Powerquest Drive Image 7 Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)This is about the 4th version of Drive Image that I've run over the last few years and it is easily the most impressive.
I upgraded from Drive Image 5 to DI 7 a few weeks ago and have been steadily wowed by the new version.
Backups I've made with this software have now saved me twice -- once when I got a little too zealous with some file cleanup efforts, and once when an major software update failed in the middle. In both cases, I simply restored my previously saved backup image and within minutes everything was fine again.
The single most important new feature is the ability to backup and restore while XP is active so you have easy access to network drives, USB drives, SCSI drives, full DMA support, etc -- all items that used to be problematic when backing up under DOS in previous versions.
The DMA support (under Windows) and the new version boosted my backup speeds from one hard drive to another from 140MB/min to about 750MB/min. It's astonishing -- a 4 gigabyte backup takes 3 minutes on my 1.7ghz P4 machine with 2 IDE hard drives!
DI7 now has the ultimate backup feature that I've been lusting after for many years -- unattended scheduling of backups. Previous versions allowed for backups to be scheduled but they had to be done when Windows wasn't active, or they couldn't include the system drive. Both restrictions are gone with this version -- simply set up a backup schedule and the Drive Image service will "wake up" and perform your backup with the OS active, whether you are logged in or not. All you have to do is clear off some hard drive space on another drive, sit back, and your drive will just automatically back itself up! Fabulous!
Some of the other posters have touched on the downsides to the software -- DI is sensitive to the type of drives you are using -- it has limits with size and type (no Serial ATA yet, according to another poster). Previous versions were limited to 120GB drives, this one is limited to 160GB drives (I believe). Plenty big enough for me but it's something to be aware of.
I was a little surprised initially when I went to restore my backed up system drive because I had to restart the system and boot off the DI 7 CD -- but this makes sense as you wouldn't want to wipe out the disk image of your currently running system drive. That would be a bit like sawing off the tree limb that you're standing on -- it's hard to fault PowerQuest for this.
I also encountered a minor bug when backing up a drive to a CD after turning on the "maximum compression" setting -- it got to the final stages of burning the CD and then reported that an "unknown exception" had occurred. The problem vanished when I repeated this at the "default compression" setting.
I highly recommend this software. This has been the most exciting software upgrade for me for the last year -- way to go PowerQuest!

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Acronis True Image 10.0 Home Review

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(More customer reviews)I have been a TI user for about a year and a half now and I'm researching a replacement.True Image, simply put, does not produce reliable backup images consisently. Inconsistent and unreliable is exactly what one doesn't need in backup software. I recently backed up a box before doing an os upgrade and of course verified the backup up. The upgrade bombed and I needed to go back to my backup image - 3 hours into the restore TI bombs saying the image is corrupt. I move the Image to another box and indeed it can no longer be read. It seems the restore corrupted the image. I posted to the forums and sure enough others have had this problem, their recommendation to do a test restore to a seperate drive for an image. With 300+GB drives which take 6 hours (at 7200RPM) to back up, and 8 hours to restore - a test restore is not a reasonable solution.
The software is flakey and inconsistent when backing up to CDs/DVDS. Sometimes TI will back up to a CD/DVD sometimes not. It says you need the roxio decoder installed, but that doesn't resolve the problem. It's very particular about the specific media, I've found one brand it seems to like consistently. Since I have over a TB in external hard drive storage I've lived with this as a minor inconvenience, but cd/dvd media backups are a feature and one you can't count on.
I've had messages where it can't find ANY HARD DRIVES, again I've found this in the forums with no solution. A restore of an earlier version solved my problem but not of others in the forum.
I've had it read an image the first time and then not the 2nd time I've tried to access it. I've had to play with the file names to get it to read an image, sometimes that works, someones not.
I adminster 5 home boxes and run a small geek-business and I assure you I WOULD NOT PURCHASE THIS SOFTWARE AGAIN, will not recommend it to my customers and recommend you steer clear. In the area of Backups and Recovery reliable backup software is essential.
Don't buy True Image.

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Acronis True Image 11 Home Review

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(More customer reviews)A couple of months ago there was a power outage, and even though my UPS kicked in, the auto-shutdown software didn't. When I tried to reboot, there was a Blue Screen of Death waiting for me. I tried everything from reinstalling XP, to recovery console, safe mode, BIOS fiddling, nothing worked.
I didn't have any backups, so I was out of luck. But as I went through the incredibly time consuming drudgery of reinstalling Windows and 50 or so other programs that I had on my original install, I kept thinking to myself, "there has to be a better way".
So I decided to spare no expense. My first purchase was a 2TB external hard-drive (split to 1TB with RAID 1), and my second was this software. And it works like a charm for my use (btw, I don't consider DVD backups to be a viable option).
The first step in backing up my new install was to establish a secure zone on my RAIDed drive (about 25 GB). This is a special partition invisible to the OS (and viruses, spyware, etc.) so it can't be accidentally deleted or modified. This was simple to do, and the hidden partition's size can be adjusted at any time.
I performed the initial backup with no problems. A previous reviewer mentioned that the green progress bar wasn't providing sufficient feedback. For my purposes, however, I don't back up individual sets of files or folders, I back up the entire hard drive, bit for byte, to include the MFTs and Boot sectors, etc. I don't need to see what's being copied at any given moment, because I already know its either a '0' or a '1'. Anyway, compression is decent (9 GB for 20 GB worth of files) and fast (usually 10-15 minutes to complete).
I've also set up a scheduled weekly backup which is done "incrementally" and only saves the changes from the original. TrueImage will automatically delete old backups to make room for new ones, as you begin to fill up your "secure zone".
I've actually begun to use this in lieu of "System Restore". I try to keep most of my regularly updated stuff on my RAIDed external drive now (I actually moved "My Documents" there) and anytime I have a serious problem I can actually restore the system to a previous state week by week. I've already done this 3 or 4 times in the past 2 months using a boot CD created by the software and it works flawlessly.
It's a good feeling to know that you can reverse any changes made to your system. There's even a feature called 'Try and Decide' that let's you do this in real-time and undo any changes made during an installation or other activity. If you're looking for a robust backup solution that perhaps doesn't involve backing up to CDs/DVDs, this software will work for you.

