Comments on: Paragon Backup & Restore Free vs Macrium Reflect Free vs EASEUS Todo Backup vs DriveImage XML vs Acronis True Image Home: Which one should you use?

By: David B

David B — Thu, 10 Jun 2010 14:46:13 +0000

I have been using Macrium Reflect Free for quite some time. Unfortunately, I’ve never been able to get it to “rebuild” a drive image once my computer crashed. It would say the files were corrupt.

I’ve since (recently) switched to Paragon in hopes this won’t have the same problems.

By: Mike Landis

Mike Landis — Sat, 22 May 2010 03:36:33 +0000

I wish you’d query the developers of the packages that include 20-100MB installers. You could field a lot of functionality in that much space – way beyond image and incremental backup. What else is in there – spyware, adware, …? To my way of thinking, given the difference in the size of their installers, Paragon should offer 50 times the functionality that DriveImageXML provides, but it doesn’t look like Paragon provides even three times the functionality of DriveImageXML. Compression, encryption, and differential/incremental backup add complexity, but DriveImageXML has compression built in and encryption/decryption isn’t that complex (RC6 requires very little code and Rijndael-256 is only about 4 or 5 times as complex as RC6). There is no way that code to manage incremental backup/restore is responsible for the rest. Doesn’t anyone know how to write efficient code anymore?

By: Ken

Ken — Sat, 15 May 2010 17:57:18 +0000

Just looking at Macrium Reflect Free on their website… Doesn’t look like many of the features are free which you have listed in your review (i.e. encryption, password etc)

By: Peter

Peter — Sun, 09 May 2010 19:40:10 +0000

While it is true that Drive Snapshot is very fast,it isn’t particularly inexpensive either and neither is Acronis, both are @ $ 50
The others are free.

By: MCHAL

MCHAL — Wed, 05 May 2010 10:56:30 +0000

Try this: http://drivesnapshot.de/en/index.htm

Just around 1 MB in size and beats them all above! – backups the same amount of data mentioned above in less than 4 minutes! Maybe even less! if you have a top performance system. (I am on a Celeron 2.2 GHz).

By: Tony

Tony — Wed, 05 May 2010 10:20:14 +0000

Useful reviews and also comments.

I used to use EMC Retrospect for backups, which I found to be excellent, but I can’t justify the licence fees to buy a new copy.

I am looking for something cheap/free but that will be fast and allow full as well as incremental backups.

I am using Karen’s Backup now, but it’s horribly slow for a 500gb drive, and with only 1 partiton an image is not the best way to backup I don’t think. Karen’s does not do incremental backups either, so my data is at risk with only 1 copy.

By: Marshall

Marshall — Wed, 05 May 2010 09:24:52 +0000

I have just run across this review. I have used Acronis Home v8, 9, 11, 12, & 13 (2010) & have had paid licenses for v9, 11, 12, & 13. The thing that has bugged me over the years is that every single version is very buggy. Yes, I get the update versions from the Acronis web site & they are still very buggy. About 1/2 of the backups don’t complete. And of the backups that do complete, 1/2 of them won’t restore. Yes, Acronis has many fancy features & does run faster than Paragon. But Paragon always works to back up & restore. When I was on Acronis Home v12 & the boot hard disk died, the backup refused to restore to the new hard drive. It just gave an incomprehensible message, but it seemed to mean that there was something wrong with the brand new hard drive. Fortunately, knowing that Acronis is unreliable in all it’s versions, I had also made a backup with Paragon before changing the hard drives around. Paragon restored without a problem & saved the day. So, for the last 2 years I have been gradually converting all of my backups to Paragon, I have logical data drives through ‘P’ + swap & drives with backups on them through ‘U’. I am now running Win 7 x64.

By: unicorn02

unicorn02 — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 15:29:09 +0000

@johnd: Macrium Free creates .xml files for the jobs you define. The Gui only allows to specify a password. But have a look at the created xml files and edit them. It should be possible to enable the encryption there. I have not tested if it actually works, but chances are high as they also deliver a "AES.dll" with the free version... :-)

By: Dali

Dali — Sun, 11 Apr 2010 01:18:56 +0000

@johnd: You are right about easeus compression it was the same in my tests but the time difference between Macrium and Easeus was like ten seconds but then if you add in all the times I tried to get easeus to run and it crashed and then finally getting it to run proper it sucks. But I say it again Easeus Todo is an Acronis program same backup same drivers, same software minus some features, and just as poor buggy and unstable as Acronis too

By: johnd

johnd — Sat, 10 Apr 2010 15:36:18 +0000

Chart states that Macrium Free allows Password or encryption but I have not figured out how to do this. Is this incorrect?

Also, in my tests, EASEUS (v1.1) in lowest compression produced smaller file and was faster than Macruim using it’s default compression & its maximum compression! However, EASEUS with max compression was really slow. In future, might want to compare with both MAX & Defaults.

By: Unicorn02

Unicorn02 — Sat, 10 Apr 2010 12:26:53 +0000

Maybe also a feature that is missing in the comparison table is the ability to use the Microsoft VSS Snapshot provider. My Acronis True Image Home 10 for example can only backup with its own snapapi snapshot provider. On the contrast Paragon Backup and Restore lets you also select to use Microsoft VSS if available on the installed system. This is interesting for applications that are VSS aware (Oracle, Exchange, SQL Server), so you can do a “hot” backup and databases are still in a consistent state.

By: Dali

Dali — Sat, 10 Apr 2010 04:14:04 +0000

@Ron: Well there is a Win PE based and Linux base bootable CD and Bart PE is based on Win PE. Bart is great and it is straight forward to create the CD but unfortunately it is based on an older Win PE version and thus is not very compatible with Vista or 7. Now the Linux CD (being Linux based and not Windows) does not have support for as much hardware, or device drvers as Win PE and so while it will generally run on most every setup, it may not be stable or it may fail in the process of a restore. Some devs like Macrium have added debugging capabilities to the Linux CD to aid users in finding the problem and Macrium has also added a compatibility mode which will fix the problem for some computers. Also most of the Linux CD's only allow for restoring images. In general I cannot tell you what specific hardware has trouble with the Linux CD's because it is always different but most of the problems do show up more in newer hardware. To be honest, and if you do not want to spend money for one of these programs and want something simple and very reliable you should take a look at PING(PartImage Is Not Ghost). It is an offline program ran from a CD or USB and it is very quick, simple, and very reliable. It can create incrementals, and it has about all of the other capabilities of the programs above except it cannot mount and restore individual files.

By: Ron

Ron — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 22:21:36 +0000

Sorry, I have to make a correction from my previous reply. Paragon’s website says that any device can by used for *backup*, but says nothing about for restore. So, this is still an open issue for Paragon. Can anyone confirm if Paragon can restore to “other’ disks? This would be a deal breaker for me…
Thanks

By: Ron

Ron — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 22:04:24 +0000

@Dali, Thanks for reply that does clarify the issue. Apparently, both Macrium and Paragon (according to their web site, flagged as “new”) allow for any drive.
General question: regarding bootable recovery CD’s, I see there are two variations on these, Linux or Bart. Apparently, Bart is quite complicated to implement. Most seem to use the Linux platform, and apparently some systems won’t recognize these. How can I know ahead of time if my system is compatible? Or, what kinds of systems do not recognize them?