Disk imaging software similar to acronis?

6

6pack

Level L
I require a disk imaging software similar to acronis. It should be able to do backups in online mode (without shutting down system) and also save disk image compressed to an image file.

Don't want windows built in tool since its a hit and miss thing. Clonezilla does not work online. Easeus I couldn't get the download from their site since it kept giving some error or other.

I want this for windows 7 x64. Would the old free versions of acronis available on Wd site or Seagate site be compatible now? Also don't want the new versions of acronis > 2013 version. All are stupidly slow and make my head hurt.
 
Tried paragon. The software is too irritatingly slow. It shows 2+ hrs to backup 30GB of data without compression. Selecting fast, normal or best increases times even more to 3+ hrs.

Windows backup does the same in less than 30 mins. Acronis does this with good compression in less than 20mins.

Is there any way to speed up this slowpoke software?
 
6pack said:
Tried paragon. The software is too irritatingly slow. It shows 2+ hrs to backup 30GB of data without compression. Selecting fast, normal or best increases times even more to 3+ hrs.

Windows backup does the same in less than 30 mins. Acronis does this with good compression in less than 20mins.

Is there any way to speed up this slowpoke software?
Click to expand...
Interesting!
I never faced any such issue with Paragon, i've been using it for the last 4 years (first Free then Compact and now HDM Professional)
in my case, it backs up my 46GB system partition (16GB used) in less than or around 20 minutes (best compression, no splits) into 4.5GB of Image file ,
which in my personal experience is the best compression ratio by any imaging software and among the fastest.
but mileage will vary from system to system.

Do you have UEFI or BIOS? paragon has some problems with UEFI
did you go through with the entire compression procedure?the initial time estimates can be highly inaccurate.
did you select another partition as the output folder? it is not recommended to set the output partition the same as the source partition
 
6pack said:
Tried paragon. The software is too irritatingly slow. It shows 2+ hrs to backup 30GB of data without compression. Selecting fast, normal or best increases times even more to 3+ hrs.

Windows backup does the same in less than 30 mins. Acronis does this with good compression in less than 20mins.

Is there any way to speed up this slowpoke software?
Click to expand...

Question for you - did you go through the full backup or did you see the message that it would take 2+ hrs, wait for a couple of minutes and then abort it?

Reason I ask is I have an ANCIENT PC with an 8-9 year old 80GB PATA drive. The Windows install that I image/backup (C:\ Drive) is on a 30GB partition of which 17GB is data and 4 GB is Swap.

Imaging this 17 GB with "BEST COMPRESSION" (the slowest option due to max compression) takes 9 minutes and 30 odd seconds. That's it.

Yes, it starts off by saying "4 hours something" while it indexes files. This carries on for about a minute during which it gives lots of "amusing" messages, and I mean really funny "one liners" about when its going to "start" working - a rarity in software these days considering most devs nowadays are very serious and rarely show this sort of sense of humor in software development anymore. I'm pretty sure its the devs way of indirectly letting users know that their PC's are really slow and they need to upgrade! :)

Once the indexing finishes, the "estimate" timer sharply re-adjusts the predicted time. So my "4 hours plus remaining" rapidly comes down to about 11 minutes and then actually ends up taking under 10 (you can see a real time clock in the app that states the time taken from the very start to complete backup).

I can suggest a couple of things you can try to see if they help. Note that the "default values" Paragon uses for these options avoids the problems I mention but just check to make sure then are correctly set.

Open [Advanced Backup Settings]->[Copy and backup options].

See that "Partition raw processing" is unchecked (default) & that "Skip OS Auxilary Files" is "checked" (default).

Although these are "default" settings, just check that they are set correctly, otherwise the backup will be significantly larger and would add useless files to your backup that are a complete waste of space not to mention time.

Does your drive have high fragmentation by any chance? Excessive fragmentation can and will slow down your backup significantly and this will happen regardless of which imaging software you use.