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Acronis True Image 11 Home provides the maximum flexibility to ensure you are adequately protected and can recover from unforeseen events such as viruses unstable software downloads and hard drive failures. Create an exact copy of your PC for a full backup or backup only your important data ? your choice. Creates an exact copy of your PC for a full backup Backs up and restores your music video and data Protects your applications Boot your computer even if your operating system has failed and restore your system image from Acronis Secure Zone Backs up your e-mails and Outlook data and settings Try & Decide: easy rollback of system changes Protects your PC application configuration settings Schedules backups automatically by time or system events Privacy protection Supports Microsoft Windows Vista Email notifications Saves to FTP Format: WIN 2000XPVISTA Genre:UTILITIES UPC:890204002043

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Acronis True Image Backup 9.0 Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)Cons: Truly bad support, documentation of error codes is completely non-existent, etc. They won't help you and you won't be able to help yourself.
This product has been absolutely dreadful for us even though we're using the newest build released just yesterday (5/22/2006).
The backups of files we select seems straightforward and the process tells us the backup was successful, but then when we go to restore from it we get one error message after another (both when trying to back up to DVDs, and then to the hard drive itself [just in case the DVDs was the issue]). Either way, we still have all kinds of error messages and unreliable backup of data using this product.
Oh, and if you need technical support what you get is you send an e-mail and in A FEW DAYS OR SO IF YOU'RE LUCKY someone responds with a canned answer that's useless and has little to do with the problem you've had to describe to them since no one will talk to you on the phone. (If you want to talk to a human you have to pay $29.99, and that's right after you just paid them for the product that never worked once.)
This is truly the worst PC product I've ever had the misfortune of ATTEMPTING to use in over 20 years of doing this, and the company has an attitude problem -- they want your money but they don't want to hear from you (or help you) after they've got it.
For some people the product seems to work, but for those for whom it doesn't, you will find as I do that this company will be little to no help to you at all.
UPDATE:
My problem with this software turned out to be the length limitation on file paths, and since all the backup files are in a tree branch structure of files, some folders plus subfolders plus file names plus the stuff the program adds makes the name too long for the program to handle. I had to figure this out for myself over two full days (add that to the price of the product!) because Acronis doesn't tell you that (perhaps by including a box of tips in the backup section) and doesn't provide a list of error codes and what they might indicate as the problem. Tech support is non-existent unless you want to pay $29.99 per call, and all of this that I went through was completely avoidable. In fact, I got a hunch the file name length might be the issue from using someone else's product which just plain SAID SO. If Acronis isn't going to help the user the should provide the means for the user to help himself, but they don't, and even when they add features like the DVD burning feature they don't update the downloadable or web site information about it -- it just shows up as a bullet point on a list of features at the time of this writing. You may have no problems with this, but if you do you are on your own. Personally I would look somewhere else for your backup needs just in case something goes wrong and you need answers. Good luck!

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Complete file and system disk imaging backup and restore software for home and home office users that can protect your entire system and family pictures, videos, music, and important documents stored on your PC.

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Symantec pcAnywhere 11.5 Host & Remote Review

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(More customer reviews)Product worked great. The wizard allows for easy setup for a new connection. Ive used several previous versions of pcanywhere and as far as ease of use the previous versions are not in the same league as the current one.

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Symantec's pcAnywhere 11.5 is the world's leading remote control solution. Now you can use it to remotely manage Linux as well as Windows systems, freeing you from command-line Linux tools. You can even manage both platforms from a Java-enabled Web browser running on a system of your choice. Enhanced video performance includes the new Bandwidth Auto-Detect feature, which automatically optimizes the performance of pcAnywhere over all types of connections. And support for the Microsoft Windows Preinstallation Environment helps you get crashed systems back up and running quickly. Built-in AES 256-bit encryption—the same security technology used in many government and financial applications—now protects communications between pcAnywhere clients and hosts. Need to troubleshoot problems when you're on the go? New pcAnywhere Mobile enables you to access a pcAnywhere host from your Microsoft Pocket PC over any TCP/IP connection, wired or wireless. pcAnywhere also features powerful, efficient file-transfer capabilities that let you transfer files across different platforms. A connection wizard helps new users launch pcAnywhere quickly, and Host Conferencing permits multiple concurrent remote connections to a single pcAnywhere host—a great tool for training or collaboration. Resolve helpdesk issues quickly, manage remote computers securely, and work across multiple platforms easily with versatile pcAnywhere 11.5.

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Fix-It Utilities 10 Professional Review

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(More customer reviews)I've been using Fix-It for many years, upgrading every year or so. Version 10 installed normally on my Dell XPS600 running Windows XP with Service Pack 3. The online update installed without problems. The utilities all functioned as expected, though every year they add a few more features, making it more complicated to use. When I tried to download the latest anti-virus tables I got a "Your serial number is no longer valid" error message.
The product was brand new disk version from Amazon, installed the day it was received. I embarked on the all-too-familiar time wasting tech support journey. After four rounds of emails and responses that failed to remedy the problem over the course of a week, I phoned tech support. After 45 minutes of "help" on the phone, they handed me off to Tier 3. They said to uninstall Version 10, remove all related hard disk entries manually, and reinstall it. That didn't work either.
Good for you if yours is working, but mine is going back to Amazon.

