Paragon Backup and Recovery 17 - New

SIW2 said:

Paragon have recently released Backup and Recovery 17 free.

(Presumably the Hard Disk Manager 17 will be released soon.)

Pros:

It is relatively easy to use
It offers several different image formats

Cons:
The files added to winpe are large
The ability to exclude files/folders from backup image has been removed. That is pretty silly because it was the feature the main competition does not have.

I have suggested they put that feature back in.

I found Paragon to be unreliable and would not recommend it. It completely failed to handle devices using 32bit uefi installation.

SIW2 said:

Of course you did.

And your sarcastic point is?

I have done lots of testing - in order from most reliable to worst

Very Reliable
1) Macrium Reflect

2) Easeus Todo (but slow)

Reliable

3 equal) AOMEI Backupper

3 equal) Veeam

Less Reliable

4) Paragon

5) Acronis

Unreliable

Windows own tool

Of all the above, only Macrium Reflect And Easesus Todo worked on 32bit UEFI system, and ANY other device I tested on 32/64bit uefi/legacy bios.

"...I have done lots of testing - in order from most reliable to worst...Very Reliable 1) Macrium Reflect..."
+1 cereberus; I found MR6 and MR7 to be very reliable! And, Image for Windows 2xx and 3xx to a little more problematic than MR6 or MR7. I'm adding Image for Windows because TeraByte Unlimited is also a major contender.

I found Paragon 17 Free to be easy to use to save a backup on my network. However, it is not easy to figure out how to access the network for a restore. The icons and places to click are not obvious. And you cannot restore the OS from within Windows (which makes sense.) You have to load a bootable version in order to restore the OS. But if your file is not saved on you local computer, it looks like you can't access those files with the bootable restore disk,...unless you include drivers for the LAN card on your machine. (I don't think it will work with a wireless connection.) ...So, backing up is made easy; not so with how to restore what is backed up, particularly if you backed up to a network location.

I still haven't figured out all the steps required to make this work. Has anyone been successful with Paragon 17 Free?

Hi there
I've done backups also on all conceivable hardware

+1 to cereberus -> Macrium definitely reliable, easy cheap (free for basic use) - pretty well all other windows stuff found failed at some critical point.

I also use DD command on linux -- reliable, 100% independant of disk format / geometry (so long as image fits on target drive) - disadvantge is complex to use if you don't like command line and takes quite a long time to run as it copies everything bitwise from Disk a to Disk b.

rsync/grsync for data backups - there's though no reason why you shouldn't use macrium for these too but disadvantage is if you have long file + directory names (> 266 chars) you get the "truncated" version. That's though a Windows problem rather than Macrium. Paid version of Macrium also worth it if you like incremental and differential backups and are not a Linux user.

From a Linux based NAS it's easy to do a data backup / restore to / from Windows drives via rsync / grsync (grsync is the gui version of rsync). Simply connect via connect network drive via samba and run the program rsync/grsync restoring / backing up what data you want. Using the Linux CLI program (rsync) makes automated backups a breeze - just use the crontab for scheduling jobs.

Here's the GUI for GRSYNC Both Source and target HDD's / directories etc can be anywhere on your network whether windows machines or not so long as SAMBA can access the HDD's. Simply mount the Windows HDD's on to your NAS and browse to the directory / directories you want to back up - recursion is also allowed etc --too many options to display in a short post. You could run a test job to see what command is generated then create a crontab job with the CLI program



However whatever method(s) you use it's important to have backup that works, is reliable and restorable when you need it.

Note again -- if you take incrementals / differentials on Windows - simply backup those generated files - on Windows created with the Macrium backup - incremental / differential (1 data file) to your NAS with the rsync / grsync selection - you should always have more than 1 set of backups.

Cheers
jimbo

Just a footnote to all for 2019 -

1. Macrium - Great, a bit rough around the edges.
2. Acronis Workstation - Polished product with little bloat. Acronis True Image Home has much more bloat. Best to evaluate Workstation.
3. Easeus - Good (and getting better) but not there just yet.

Stay away from Paragon!

FWIW.