One thing "Mechanic" stated above that does help (my backup times comes down even further to about 7 minutes instead of 9:30) is to backup to a network/USB drive rather than a different partition of the drive you are backing up from. However I don't use this option very often as I use the "backup capsule" option on my base drive itself so I HAVE to backup from and to it directly. Even so, under 10 minutes is perfectly fine for me.

Note that the "backup capsule" option is dangerous in the sense that if you have a mechanical drive failure, you have pretty much lost your ability to restore your image to a new hard drive as well. I use the "capsule" purely for convenience and have a separate image snapshot of my system saved to a portable USB as well.

Hope this helps... :)
 
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@Mechanic & @Rickyk, I will try and answer your questions as much as possible.
1 I don't have uefi bios, just the normal one.
2 I tried with default settings first. The only difference I made to the procedure was I excluded a windows.old folder which had previous windows 8 in it.
3 disk is just 1% fragmented. I had taken precautions of de fragmenting the disk a day ago. Probably installing paragon b&r fragmented it a bit.
4 I selected a separate disk for backup.
5 I ran the program in all options. With VSS and without VSS. With vss, it is slow as hell even after 15mins into the operation. During these times, even after end of 15-20mins, it shows times of 1+ hours for backup to complete irrespective of compression used. So I stopped the process after 20 mins had passed every time.

6 without vss, the program booted to dos mode and took about 45 mins to complete. The size was just 15GB compressed at normal compression.

7 in windows, I wanted to check the integrity of the backup. So I tried rescue option from paragon and it said it couldn't load the backup due to it being complex or something. :confused:

So it can't even load its own rescue media. Seems poorly written for a backup software.

My comp specs are c2d e6300 @ 2GHz, 2GB DDR ram and 2 hdds. C drive of 500GB and backup drive of a TB.

If you guys have such good backup time, the only conclusion I can come to is the company devs have purposely reduced the speed in free version in latest release so that people buy their standard or pro versions.
I don't think I'll buy this, since the first impression I got from this software was too bad.

I think I'll get acronis instead of experimenting too much.
 
Need to correct some few things. In dos mode it took 35 mins to complete backup for about 18GB of data. Compressed size was around 14GB. The 30GB is with windows.old included. Without windows.old all the default/ non default options I stopped them after 20 mins had passed and the backup % bar was still about 1/4 the distance and showing times of 1+ hr to complete.
 
6pack said:
Need to correct some few things. In dos mode it took 35 mins to complete backup for about 18GB of data. Compressed size was around 14GB. The 30GB is with windows.old included. Without windows.old all the default/ non default options I stopped them after 20 mins had passed and the backup % bar was still about 1/4 the distance and showing times of 1+ hr to complete.
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Its not DOS mode , just a LiveCD mode
backing up images in LiveCD mode is not recommended as the Compression is horrible (no file level backup, the backup is done sector by sector) which leads to large image size and extreme backup times
just install B&R free 2013 cleanly on your system and proceed to make a backup of your system keeping all settings intact (save for compression level at maximum and no splits) while the computer is running (i.e. on desktop mode), ignore the backup time shown
i'm sure you won't face any problems
 
The installation of both windows and paragon is as clean as possible. I have only installed amd gfx card drivers, pantech pc suite and mpc hc Nothing else. The rest of stuff installed are some directx and vb & c++ runtimes.
Whole os drive is devoid of any unwanted programs since this is my htpc.
 
6pack said:
3 disk is just 1% fragmented.
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1% is very low. No issues there.

6pack said:
In dos mode it took 35 mins to complete backup for about 18GB of data.
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Again, 35 min for 18GB is really very slow. However, I have never tried Paragons native boot environment for a BACKUP. I use it only for RESTORE so I can't comment on backup times using that method.

I ALWAYS create an image from within Windows using Paragons "Hot Processing" option because this allows me to continue using my PC even while the imaging is underway.