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Keep your PC running like new with Fix-It Utilities PC tune-up and repair software. Fix-It Utilities finds and fixes Windows problems, eliminates PC crashes, slowdowns and freezes, and removes viruses and spyware.

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StompSoft PC BackUp Review

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(More customer reviews)This program was difficult to use, with a counter-intuitive user interface, complicated scheduling sequences, and at least on my computer - faulty software altogether. Constant error messages, inability to restore individual files successfully, and time/date stamps that were reading the year 2047, and no way to change that, etc...
I bought this instead of Acronis True Image, because I wanted to save the $15 bucks. I figured as a single-computer, "home" use, I didn't need a program with advanced features.
So. The question is, was the 15 bucks saved worth hours and hours of head-scratching, and months of lacking of true backup protection?
Finally, I bought Acronis True Image Home 10, and set it up and had it running to my needs in under an hour. It works, it's professional-grade. Imagine your HD crashes. Imagine how much time you might have to spend to get up and running again. Is that worth skimping 15 bucks?

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PC BackUp for Windows protects your data simply and automatically, so you never have to worry about data loss again. PC BackUp uses an advanced virus scanning engine with up-to-date virus definitions to keep your backups free from infection. Command line options allow for PC BackUp jobs to be utilized from a command prompt and user created scripts. This quick method allows the user to input a single command into a command prompt to run the specified PC BackUp job. File Encryption protects all communications between you and the backup device or location. Your files will also be stored encrypted on the backup media providing the maximum in privacy and protection. Backups created with the Disaster Recovery option enabled can speed recovery of your system after a hard drive crash or similar failure. Just boot up using the recovery disk, recover the system backup, everything is back like you like it!Peer-to-Peer Network Backups enables you to protect data on your computer and other systems on your home or business network Automatic Scheduled Backups set your computer to protect your data at any time so you don't have to be reminded Email log delivery keeps you informed automatically on the status of all of your manual and scheduled backups

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123 Copy DVD Gold Review

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(More customer reviews)I just puchased the latest version of this product; 123 Copy DVD Gold v7.0.0.25. It has failed to work at all. After visiting the website forum for the company, I discovered that there is a known problem that the software will not work with some external drives.
So, if you are a laptop, notebook, or netbook user (as many people are these days) it's likely that this software will not work on your machine.
I am currently waiting for the company to release another update that they say is supposed to fix this problem. If and/or when this update becomes available I will update my review of this product.
In the meantime, be warned...
Update...
Since I posted my review of 123 Copy DVD Gold (2010 version) a couple of days ago, I have been told by the company that the updates that they are releasing are in attempts to fix the problems with the 2009 version of the software. So, apparently there are no immediate plans to update the 2010 version to fix the problems with it since apparently not enough users have yet upgraded to the 2010 version. I recommend avoiding this software. Unfortunately, there don't appear to be many alternatives to this software for DVD copying, nevertheless, this software has not worked for me at all.
Further, I was curious about the positive 5 star review that was also posted for this product, given the problems I've had with it, and the problems that others have posted on the forum at the company's website.
In checking all the reviews that this individual has posted it is interesting to note that they are all for this company's products and they are all five star reviews. Perhaps this individual is an employee of the company? If so, I would consider this a deceptive practice and would ask Amazon to look into it.


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123 Copy DVD Gold is our flagship product. It can do anything you can think of when it comes to copying, converting or transferring all of your favorite DVDs and video files to any device or media you wish.

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Acronis Disk Director V11 Home Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)This product caused me a lot of problems yesterday. While I have never made a review like this before, I felt like I should offer this cautionary tale:
I bought this product after receiving several emails the upgrade from my previous version of DD 1o, which would no longer run on my laptop. Tried the trial version first and it looked like it would do what I wanted. My laptop was partitioned by DD 10 in 2 and I wanted to give the OS a little more space as I had used up the 37GB I had initially allocated that partition. And, it worked! Next I installed it on my 2 Desktops. On both of them it caused my computer to not boot up correctly until I selected "Start from last known good configuration." Next I tried to merge a small unallocated bit of HD space into the Partition of my older PC, which required a reboot.
Thant is when things started to go terribly wrong.
I got an error message during the reboot that process 2 failed.
And, the system failed to boot after that. Just a message about "Verifying DMI Pool Data."
So, I took the drive out and tried to use the included "Recovery Expert" module from DD 11 loaded on my other PC to restore the old partition.
But, the Recovery Expert module would not load. If I tried run it directly, and not from within DD I got a snapapi.dll not found error.
I went to the website, found how to chat with tech support, and was on with Ankur very quickly.
And, put immediately on hold. While I was clear about the situation, his advice to me was far less than helpful. ""Recovery Expert is for recovering deleted partitions." He said after several minutes. Yes, that is why I want to use it I explained. Kinda thought that was obvious. Several minutes later he came back with this; "You do not need to verify the product, it should work." YES, I KNOW IT SHOULD WORK, BUT IT DOESN'T. (No alt caps when I explained this to him.
So, I tried uninstalling, with the intent to reinstall. Got an error there too.
Next, I ran the installer again and choose repair.
That did it! I was able to use the Recovery Expert!
And, it looked like it worked.
But my joy was short lived, since when I put the drive back in my older PC, I still could not boot. After several hours of trying this, updating my Bios settings, etc I got nowhere.
Eventually I had to give up and wipe the drive. Now that rig is out of commission. :-(
Sad especially since I had a lot of expensive software on there. Fortunately I didn't have any critical files.
In conclusion:
The older Disk Director Suite was not very stable, at least by my own use, and a number of reviewers here on Amazon that gave it one star and called it dangerous.
This product may be better, hard to tell from my limited experience.
I found the free chat support fast but useless, I had multiple issues with instillation on my PCs, and the product itself performed a resizing of the partition on my laptop successfully, but and when I tried a simple merge of a small file it ended up ruining the OS and destroying all the data on the disk. Was it worth $30.00 to upgrade? After spending 9 hours trying to fix the OS on my PC that this program destroyed.... in a word. NO!
If you are going to use Disk Director 11 Home:
MAKE A BACKUP OF ANYTHING YOU VALUE & USE WITH EXTREME CATION.

