disk image software comments please

  • Thread starter Thread starter rello
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rello

Reading the reviews etc through google one gets the impression that
drive imaging software is fraught with many problems...thge 3 most
mentioned prioducts
norton ghost
drveimage
acronis drive image 6 [true image 7]
i saw either really good but mostly really bad reviews
which software is the one to use??
thanks for your guidance

relloman
 
Reading the reviews etc through google one gets the impression that
drive imaging software is fraught with many problems...thge 3 most
mentioned prioducts
norton ghost
drveimage
acronis drive image 6 [true image 7]
i saw either really good but mostly really bad reviews
which software is the one to use??
thanks for your guidance
Click to expand...

I'm in the same boat. I'm wondering which to use too. I'm interested in
hearing any pros and comments anyone has on any of these products. I've been
using disk image software since LinkWiz first came out.

For myself, I've decided to try them all out in order to really know which
works best for what I want, which is fully automated creation and restores
from a bootable DVDRW, with spanning to multiple DVDRW. I could create such
a disk set myself, by hand, but I would prefer if the software did it for me,
in an automated process.

All of these products do basically the same thing, but each has it's pros and
cons. A weak point or problem area that has caught a customer unawares and
they have not been able to get around the problem except by switching to one
of the other products.

For myself, I'm a long time ghost user. I ran into problems with ghost
running extremely slow on certain disk controllers. I found away around it
with the command line switches that worked for these particular controllers.
Others ran into the same problem. The command line switches didn't help.
They switched to Drive Image which backed up their partitions even faster
than I could using Ghost. Same sized partitions, same contents. Some vendors
refuse to support certain disk configurations while others do. If you don't
happen to use that configuration, it's no big deal, but if you're the one who
happens to have it, it's a big deal, so you have to switch products.

I've run into a problem with Ghost 8 that prevents it from doing what it's
supposed to. I've figured out what it's doing wrong too, but I can't think
of a way to fix it. So I'm going to try Ghost 2003, which might work. But
I'm also going to try Drive Image and True Image to see if they do a better
job.

Best of luck on our hunt for drive image software. Maybe it will be built i
nto the next version of Windows?
 
rello said:
Reading the reviews etc through google one gets the impression that
drive imaging software is fraught with many problems...thge 3 most
mentioned prioducts
norton ghost
drveimage
acronis drive image 6 [true image 7]
i saw either really good but mostly really bad reviews
which software is the one to use??
thanks for your guidance

relloman
Click to expand...

I use V2i Protector, DI7's big brother. It's nice for making incremental
images.I always use TrueImage 6 every now and then for straight forward
image creation and restoration, also pleased with that.
 
Its not so much that the software is full of problems, its just that imaging
a drive and using that image again isn't always easy. There is a lot of
stuff you need to know.

I don't mean to sound negative but your post is kind of like saying "I read
about those car fixing wrenches and how they are fraught with problems."
You see, having the wrench isn't ALL you need.

I have used Ghost and DriveImage and I feel like I can accomplish any
imaging tasks I need to do with either product. Never have used acronis.

--Dan
 
rello said:
Reading the reviews etc through google one gets the impression that
drive imaging software is fraught with many problems...thge 3 most
mentioned prioducts
norton ghost
drveimage
acronis drive image 6 [true image 7]
i saw either really good but mostly really bad reviews
which software is the one to use??
thanks for your guidance
Click to expand...


I'm a fan of Acronis True Image. Ghost's somewhat ambiguous wording/UI
in places has caused me to lose data on a couple of occasions. The
advantages of TrueImage over a program like ghost include:
- Incremental Backups
- Scheduled Backups
- Backup without needing to exit Windows
- Linux filesystem support (EXT2/3, ReiserFS)
- Native support for backup over "Network Neighborhood" (SMB)

Disadvantages of True Image:
- Because the rescue disk is Linux based, some hardware configurations
which don't "play well" with Linux will also not play well with the
Acronis rescue software. (google for previous thread with "T40")
- I cannot vouch for this, but I have heard that the tech support for
the software is somewhat lacking.

I haven't used it myself, but V2i Protector seems to have similar
features. (At about 2x the price)


-WD
 
I'm a fan of Acronis True Image. Ghost's somewhat ambiguous wording/UI
in places has caused me to lose data on a couple of occasions. The
advantages of TrueImage over a program like ghost include:
- Incremental Backups
- Scheduled Backups
- Backup without needing to exit Windows
- Linux filesystem support (EXT2/3, ReiserFS)
- Native support for backup over "Network Neighborhood" (SMB)
Click to expand...

I also like TI7 for all these reasons. The wizards are very simple
and straightforward, especially compared to Ghost, and it's been
reliable for me. This simplicity may be a liability if you have a
setup that it doesn't like, but my success rate has been very good so
far. They also update it pretty regularly to support new hardware and
such.
Disadvantages of True Image:
- Because the rescue disk is Linux based, some hardware configurations
which don't "play well" with Linux will also not play well with the
Acronis rescue software. (google for previous thread with "T40")
- I cannot vouch for this, but I have heard that the tech support for
the software is somewhat lacking.
Click to expand...

I ran into this with an older VAIO laptop, which is not something to
hold against TI7 necessarily (if you know VAIOs).

The tech support is not very real-time. I've had to wait days for
responses, and sometimes they're not very good. My question about
password robustness got the answer "It's not very strong. If you can
crack zip passwords, you can crack ours.", which shows the guy who
answered didn't really understand password robustness.


Neil Maxwell - I don't speak for my employer
 
Neil Maxwell said:
I'm a fan of Acronis True Image. ......
Click to expand...
[snip]


The tech support is not very real-time. I've had to wait days for
responses, and sometimes they're not very good. My question about
password robustness got the answer "It's not very strong. If you can
crack zip passwords, you can crack ours.", which
Click to expand...
shows the guy who answered didn't really understand password robustness.
Click to expand...

Well, maybe you could tell us what "password robustness" really is about then.
 
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