Comments on: 8 free software to image/backup/ghost your computer (free alternatives to Acronis True Image, Norton Ghost, etc.).

By: gordon55y

gordon55y — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 21:29:56 +0000

Ashraf,
Thanks for your helpful reviews.
I prefer Paragon Backup & Recovery.
It has an option to exclude pagefile.sys
and user selected folders that can be
excluded from backup. It is under
Tools/settings/CopyBackupExcludeoptions.

By: Nick

Nick — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 12:53:49 +0000

I was using Macrium for a while as it was the strongest backup solution from freebies, but finally switched to Paragon Backup & Recovery Free Edition – it’s the version Paragon released after Drive Backup Express – http://www.paragon-software.com/home/db-express/, the key reason why I decided towards Paragon is its functionality:

• differential backup (it’s very useful for this kind of peace of software)
• Built-in ability to create a rescue CD or bootable USB Flash drive
• Linux/DOS bootable recovery environments
• Automatic data exclusion
• Backup to a network
• Hot backup
• Enough featured for the home user but not overwhelming

Also, Macrium has one major bug that I couldn’t face it with – cannot restore an image from a larger hard disk to a smaller one, even if your backed up data is less than that of your destination disk’s capacity.

By: PTLdom

PTLdom — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 11:59:53 +0000

Being a user, i found drive image xml pretty friendly. Morover, I can produce a bootable file in my external d: drive without having to erase the other information on it. Try doing the same with Paragon.
Regards, PT

By: Tiffanie

Tiffanie — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 17:38:36 +0000

Just wanted to do a follow up. After everything was flashed over, I did the partition restore which is included in the .iso from my son’s computer, and it worked perfectly. She has a fully functional computer again! Thanks very much

By: Tiffanie

Tiffanie — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 20:49:53 +0000

Thank you for all your patient help. I followed all the links and info and am working on doing the restore right now. Hopefully it will work and she will have a working computer again. Thanks

By: Ashraf

Ashraf — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 17:01:01 +0000

@Tiffanie: Oh no, no. It is just Linux based so it can load when Windows can't. It will work for Windows XP just fine =).

By: Tiffanie

Tiffanie — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 15:42:49 +0000

Will a Linux boot disk (USB) work on Windows XP? Or will it make the HD Linux? Sorry for the computer semi-literacy.

By: Ashraf

Ashraf — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 15:24:46 +0000

@Tiffanie: Ya that shouldn't be a problem. In addition to that you may want to look into creating a bootable/recovery USB/flash drive instead of a bootable/recovery disk (CD/DVD) because restoring from a bootable/recovery disk is better (although not necessary) than from within Windows. To create a bootable/recovery USB/flash drive create an ISO of Macrium's Linux boot disk and google how to turn that ISO to bootable USB (sorry I can't give more specifics here... don't have any articles on hand).

By: Tiffanie

Tiffanie — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 15:16:34 +0000

Will any of these programs image onto a USB external drive and then restore to a computer? Or does it HAVE to be to a cd/dvd? My kid’s Acer netbook doesn’t have a dv drive, and I don’t have funds to purchase an external one. I have a Seagate 500GB external HD, will it work for this purpose? (The eRecovery partition on the kid’s netbook is corrupt and so it won’t restore, I want to take the clone from her brother’s identical netbook and restore it to hers.) Any ideas?

By: Nextel2010

Nextel2010 — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 20:19:16 +0000

DriveImage XML will preserve partition alignments upon restoring. This is a technical fact of which not many readers will be aware, but it is an important distinction when intending to image onto an SSD drive. The other software may or may not – for example, I’ve heard that certain versions of Acronis will not.

As for using DriveImage XML to make a drive bootable, all you have to do is merely set the partition as “Active”. I’ve never imaged anything BUT bootable partitions, and have never had an issue. Additionally, there’s a plugin should you want to install this program on a BartPE disc.

By: Clive

Clive — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 02:18:58 +0000

I like cloning rather than imaging and use the freeware XXClone (http://www.pixelab.com/) to do this. I have a fear of hard drive failure so like to keep a couple of clones, one stored on site & one off site. XXClone will clone to any size HDD (or even a partition) as long as it’s not smaller than the original. It will also make the clone bootable. For further info follow the link I’ve included.

By: Rob

Rob — Wed, 27 May 2009 08:08:42 +0000

I have been going through hades with some of my dying PCs.
I use IDE drives, and XP Pro.
I have settled on using Seagate’s DiscWizard for imaging the drives, and recovering (sometimes to the same PC, sometimes to another PC).
The two major stumbling blocks(apart from hardware glitches) have been -

- The images can appear to be corrupted on some PCs (Googling reveals that others have that problem with DiscWizard and Acronis)

- When restoring an image to another PC, you have to do an XP repair, and I have lost count of how many times I came up against the dreaded –
a disk read error has occurred
press ctrl+alt+del to restart
Googling, reveals better men than me, have been stumped by that one.

Regarding my first problem, I threw the offending PC into the toilet (stored it in the bathroom), and found one that did not say the image was corrupt.

Regarding the second problem, I have converted the partition to Fat32(from bloody NTFS), and now the XP CD, can repair Windows with no problems.
I have been suspecting for some time now, that it was that flippin NTFS that was thwarting Repair installs.

I type all this for three reasons -
1) It may be of some assistance to others (Seagate DiscWizard is great, provided it likes your PC).
2) It may assist others who find that the repair install, stalls during that half way re-boot.
3) If I decide to stay with FAT32 (to make future repair installs, painless), can I handle files greater than 4GB ?
I know that you cannot store large files in the FAT32 partition (where XP is running),
BUT CAN IT SAFELY HANDLE large files, on other NTFS partitions or external hard drives ?
Let us say I have some image backups on an USB external hard drive (which is formatted to NTFS). Can I be in a FAT32 XP, and be SAFELY moving those 10GB files from folder to folder within the external NTFS drive ?

Rob

By: sys-eng

sys-eng — Mon, 11 May 2009 21:22:07 +0000

It would have been helpful if you would have elaborated more on the imaging features of these programs. Some take much longer because they waste time cloning vacant space on the drive. Clonezilla clones only the used portion. Some programs can restore only to a partition of the same size or larger while others can restore to a smaller partition.

I have customers who are computer illiterate using Clonezilla every day with no problems.

By: Jeanjean

Jeanjean — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 10:51:40 +0000

Hi Ashraf,

For information and after discussion with people of Acrium, it appears that Reflect backs up every used cluster in the file system.
My problem would not appear with SVS, but probably with the use of EAZ-FIX (that I’m testing for the moment).
EAZ is probably storing data in unused clusters and isn’t compatible with imaging software that backs up ‘in use’ clusters.