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With Acronis Disk Director 11 Home, the ultimate Disk Management Solution, it's never been easier to create hard disk partitions, resize, move, or merge partitions without data loss. Optimized to offer maximum freedom without impacting your current system!

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Symantec Backup Exec System Recovery 2010 Server Edition with 12 Months Basic Support Review

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(More customer reviews)Bottom-Line: If you need brick-level back & recovery solution for you large, medium, or small business look no further than "Symantec Backup Exec System Recovery 2010 Server Edition."
I have used some form of "Symantec's Backup Exec System Recovery Server Edition" since the Windows 2003 days, when the interface was clean, simple, and easy to use. Since that time, Symantec Backup Exec System Recovery which used to be marketed by Veritas (until Symantec bought out the company), has evolved along with Windows, and today it is a robust, flexible, somewhat complicated enterprise-class application that is almost indispensable to a shop still utilizing hardware or a Data Center operation in transition to a virtualized environment.
But not every server/application lends itself to virtualization, so I predict there will be a need for the functionality Symantec Backup Exec System Recovery brings to the Data Center table for quite some time.
Product Description (From Symantec): Symantec Backup Exec System Recovery 2010 is a simple, cost-effective backup and recovery solution for small businesses that helps minimize downtime and avoid disaster by easily recovering individual data files/folders or complete Windows systems in minutes - not hours or days - even to different hardware, virtual environments, or remote locations.
"Symantec Backup Exec System Recovery's" forte has always been in keeping the backup & recovery process simple (well relatively simple) and easy to use, but flexible enough to adapt to almost any enterprise environment. Version 2010's release is no different. Key Features include:
oBackup systems automatically, while you work, through scheduled or event-driven backups;
oOffsite Backup Copy to an FTP location or secondary disk drive;
oDissimilar Hardware Recovery with Restore Anywhere Technology;
oSeamless physical to virtual (P2V) and virtual to physical (V2P) conversions for VMWare, Microsoft and Citrix virtual environments.
Installation
"Symantec Backup Exec System Recovery 2010 Server Edition" can be installed one of two ways; either on the server you need to backed-up, or on a centralized server upon which the back-up agent can be pushed out to the servers needing to be backed-up. A centralized installation will further allow an administrator to centrally manage the backup events and scheduling for each server.
However, we choose the individual option (it was easier to administer) and installed "Symantec Backup Exec System Recovery 2010 Server Edition" on each individual server (7 in all); thereafter I can log into each server and set the backup schedule for each.
Usage

"Symantec Backup Exec System Recovery 2010 Server Edition" is like most backup software these days, wizard driven, asking as series of questions to help simplify the backup and recovery process. But, make no mistake "Symantec Backup Exec System Recovery 2010 Server Edition" is a complicated software application with a lot of moving parts, so before using it for the first time one should read the owner's manual.
Brick-level back-up is pretty straight forward (depending on the amount of data being backed-up, it could take upwards to an hour to complete), but brick-level recovery can be time consuming and problematic especially if you are performing a Restore Anywhere procedure. Partition table may need to be deleted and recreated, hard disk partitions deleted and recreated, and or FAT tables rearranged. But if all goes well, I can perform a System Recovery in under an hour.
We use "Symantec Backup Exec System Recovery 2010 Server Edition" to perform brick-level back-ups on (7) servers nightly to an off-site location connected by a generous data pipe so the process is seamless. After I installed the software on each server I ran the backup wizard, specifying what I needed backed-up, to where, and how frequently.
The "Symantec Backup Exec System Recovery 2010 Server Edition" agent runs as a Windows service so an administrator does not have to be logged into the server in order for the process to run unattended. You can set the application to append the current backup set, or overwrite it to save space. Full or incremental back-ups can also be configured.
For recovery we store our sets on a network drive. No problem, "Symantec Backup Exec System Recovery 2010 Server Edition" has a utility that allows for logging into a network and mapping a drive as long as the right credentials are used. But the application can also read back-up sets from locally attached (USB) hard drives and or DVD drives.
Conclusions
I have no (real) complaints concerning either the functionality or usage of "Symantec Backup Exec System Recovery 2010 Server Edition"; it is an easy to use, robust brick-level backup & recovery program that offers a ready solution for just about every enterprise environment. There are of course other solutions on the market, but none that seems to offer the level of functionality and refinement our business is looking for.
Symantec technical support has always been there when we needed them, including weekend and evening, and the support techs have always been knowledgeable and willing to stick with me until whatever issue I was having was resolved to my satisfaction.
If you need brick-level back & recovery solution for you large, medium, or small business look no further than "Symantec Backup Exec System Recovery 2010 Server Edition."

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Symantec Backup Exec System Recovery 2010 is a simple, cost-effective backup and recovery solution for small businesses that helps minimize downtime and avoid disaster by easily recovering individual data files/folders or complete Windows systems in minutes – not hours or days – even to different hardware, virtual environments, or remote locations.

