices in accordance with alleged "minimal" reach)?

Then, there are some sites getting money from bringing in contact developers and customers; some such sites do make TOO much money from this, so there should be some possibilities in that, too: There's some room for a site that would take its share if that's a more decent share.

You know, this reminds me of AHK's problem: Just some months ago, AHK_L top developer / admin said, "I've got better things to do than to work for free, upon your making money with AHK" (citing from memory again). Background was, for the xth time, AHK not allowing to scramble its code (just obfuscate it), and worse, AHK_L .exes now showing off the source code openly, without any de-"assembling" needed anymore.

Fact is, it would have been all so simple, and always could be: Have it free for own use and for everything you give away; collect some fee for anything that's sold... but make it as difficult as it possibly gets to steal your code. (I would have been happy to pay for AHK for some years now if I had had the chance to sell some macros; cf. many AHK programlets being given away by some fellow DC contributors: Selling or giving out should be your choice.)

Or this one: We all know developers leave a whopping 50 p.c. fee at bits, from the reduced price they have to grant in order to get impulse buys: original price 80 bucks, bit price 40 bucks, developer gets 20 bucks - well, he'll be happy to get 19 in fact (and more realistically, some 18.30 or something) since his payment processor will get some money, too.

Now, just thinking: Original price 80 bucks, DC price 52 bucks, payment processor gets 42 bucks (10 for DC), developer gets more than 40 bucks, which is quite some more money than 18.30 - win win for everybody (except for bits, which would get less developers piling up their programs for them).

In a word, DC seems to have real good "coverage" (tremendously good google results for as said almost everything), but as for now, it doesn't do anything about even just trying to "commercialize" this value, the irony being most people in the web being willing to do anything to get just a little fraction of DC's seo value.

Thus, the question should not be, what to do with unwanted traffic that just costs hosting fees, but obviously should be, how to capitalize on that traffic (and optimize it further, and so on).

And now, I'm going to delete my above post.

[tomos]

So this is the background of my hyper-sensitiveness when it comes to people saying - perhaps even inadvertently - a thread of mine is "OT", i.e. should not even have been published to begin with. (Cf. funny cat pics in a programmers' and sw users' forum - you know I accepted these being OT.) Perhaps even they did NOT say it, but it was just me that READ that INTO it:

As for the "OT", please read again, above:

"^ I was going to say quite off-topic *and* well worth a new thread, but the thread seems to be already fairly off-topic

+1, combined with the rewritten title and small-essay size post made me TL;DR; (again) huh"

As implied above, I'm beyond any acceptance of such "+1" when it comes to requests to silence me or sayings that I should not have mentioned some subject (length criticism being another story). But tomos is a non-native speaker, as I am, and it all was a language problem (again, with the above, totally unbearable outliner forum background and non-knowing who are those "doubly-writers" there and here):

In correct English, it should very probably have read, "but the thread seems to have gone [and not: to be] already fairly off-topic" - the "already" should have told me better, but in light of the above, I overlooked that in spite of re-reading it thrice - I'm verry sorry ; obviously, from my outliner forum experience and from some people furtively writing there and here, I now see "enemies" where there are none.

Hi Peter,
I am a native (English) speaker, but I was careless with my words there: as you speculated, what I wrote should have read:
the thread has already gone off-topic.
In my defense and OTOH the other interpretation makes no sense: to say that a whole thread is off-topic is meaningless - so construing it as an attack on you + your thead is the last thing I would have expected.

Sincere apologies for any misunderstanding!