6pack said:
7 in windows, I wanted to check the integrity of the backup. So I tried rescue option from paragon and it said it couldn't load the backup due to it being complex or something. :confused:
Click to expand...

TBH, I have never bothered to check image file integrity simply because I have the "Control Archive Integrity" option set to ON (IIRC, its the default setting) in Paragon and it does it for me automatically. From the Paragon B&R Manual -

"Control archive integrity. Mark the checkbox to guarantee that all backup images created with the program are 100 percent flawless. If you decided not to control the archive integrity, the backup operation would take about 3-5% less time."​

I have been imaging and restoring using Paragon for years. Never checked integrity separately, never had a restore error. Ever.

Regarding your second point, I can see the problem but please note that what I am writing below is from personal experience and I don't think its documented anywhere.

When you create your image you have an (unsaid) "option" of creating a "simple" archive (say one drive, C:\ partition only) or a "complex" one, which includes things like the MBR area, Extended partitions etc.

If you click on the "root" in the "What to Backup" screen, you are in fact creating a "complex" archive image as you are automatically including the MBR and all available partitions.

Unfortunately, Paragon doesn't warn you about this. I learned this purely from personal experience having used this software for years now.

I believe the reason a "Complex Archives" cant be checked for Integrity in the normal way is because they in fact contain MULTIPLE partitions, the MBR area etc.

You don't need to bother with this option at all. Just create a "Simple Archive" by selecting ONLY the Partition/Drive you want to image and NOT the root, MBR area etc. If you create the image this way I'm fairly certain you can check image integrity later on but to be honest, I have never bothered with doing so as I have full faith in the default "Control Archive Integrity" option.

6pack said:
So it can't even load its own rescue media. Seems poorly written for a backup software.
Click to expand...

Like I said above, thats because you made a "complex" image. I have restored my Paragon Images for years now, across several different types of drives of varying capacity. It works flawlessly though I do agree with you that the manual should be a bit clearer on certain issues.

6pack said:
If you guys have such good backup time, the only conclusion I can come to is the company devs have purposely reduced the speed in free version in latest release so that people buy their standard or pro versions.
Click to expand...

Here's the thing - I have NEVER, EVER, used the paid version. I have always used the FREE version. I do however agree that you have spent way too much time on trying to get Paragon to work. For some reason its not working for you like it should. If you like, you can consider this app as well -

http://www.macrium.com/reflectfree.aspx

The "free" version pretty much does what you need but I personally prefer Paragon over it any day. If you have a Seagate drive, you can also try this option -

http://www.seagate.com/support/downloads/discwizard/

which is actually Acronis tailored specifically for Seagate drives. Again, 100% free...
 
Thanks guys for taking so much time to reply and answer my queries. I think I'll shift to acronis free version. Like @Rickyk said I've spent too much time on this to make it work. Probably its just bad luck that its not working as required on my pc.

Thanks guys :)
 
I downloaded acronis from wd site. It turned out to be 2013 version and very limited. Everything has a lock next to it except backup and restore.

No options of excluding files etc. It backed up the whole c drive partition in less than 10 mins. The full 30GB of both old and new windows installations was compressed to around 15GB.
 
Even though WD/Seagate version of Acronis is limited, its good to note that it did the job in GOOD time!

Would also seems to indicate that there's some sort of software incompatibility between Paragon and your hardware specifically.

In any case, you got the job done and that's the important thing when it comes to system backups...
 
6pack said:
I downloaded acronis from wd site. It turned out to be 2013 version and very limited. Everything has a lock next to it except backup and restore.

No options of excluding files etc. It backed up the whole c drive partition in less than 10 mins. The full 30GB of both old and new windows installations was compressed to around 15GB.
Click to expand...
don't trust a backup solution just like that.
make a recovery media and try to restore the image. if it's successful all is well :)

I just made a backup of my 46GB HDD (19GB used) using Paragon HD Manager it took me 9mins 45 secs and the output image size was 6.9 GB.
so the compression ratio is 6.9/19 which is not too bad huh?
 
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