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Norton Ghost 14.0 Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)Symantec Ghost 14 seems to be a merge of features between Symantec's older Ghost product line with Symantec's disastrous "save and restore" product, which for some strange reason is still offered in version 2.0.
You can see my reviews for Save and restore here on amazon to see why my copy ended up in the garbage can.
I have been using ghost in its various incarnations for several years, when it used to run off a floppy drive, so i am very familiar with its capabilities. Symantec Ghost 14 can backup files or your entire computer's drives if so desired to another computer on a network or to a USB drive. It can do this on a schedule.
The features of Ghost 14 on paper are impressive, so i decided to give it a test by installing the product on my laptop and creating a complete backup to a network drive on another computer. The entire backup was completed in less than 15 minutes. Then i decided to create an updated recovery disc for my laptop to do a full recovery, Ghost automatically recognized the fact that my original Recovery Disk had been burned to a rewriteable disc, and proceeded to erase and burn a new updated version on the same disc.. very impressive.
Unfortunately, as soon as rebooted my laptop with the Recovery Disc and i put an ip address on the interface (i am not running DHCP on my network) i wasn't able to connect to the computer containing the backup, due to some kind of authentication error.. so no matter what i did, i wasn't able to get past this hurdle.. so i am left with a complete computer backup i am not able to access..
Imagine, how would you feel if you computer died and you weren't be able to restore, thanks to Symantec buggy software, despite having an entire backup of it???
What is the point of all the countless fancy features if this product fails at its most useful feature.. which is to restore your computer's hardrive in case of failure?
For all intents and purposes, Norton Ghost 14 is another piece of semi-functional software.. with partially working features, pretty much like every product Symantec makes...
I don't recommend purchasing this product, unless you are somewhat computer literate and are able to get through the bugs that are present in this product.
UPDATE 1: When i booted my laptop using the recovery disc, every time i tried to map the recovery point share on a computer on the network, i keep on getting the following error message: A specified logon session does not exist.
After doing some online research, i was able to figure out how to fix this error by entering the name of the computer followed by the login name in the following format compname\username when prompted for a user / password to map the drive. I will post another update to see if recovery works as advertised.
UPDATE 2: When i booted my laptop using the updated recovery CD, and i mounted the recovery point using the compname\username trick to authenticate, i was able to dump the entire laptop's drive image and do a full recovery. The catch is that i work on the field, and I was able to find out the solution on my own, but less savvy users will probably have to resort to having to call Symantec, etc etc, so when you purchase this product expect to spend some time making it work and make sure you TEST the recovery process if you can.. because the last thing you want to find out is that your recovery process doesn't work when you really need it.
UPDATE 3: I tried to create a backup of my Windows 2000 Dell laptop.. but Norton Ghost 14 doesn't support Windows 2000.. so beware.
UPDATE 4: Unlike Norton's disastrous Save and Restore, Ghost doesn't go on the internet and check the serial number every time you install it on a computer, I know this after i installed my copy of Save and Restore one too many times to one of my 4 computers and the serial number became "blacklisted" and the product ended up in the garbage can.
This good news means that if you want want to make backups of multiple computers, you can just purchase ONE copy of Norton Ghost.
UPDATE 5: Feb 2009
I just tried to move a hardrive with a bootable partition (Windows XP) and a data partition to a bigger SATA Drive with Norton Ghost 14.
After installing the new hardrive on the computer and partitioning using Windows XP, i used Ghost to copy the bootable partition and the data partition to the new drive's partitions.
The results were as follows:
1-The bootable partition copied ok, and the new drive boots from the partition, the only problem is that when i try to login into Windows XP, the system logs me off inmmediately. This is the same problem i had with Norton Save and Restore.
2-I spent over an hour copying the data partition using Ghost 14.. but at the end, the program gave me an error message telling me that the copy couldn't be copied because the system had ran out of memory.
The data that i tried to copy was around 300Gb.
After the Ghost error, all the data the program had supposedly copied was inaccessible because the partition couldn't be mounted by Win XP, so i had to reformat the new partition using the disk utilities in Win XP and use Microsoft's FREE copy utility ROBOCOPY to copy all the files from one partition to another.
The copy worked fine.
Norton Ghost couldn't do something a FREE utility can.
I ended up connecting a CD drive to the computer to boot from a Ghost 2003 CD, and used that program to copy the C partition to the new drive and was finally able to migrate to the new hardrive.
UPDATE 6: 2009-11-14
I was forced to use Norton Ghost 14 to update my computer's laptop hardrive since Ghost 2003 cannot backup an active drive to a firewire connected external drive.
So this is what i did:
1-I booted my laptop with the Norton Ghost 14 CD created specifically for my laptop when i installed the software on it.
2-i backed up my entire laptop hardrive to an external 1tb firewire drive.(bear in mind trying to backup the drive while Windows was running failed every time, so i had to boot from the Norton CD and back it up the old fashioned way.. just like in Ghost 2003!)
3-Physically replaced the laptop's old drive with the new one.
4-I booted my laptop with the Norton Ghost 14 CD. The software was able to find the recovery point in the firewire drive and i was able to do a recovery to the new drive. At no point i was prompted to restore the MBR or to make the new drive bootable.
5-You will think all is well, right? but when i booted the laptop off the new drive, what do you think happened?
Nothing.. the drive refused to boot and i got a blank screen, because it didn't occur to the geniuses at Symantec that most new drives don't have bootable master records (MBR), so the data is in the new drive, but it won't boot.
So i had to get my Windows XP CD, do a dummy installation so the drive boots, and then dump the Norton Ghost Image on the drive AGAIN.
Only when i tried to restore the drive a second time i was prompted to restore the original drive image and the drive MBR.. What a joke!
Symantec is the Microsoft of security and disk utility software, their consumer and pro-level software is garbage, and since their horrible products can't compete in the marketplace, the only way they can get market share is to buy other competing products / companies such as Altiris, Partition Magic and many others!
This is the last time i brother with Symantec's garbage software.
After this, i am uninstalling all traces of Ghost from my laptop and i looking for some other software package.. there has to be something better out there than this piece of junk.
Needless to say, don't waste your time purchasing Norton Ghost 14, unless you want to spend endless hours trying to make it work.

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Norton Ghost 14.0 protects PCs including all applications, settings, folders, and files with advanced backup and recovery. It provides powerful protection with new features such as offsite backups and Symantec ThreatCon integration, as well as enhanced performance, remote management, LightsOut Restore capability, and more.With Norton Ghost 14.0, you have a choice of backup types: full system (disk image) or specific files and folders. Incremental backups and enhanced compression help reduce the amount of required storage, while encryption helps keep everything safe. Norton Ghost 14.0 works with most storage devices, including external hard drives, networked drives, and recordable and rewritable CDs and DVDs.

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NTI Shadow 4 Windows Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)As a long time user of NTI Shadow, I am disappointed NTI has chosen to not allocate resources to maintain this product. After several incidents (discussed below), I finally needed to find another solution, requiring time to identify an alternative as well as go through the process of learning and again setting up NAS drives. To date the only similar alternative appears to be Second Copy, which although much faster and normally current, does require establishing a new backup with a different naming convention,
Shadow runs without incident, until I either upgrade a computer or the operating system, and then the problems are major, take forever to be addressed by an update, and I cannot get NTI to provide feedback for extended periods, regardless of my efforts
For example, after installing Win 7 / 64 bit It took me over two months for NTI to acknowledge that NTI's Shadow was crashing Vista, Win 7 and next 64 bit.
1st --- Ninja (included as part of Shadow) crashed Vista and then Win 7 - It took over two months for NTI to acknowledge . or to acknowledge that it was not possible (with NTI upgrades) to stop Ninja from trying to load.
2nd ---- Since NTI only provides upgrades not full programs it took another month for NTI to authorize a recent full upgrade so I did not need to install several prior upgrades (not compatible with the operating system) in sequence.
3rd ---- After getting these issues addressed, NTI has acknowledged there are issues with Shadow not working with Win 7 / 64 bit. Preferring to stay with NTI than implement an alternative, I spent extended periods trying to get NTI to provide an answer if it would address in the near future. NTI chose first not to respond, and later after acknowledging the issue was real, NTI now refuses to answer if or when the issue will be addressed.
At some point, it makes no sense to wait for a non-responsive firm to provide feedback, allowing a user to understand if NTI might share if it intends to support the product. Win 7 and 64 bit have been here for more than a year. I will now move to Second Copy, unless someone is aware of another program (other than RAID) that will keep an exact duplicate backup current with the same directory system, without dozens of versions, and not be intrusive.


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Shadow 4 enables automatic, continuous sharing and backup of photo, music, data, and video files to virtually any attached storage device and computers on your network with a drive letter. After its initial release in August 2005, and receiving PC Magazine Editor's Choice and DingBat Magazine's Best of the Year Award, NewTech Infosystems, Inc., is proud to announce NTI Shadow 4 is now available! What's new & unique: Two Way Sync with multiple drives and multiple computers Ninja public and private partitions on the same USB drive for Windows Continuous data protection and schedule backups Capacity alert so you know when to add more space Version control delivers multiple revisions of your files Drag and Drop plus 1-Click "Quick Restore" Improved user interface for even easier backup and file sharing Graph layout of Source and Destination devices toquickly undestand capacity NTI Shadow 4 continues on the award-winning easy-to-use backup application that automatically protects your photo, music, video, and various data files. It makes data restoring as easy as dragging and dropping files from one place to another. Real-time and continuous data backup plus you can set Shadow 4 to save versions of your files/folders every time they change. You can also specify your backup schedule by the minute, hour, day, week and start time(s) and choose a specific or even a customized file type with Shadow 4 advanced file filtering. Shadow 4 delivers the ability to automatically copy files from multiple PCs to various devices in real time and also preserves the files in their native format - meaning no additional software is necessary to restore files. Shadow 4 works transparently in the background silently keeping your files protected.

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Acronis Disk Director Suite 10.0 Review

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(More customer reviews)This is probably the worst software I've used in years--probably in the last decade. If you are using old operating systems or old hardware, you may be fine, but with XP64 or Vista on the latest hardware, it repeatedly corrupted my hard drive partions rendering them not only unbootable but generally unrecoverable. Another bug is that my wireless mouse would only work during the first welcome/splash screen of the boot CD but not the actual utility once it loaded. I had to hook up a PS/2 mouse. Even that didn't work all of the time (like when I had a 2nd drive plugged in).
Aside from the hardware problems, it plain destroyed partitions and corrupts MBRs. I'll give you some examples. Resize NTFS cluster sizes renders Windows completely unbootable and corrupted. Changing drive letters renders the system unbootable. Setting a partition active corrupts the drive. Performing operations on an external USB drive completely corrupted the drive, and I couldn't fix with any other DOS/Windows utilities that I had. I had to fix it on my Mac! Note that you cannot clone a drive or partition. You can only copy a partition which assigns the wrong drive letter and as noted above you cannot correct without losing all the data. Many operations require multiple reboots for each step involved and some steps fail/crash. Sometimes, it would set the wrong partition active. Finally, copying partitions from one drive to another failed inexplicably and crashed about 1/2 the time. The only operations I was consistently successful at were trivial operations like partition resizes which Vista does natively anyway. Operations that I could do in their "demo" (it is NOT a trial) are fake. They could not be performed using the real software which was the latest version. Please note that my system is otherwise stable and all the native Vista disk utilities/operations work flawlessly. I have used disk utilities like Partition Magic, Norton Ghost, Drive Image, etc., for decades so I am not a newbie.
The final reason for 1 star (zero if I could ), I purchased this direct from Acronis via Digital River. Their support is horrible (basically auto-replies) if they ever respond. Despite having a 30-day money back guarantee, you will never see your money again. This product sets new lows in the already shaky computer hardware/software industry.

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Avoid putting off the task of repartitioning your hard disk drive because of the time consuming task of reinstallingoperating systems, applications and the recovery of data. Now with Disk Director Suite you can easily separate system data from personal documents and increases PC performance and data safety! Easily recover any inadvertently deleted partitions or edit hard disk drives!

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CMS BounceBack Ultimate 9.2 Backup and Instant Recovery Software Review

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(More customer reviews)BounceBack Ultimate with Instant PC Recovery was a super smart purchase. After I received the software, I cleaned up and optimized my PC before installing. Following installation, I immediately made a complete system backup on my external hard drive and maintained the backup with "continuous data protection". Several month later, I got the dreaded BSOD but was able to restore my system quickly and completely with the component "Rescue Disk".
BounceBack Express, Version 8, came with my External Hard Drive but the software is woefully inadequate; it allows you to backup data only, not the entire system. If you crash, and wind up with a defective drive, the full system backup, stored on the external hard drive, can still be used to operate the pc until you fix or replace the drive and restore your system on it. This purchase saved my bacon! I am actually writing this review on the pc that crashed and with the system that was saved.
Here's a tip: after you purchase the BounceBack Ultimate Version 9.1, go to the CMS website, register the software, and immediately get the free download update to Version 9.2. It contains some post production fixes. This software really works!
UPDATE: It has been one year since my review and I am still pleased with this product. I have since upgraded my software to Windows 7 and have learned that the original "rescue disk" doesn't work with this OS. I needed to purchase the new "rescue disk" for under $10 ... well worth the investment since the heart of the program works with Windows 7.

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BounceBack Ultimate Instant Recovery software enables you to back up your entire PC or laptop hard drive, including the Operating System, data files, applications, pictures, video, financial documents and settings. Using CMS' patent pending Instant PC Recovery mode, you can start your PC or laptop directly from an external USB backup hard drive in the event of an operating system malfunction or even a failed hard drive.Key Benefits- Instant Recovery Software for Your PC! - Start-Up and Recover From Your External USB Storage Device- Continuous Data Protection (CDP)- Immediate Access To Your Files - Data Saved in Native File Format Creates a Bootable Drive - Ability to Startup Direct from Backup- Backup to Any USB Hard Drive, Secondary Drive or Network Drive- Data Security - Built-in AES-256 Encryption- Backup Automation Through Backup Scheduling, Auto Shut Down- Parallel Backup - Backup to Multiple Destinations- Version Control - Ability to Go Back To Point In Time Backups BounceBack Ultimate Is Better Than The Rest - Typical backup software makes the process of recovery complicated, arduous and time consuming. CMS understands the value of your time. Other backup programs require you to load CD's and navigate complicated restore processes. If you backed up using an online service, online backups are only good if you can still access the Internet. If your computer is not working what good is a backup that you can't restore? Not to mention the fact that downloading a full system restore over the Internet usually takes several hours, sometimes days. BounceBack makes recovery effortless!

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Acronis True Image Home 2009 Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)(I've adapted this review from an earlier discussion post because those posts don't affect the product's star ratings.)
I've been looking for a drive imaging program for protection in case my HD fails at some point. I'd tried ShadowProtect, but it wouldn't run, and the publisher's tech service people were unable to find the cause. So now I've done a complete image backup with True Image 2009 to an external hard drive, and I've restored individual files from the backup without any problems. I'll also mention that this program was very easy to use, and the user manual is clear.


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Acronis True Image Home 2009 is a comprehensive backup and recovery solution that protects your PC with less effort on your part and allows you to recover from the impact of viruses, unstable software downloads and failed hard drives.Create an exact copy of your PC and restore from a major failure in minutes, or back up only your most important data and recover it even faster. Millions of PCs are protected by Acronis, the top-ranked backup and restore product for the home!

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True Image Home 2011 Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)I'm a software engineer and I'm used to pushing computers to their limits. Just my computer at home has 3 hard drives with a total of 14 partitions (I use Boot IT NG to manage so many partitions). I have installed in these disks mostly Windows 7 and Windows XP.
Acronis. A backup and restore solution is like a parachute. It either opens when you need it or it doesn't. It's as simple as that. I've been using Acronis for over 6 years and I've spent my money buying the most recent versions.
Fact: this tool never let me down and it saved my skin several times. However, this isn't to say I love the tool.
To make Acronis work for you is simple: stick to the basics, backup and restore. Acronis has a smart team of developers, but their marketing team is stupid. Every version they come up with, more senseless bells and whistles are added which just clutter their tool.
After so many years, here's a list of features that worked well and some that failed miserably. Again, this is my experience with more partitions in my computer than most users.
One-click backup.
This "one-click" feature works great if you're buying stuff from Amazon. For backups you can't be serious. What will it back up, where will it store, and how do you recover? Sure, the answers are there but how can you understand things with a "one-click"? It's a silly marketing catch phrase that in the end never did anything useful to me. Spend a few more clicks and... do things right.
Try and Decide
This one should be called "please crash my computer". Every time I attempted to make this feature work, something went wrong. To me, this is absolutely useless and it's consistently useless across all Acronis Home versions I owned. This has never, ever worked for me.
Acronis Secure Zone.
This one has consistently worked well for me. On client computers I use the Acronis Startup Recovery Manager and it works really well. Again, a core feature that works when you need it. One drawback: it's painfully slow on larger disks with incremental backups. Here's a suggestion for the Acronis engineers:
MAKE EXISTING FEATURES PERFORM BETTER
instead of adding non-sense bells and whistles every year. With Acronis TI 2011, you can convert the ASZ from a FAT files system (old) to NTFS (newer). They claim this should help performance a bit; however, their conversion utility stops working at "33%" on my 350 GB ASZ (not all is used). So, I can't tell you if it's any faster on this version.
Online backup
Another "you've got to be kidding me feature". Why would you want to do it this way? Simple: another marketing catch. This is simple: save your backup locally, validate it, THEN you upload it to the online service of your choice. Now... uploading the file "directly"? It sounds good in theory, but in reality upload speeds are slower, they drop, people use wireless (!) and you set yourself up for failure. I'm sure this works well for some people, it's just that I'm not one of them. I stay away from this one. If you save your stuff online, save it locally first.
Scheduled Backups
Another feature that works well. I have several backups that run every week and Acronis does a great job emailing me the results (good or bad). These backups have worked consistently well for me over the years and they never failed me. Here's something they did right and it works well.
Recovery / Restores
This is thee acid test: does the parachute open or not? In all fairness, a restore with Acronis has never, ever failed me. I restored partitions, files, data from internal hard drives and from external ones (USB). It worked 100%, all the time. It's even smart enough to deal with the file security in Windows O/S and it even updates the boot.ini file to make Windows bootable. Smart. Useful. It's great.
All other features
I can't cover them all here without making this review 50 pages long. However, stuff like mount / un-mount images, file shredder, system clean-up, work "alright" but... they're slow. What's up with the Acronis team that their tool is "consistently" slow? How do they manage that? :-)
Again, in my opinion Acronis is going in the wrong direction trying to add more "features I don't need" to their software to make it more marketable. Instead, they should make this tool screaming fast, but it has been consistently slow over the years.
In the end: does it work? Yes, but only if you stick to the basics. Do I recommend it? Yes, but only if you stick to the basics.
I've been running TI Home 2011 on my computer at home and it seems to perform better from prior versions. The interface is now centered around backup files and this takes some getting used to. If you want to schedule a backup, it's not as obvious as before in my opinion, but it's there.
All in all, buy it if you don't have one. The price is good and the tool works, just make sure you understand what this tool is: backup and recovery. Stick to the basics. All the other stuff is almost useless to me and I guarantee you all bad reviews here have something to do with their "extra" features (Acronis just needs to get smarter). Their basic backup and recovery works well, if you can deal with slow performance (this could be because of so many partitions I have in my computer too). So your mileage may vary.


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Have you ever accidentally deleted a file, had a virus corrupt your files, or had a disk fail? These are just a few examples of how people lose pictures, music, personal and financial data every day. Don't let this happen to you. Now is the time to protect your PC with Acronis True Image Home 2011.
Redesign of friendly user interface includes new features like Drag and Drop for faster navigation. View larger.

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Roxio Easy Media Creator Suite 10 Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)Creator Suite 10 does it all (or at least anything I could possibly want to do). Audio, video, data, photos, media devices, label creation and more. You can download directly from a camera, camcorder, iPod, cell phone and most portable devices. It has a sound editor to capture sound from DVDs and other sources. It even converts LPs and cassettes to digital sound from a stereo input. DVDs are easy to create and users can add soundtracks using their own music catalog. The program screens are well organized, with helpful wizards to get a user started with every feature.
I recently purchased a new HP tablet laptop with Windows Vista. Windows Vista does not work with older versions of many software programs. I already own Nero Burning Rom and Easy CD Creator 6. Neither would work with Vista. Creator Suite 10 runs perfectly with Vista. Also, older Roxio products do not do DVD burning and my version of Roxio will not rip from CDs to create MP3s (which is why I had bought Nero). I had never created DVDs before getting this program. But, it worked perfectly with the Lightscribe DVD drive, and I easily created a DVD from MPEGS, added chapter inserts and customized the menu. It played in our 5-disc DVD player with no issues. Burning CDs was just as simple.
So, why 4 stars and not 5? First, doing it all is great - unless you're never going to use it. A $100 retail price is a little high for some users. Other than the DVD and CD burning, I am unlikely to use the product to do photo manipulation and the myriad other features available. I already own other programs that do these things, that I am more skilled at using. Second, it will likely not work in an older system. I tried loading this on my 2 year old Averatec laptop running Windows XP. I could not get the software to install. I ran DSKCHK when prompted by Windows, but the disk would run loudly in my drive and go nowhere. I did install it on a Dell GX620 system running XP with no problem, so it is the laptop (or drive), not XP, that's the problem.
If you have an older computer, or just want to burn CDs, you may want to go with a cheaper media program. If you've got a brand new system with Windows Vista, I cannot recommend Easy Media Creator Suite 10 enough.

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The new Roxio Easy Media Creator® 10 puts everything you need to express yourself digitally at your fingertips. Transform raw vision into sophisticated movies stunning photo slideshows. Even advanced creative work is a snap like timeline video editing or photo touchups and object cloning. Now you can auto-fix camera phone photos. Post video to YouTube™ with one click. Encode HD video faster. Burn or copy the latest HD DVD or Blue-ray discs. Share and enjoy your creations at home on-the-go or on the web. It s the best software for all your digital media needs. Fully certified for Windows Vista™ and supports Windows® XP too!System Requirements:Minimum System Requirements: Windows Vista with 1.6 GHz Intel processor 512 MB RAM Windows XP with 500 MHz processor or faster; 128 MB RAM 1 GB of free hard disk space for typical installation of all components 1024x768 16-bit color graphics card DirectX 9 or higher compatible sound card and graphics card Windows Media Player 10 or higher Microsoft Internet Explorer 6 or higher DVD-ROM drive is required to install the softwareFormat: WIN XPVISTA Genre:PRODUCTIVITY UPC:815227007981 Manufacturer No:235500

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